"Quality" Branches Dedicated to HEVC / x265

Not sure if it has been fixed yet, but markus said in another topic a few days ago there’s a bug with preferred words. You have to enable the checkbox “include preferred in renaming” for sonarr to use those words when determining the scores.

I truly hope this becomes a priority in future builds. So many shows I currently follow are ONLY being released in HEVC x265 720p format or greater. However in order to maintain that a much larger file size 720p is not grabbed instead, changing the profile (in what ive found) does not allow for a very tiny x265 file size. (I can get the correct size for hour long shows, but half hour or shorter cannot change the cutoff to a small enough size to match and download said file). Truly tired of manually operating what I would hope to eventually be an automated system. Short of a dual-sonarr setup, I cant figure a way of doing so. [However I also previously didn’t see, find in my playing with options within, or even know about the restrictions section. Doesn’t help with current goal (as to what I see), but perhaps there is a combination of options currently available within sonarr that could achieve the desired result and I haven’t had the luxury of stumbling over thus far.]

In any case… please provide an option to make this end a reality! So much content is only available at such quality or better and at such small file sizes. Without this option, it requires a lot more super user interaction to provide a seamless (and what should-be automated) system.

Thanks for any and all help the devs make towards this end! (Honestly don’t know how I dedicated so much time to my setup before utilizing sonarr)

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Potentially cracked the x265 quality dilemma, please try these settings. HDTV has to be above WEB so it will grab x264 first and then upgrade to x265 HDTV on release if it becomes available.

Edit; confirmed working for me, I’m seeing x264 quality releases automatically upgraded to x265.

Ok, thanks for the help. But perhaps a bit more, please. Your second screenshot… How exactly do I get to that setting? I’m finding nothing like that anywhere within settings or general. I’m currently on version “2.0.0.5287” if that helps.

The only thing I’ve found remotely similar is the restrictions section. However this does not have a “preferred” section anywhere within it.

(And yes I have advanced settings enabled)

Thanks for your help so far; as well as any further help you are able to provide.

@madhatter806 Those pertains to the 3.* branch of Sonarr, they aren’t available in 2.*

Thanks for the help. Had a feeling it had to do with the version I was running, but didn’t realize there was an alpha release. After upgrading to that, correcting my service to local account so my network shares work, and adjusting profiles as your screenshots showed… viola! Everything works.

Again thanks so much. Glad it is now pulling in HEVC/x265 automatically!

Hallelujah this is finally in the pipeline. Not being able to preference HEVC>AVC>XVID was the only thing keeping me from letting Sonarr loose on my entire TV collection. For new releases its been simple to download HEVC only, but for obscure older stuff sometimes i have to search manually and take whatever i can get.

I am still having issues with the settings @bolagnaise is displaying. I have HDTV (720p only) above WEB, but this is only forcing Sonarr to download X264 files in HDTV-720p. There is no automatic upgrading. I can give more details if necessary, would like to get this automated so I can focus on reencoding my film instead.

@Geoghoff Have you set release profiles up as well? Picture below
https://gyazo.com/0664e5269ba9258a4fe9c11ce61d7917

I have, and I’ve double checked and added all the extra clauses you have too.

So for example on Modern Family, I have a 700MB HDTV-720p x264 file automatically downloaded. There is an x265 release available, with a preferred score and everything, but it’s not downloading because Sonarr has already prioritised an x264 release for the HDTV-720p.

So it does see that release as an upgrade due to the preferred score, but it’s not automatically grabbing the upgrade. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong!

is the cutoff met? if so are you sure sonarr sees the x265 file as the same quality as you already have? not better/worse, it has to be the same once cutoff is met

change the logging level to trace, do an auto search on the show then read through the trace logs (or post them here) to see why sonarr is ignoring the upgrade.

Unsure of how to upload a .txt file, and I’m not sure which part I’m looking for so I don’t want to plaster the whole thing here!

The cutoff (Upgrade Until?) for this profile is HDTV-720p, which is placed above all WEB. The x264 releases that are automatically downloaded first are all HDTV-720p, and so is the x265 release (there’s only ever one). However the x265 doesn’t have an error mark (unlike all the rest of the x264 releases in the list), so I’d assume that it would download (and upgrade) automatically.

And that’s where I’m having issues: if I force Sonarr to automatically search for a release, AKA force an x265 upgrade over the x264, then the x265 file does begin downloading. That’s great, but my problem is that this action is not being done automatically.

As far as I can tell, I’m doing everything the same as everyone else, but I’m just getting different results? The only thing I’ve changed just now is removing the “Must Not Contain” restrictions on the release profile.

Is that an old release? Then it’s normal you have to use a search to trigger a download.

I’m on the alpha, 3.0.0.348, 29 December 2018.

Sorry, should have been more clear. I was talking about “the release” as in “the download you were expecting sonarr to grab automatically” :sweat_smile:

thats the most important part. sonarr does not search. if the x265 release never made it into the RSS query results then sonarr wouldnt have seen it to be able to download it as an upgrade.

make sure you arent doing an RSS query too often if your indexer limits queries, if you max it out too early then it basically will miss chunks until the api timer resets the next cycle (daily/hourly).

there might also be issues on the indexer side that causes the RSS feed to skip

if you are getting gaps in your RSS feeds (for whatever reason) it will look like this in the logs;
19-1-19 07:17:39.1|Warn|Torznab|Indexer (sanitised) rss sync didn't cover the period between 1/18/2019 7:02:54 PM and 1/18/2019 7:50:27 PM UTC. Search may be required.

I checked the trace logs and the more recent normal logs, the only warns I have are JPG banners etc. not downloading and Free Space / Import warnings from this morning :woozy_face:

They’re all currently airing series, so the x265 releases are hours after the airing, but it’s not prioritising downloading the x265 after it’s already downloaded an x264. As far as I can tell this is because both are HDTV-720p, and Sonarr doesn’t care about automatically upgrading to the same “quality”? I really feel like I’m missing something!

Edit: Apparently I’ve hit the reply limit so I’m editing here.

I just found out that when I do a full series search on The Good Place, which was missing S03E11 due to the scene information being inaccurate, Sonarr has decided to redownload most of the x265 files I have, but instead with 500mb x264 releases? So besides the series having scene information errors for E10-12, what is causing all this?

trace logs - its the only way anyone can tell why sonarr picked a specific release over another

the other thing you can do is just a manual search. make sure the +xx values are being shown, and they should be sorted by order that sonarr would grab them (if not click on the download icon header). if the x265 is under a whole bunch of other files then you’ve got that quality higher in the list than the x265 files quality

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