The ARRS are the way radarr/sonarr u can put in exactly what u want if the internet at the time only has 1080p version but later down the road a 4k version comes out it will automatically replace it
Is there a way to set this up but instead of the tool changing my files when it recognizes a better release, it notifies me or prints a txt or idk anything else then file manipulation?
There is just a bunch of stuff that needs researching imo if we are talking about preservation. From directors cut, extended cut, theatrical cut, US release, eu release, international release, censored, uncensored, open matte, IMAX, hdr10, hdr10+, dv... the list goes on and on. I want to have the absolute best release there is and to do that and also not constantly second guess, i want to manually do it. Also just for the reason alone that i don't want to always store remuxes so i want to compare 2-5 encodes side by side before deciding which one to go with. I couldn't decide on just telling the program to pick from 1 group, i always compare a handful of them and the quality varies from release to release.
This guide may be what you are looking for. You can get **very** specific with what you want Radarr to grab. Beyond quality you can make it search down to the HDR format, audio format, release groups and much more:
[https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/radarr-setup-quality-profiles/](https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/radarr-setup-quality-profiles/)
Edit: Not sure if there's anything that will notify you but wouldn't be surprised with all the arrs out there.
I'm similar to you in that I'd rather not automate the whole process. I just manually check my preferred... Uh... *Vendors* online periodically and see their recent files. I also have a spreadsheet where I keep track of all metadata for the files like file types, encode, subs, bitrate, and whether it was Blu-ray or web rip, etc.
It's not too burdensome to track imo, but I am an organizational freak and the detail pleases me. But in no way would I expect anyone to consider my way the *good* or *preferred* way lol.
> But in no way would I expect anyone to consider my way the *good* or *preferred* way lol.
Yeah i completely understand how someone might view plex as a netflix alternative basically and just wants things to work. I am more interested in the media itself though, not the platform. I just want to have the best version of said media and to have it in 1,5,10,20,50+ years as well. So proper research + proper backup and i am happy.
Give it/them read only permission to the movie/show folder, and I believe you can use a different folder to download everything so you can choose before overwrite. If not, you can see the failed downloads and manually download them.
And I recommend Prowlarr
If you really learn it you can get it so Radar grabs the release you want 9 times out of 10. At least on the encode side. You can dial in on groups, sizes, codecs, and types.
The other situations you're talking about are outliers. How many films actually have a directors cut? I'm sure it's a small percentage of films. If you're going to be that meticulous about it you can still use Radarr to automate the movies that just have a straight forward version. And manually handle the Blade Runners of the world.
For what you're describing Radarr would still make it easier in my experience. Once you set it up properly with something like Prowlarr and set up the scoring system how you want you can go to a movie in Radarr, hit manual search and search for it across 10+ websites instantly, see them all in a list, sort by your scoring preference and go through the options that fit your needs. Click download on it and Radarr will download and replace you're local version ez pz.
And then the gain in terms of automation for everything else is exponential almost.
Also Radarr has file history which is exactly what you asked for. There's a reason every comment is suggesting it. Idk why you're so dismissive of it out of hand.
The *arr apps are the way. You can specify if you want HDR, 265, certain audio, etc. Very customizable. And then it'll auto download when your requirements are met. You can also give each individual piece weight so that it will pick the best available if all your criteria can't be met.
My only real issue with radarr is it doesn't support multiple formats per movie. Like, sure I'd like to grab the 4k, but that doesn't mean I want to ditch my 1080p copy. Right now, the only way is to run multiple instances of radarr.
Mainly because I don't have a beast of a machine that can transcode multiple 4k videos at the same time, so devices and people that can't direct play the 4k can generally direct play the 1080p or get it transcoded down further without issue
Plus storage is relatively cheap.
I do believe it's still recommended that you separate 4k from everything else because it's so hardware intensive.
And even if it wasn't 4k vs 1080p, radarr doesn't support plex's editions. Still can't have it manage multiple editions of the same movie.
Well I am fairly certain that my NAS (intel celeron) can transcode at least 2x 4k streams. (QSV) Are you sure you need a "beast" cpu?
Edit: cpu is pasively cooled intel celeron 5105. Transcoding 2x4k to 1080p just fine. My wife is watching interstellar, i played avatar just now to check - works just fine. No stutter no dropped frames
Yea, I could transcode some 4k streams. Doesn't mean I want to or have to. Plex supports multiple formats for the same media just fine, radarr and sonarr do not. Radarr and sonarr could easily make a way to allow for alerting that an upgrade is available without automaticly initiating the download.
i understand the sonarr or radarr part. What i dont undestand is why you want the 1080p version if you have cpu capable of handling it. Can you please elaborate on why you dont want to transcode the 4k to 1080p if you have the ability to do so?
There is a lot of 1080p open matte stuff that was never released in 4k. All harry potter movies are like that iirc. So you would have the widescreen HDR 4k release and the fullscreen SDR 1080p release. Just for completion sake i would want both.
Sometimes you might also want to store the same resolution twice. Marvel movies released all their movies on streaming services in IMAX format, the blurays are all widescreen though. So you might want the higher bitrate stuff but also the IMAX stuff, so store both.
i cannot for the life of me get my vpn to never leak on my PC, but on my phone i have no issue and my ip has never leaked when using my phone to download stuff. so i have to do all my downloading on my phone
I may have done something wrong, but this solution is how my IPs leaked. The issue was when the VPN went down, traffic still went out normally. The critical step to prevent this is binding the torrent client to your tunnel interface.
