Sonarr version (exact version): 4.0.16.2944
Mono version (if Sonarr is not running on Windows):
OS: Ubuntu
Debug logs: 1) Debug Log 2) Standard Log
Description of issue: I am using NzbDAV with Sonarr. I have noticed sample files are being downloaded which at times makes Jellyfin think the sample file is the “main” file. After reading through the forum, by default Sonarr excludes sample files.
Sonarr skips sample files, when it’s able to determine it’s a sample.
In this case:
2026-01-15 18:50:13.3|Debug|DetectSample|Skipping sample check for .strm file
2026-01-15 18:50:13.3|Debug|Parser|Parsing string 'panorama.2016.09.12.why.are.gambling.machines.addictive.720p.hdtv.x264-c4tv-sample.mkv.strm'
It’s for a sample for a file that Sonarr is unable to verify and just accepts it. Not sure why there would be a sample for a strm file, but you may be able to filter them out in your download client.
Oh I see. Nzbdav basically converts the content to strm links which points to where the actually content is (it doesn’t download it directly), allowing Jellyfin to stream instead. As of yet nzbdav doesn’t support excluding sample files is my understanding. Is there a workaround in sonarr where I can instruct it to exclude any file names using a wildcard for example *.sample.strm?
Thank you for looking into the logs!
You might be able to do something with Custom Formats, but that wouldn’t include the extension. There isn’t a file filter to exclude specific formats/patterns.
Thanks @markus101, and apologies for the newbie question, but would it be possible to use custom formats to exclude any file names (source) that matches .sample e.g. (?i).sample(.|$), but continues with importing the rest? By “the rest” I mean the nzb downloaded file consists of the “main” video and “sample”, and it’s the latter that gets picked up instead. In other words, the release itself is fine but I want it to ignore the sample video file within that same release. I am not entirely sure if custom formats will prevent the whole download or is able to work purely on excluding certain files during the import process based on these rules.
For terminology alignment, when I say “import” I’m referring to sonarr sending the download request to nzbdav → nzbdav downloading the files → sonarr then “importing” these files, but applying the custom formats to exclude certain files and structuring them accordingly.
I’m not 100% sure if it’ll work offhand, but if it does work it should just prevent that file from being imported,
Okay thank you @markus101 - just wanted to make sure I’m not exploring obvious avenues that won’t work. Will play around. Thank you again for your inputs!
For future readers:- this has been resolved in the later versions of nzbdav (i.e you define a wildcard exclusion list of keywords in the name of the file).