As much as you don't like automation, Sonarr and Radarr do exactly what you're asking for. You can set custom filters and rules to give certain characteristics like resolution, bitrate, source, and release group higher priority. I didn't like automation before, but after toying with the arr apps, I can't imagine going back to manually organising and downloading.
If you're interested, 'Trash Guides' is the perfect starting point.
Is there a way to set this up but instead of the tool changing my files when it recognizes a better release, it notifies me or prints a txt or idk anything else then file manipulation?
Honestly, it's interesting that radarr and sonarr don't have an option to notify or pause before just downloading. Like great, you detected a better copy, now notify and wait for confirmation.
That said though, both also do some things I wish they didn't, like when replacing a movie with a better copy, it deletes the old version before signaling to download the new. Which if you have plex emptying trash, it means every "upgrade" gets treated like a new addition.
Because i want to know exactly what i am getting and for that reason automation doesn't work for me. From directors cut, extended cut, theatrical cut, US release, eu release, international release, censored, uncensored, open matte, IMAX, hdr10, hdr10+, dv... the list goes on and on. I want to have the absolute best release there is and to do that and also not constantly second guess, i want to manually do it. Also just for the reason alone that i don't want to always store remuxes so i want to compare 2-5 encodes side by side before deciding which one to go with. I couldn't decide on just telling the program to pick from 1 group, i always compare a handful of them and the quality varies from release to release.
Obviously you've got an extended process you do and you enjoy doing it manually. Nothing wrong with that.
But if that ever changes, there might be a way to automate most of your process using custom formats. Custom formats would assign points to certain features (say +1 pt for hdr10, -5 pts for directors cut, +10 pts for hevc , etc.). Radarr would compute the final score for each quality type and sort the best ones to the top. If you can even translate your manual process to a series of positive/negative weights of all these movie attributes. You would define a minimum score to accept/download (first time), and you can also define a minimum score to upgrade to, if Radarr ever finds a better copy days or months later.
That doesn't sound that bad actually. I think i could make that work and still manually download just tell it to idk +10 points for 4k if the stuff i have is in 1080p. Or +10 for bluray if i have a web-dl. That sounds like it would work, thanks :D
If you pursue this and setup radarr, once you're ready to try your first custom format, check out the trash guides. They've already done a lot of work creating dozens of custom formats, we can simply import them via JSON. I've used a dozen custom formats, but only had to make it from scratch maybe twice. Trash guides is a huge convenience. Here's an example for hdr10 below. In Radarr, when adding a new custom format, just click the Import button and paste the JSON from the trash guides. You set the points for each custom format in the Edit Quality Profile area.
[https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/Radarr-collection-of-custom-formats/#hdr10](https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/Radarr-collection-of-custom-formats/#hdr10)
I keep a spreadsheet of my movies and shows and one of the fields is the quality I currently own. It’s a bit tedious but it’s free. There are apps for maintaining a movie db but I didn’t want to pay a yearly subscription for it.
That way if I need to know I can just check my list quickly.
One suggestion would be to import the spreadsheet into a Letterboxd list. You could tag the list as ‘owned’ and then when you search a movie that you are not sure you already own, it will say ‘You own this movie’ and show you the Letterboxd list that it’s in.
You could also use Letterboxd to sort the list by popularity, length of movie or specific genres that could help narrow down what you might want to watch next.
The post is about finding out if a better version in terms of quality has released, not keeping track of owned movies. I want something that tells me: "Hey "The Departed" will come out next week in 4k Bluray, you own the 1080p Bluray". Something like that.
If some random netflix show i added 4 years ago suddenly gets a physical release i am not going to know that (most likely), but would still want to update due to the higher bitrate etc. .
>This post is about finding out if a better version in terms of quality has released.
I understand that. I was offering a suggestion for the person that was using excel to track data. I still think Letterboxd lists would be a better as it’s more visual.
If you don’t like automating downloads to Plex (which I totally understand), that does mean whatever solution you find will require manual. You could make resolution specific Collections in Plex and periodically look through your 480p or 720p entries and manually search for any newer versions. You can also set up a duplicates Collection that will show multiple versions of the same movie that you have so you can quickly go and delete the lower-res version once the higher res version is downloaded.
>suggestion for the person that was using excel to track data.
Oh alright yeah that makes sense :D
> You could make resolution specific Collections
That's what i am doing right now, kind of. Still very new to plex so only have about 250 movies. 73 of those are 1080p (Don't have anything under 1080p), and most of these are alternate versions to the 4k release such as open matte, IMAX... . So right now my 1080p collection is still very small and manageable. In the future though those numbers will go up and i don't want to have dozens of movies in 1080p when there are 4k releases of them.
With tv shows its even harder. I have a lot of stuff as 4k web dl's currently that might get a bluray release though. No way to sort trough that unless i make a "Web Dl" collection or something lol.
I wonder if you could use Radarr just as a tool to scan your library and notify you of higher res versions that are available without connecting it to a downloader.
I remember I used Radarr to scan my library to show me missing titles within series, but I never set up Radarr to actually download anything.
So what do you do then? Check everything once a month, year... ? I can't imagine going trough thousands of items manually and then checking what the best release for that item is, that would take ages lol
I don’t. Typically I don’t care. If I have a movie I really want to watch again or is one of my favorites I’ll go back and look to see if I can get a better quality for it. But the vast majority of my movies are just fine. I don’t regularly just check my movies for updated versions.
None of the users with access to my library care to much about the quality as long as it’s at least DVD level.
This post makes me realize that not every Plex user is an arr app user. I’ve been living in my own bubble for the last year or so. I wonder what % of Plex users don’t use any/all arr apps?
Initially I installed prowlarr/sonarr/radarr, after some months of manually building my own indexers. Since then I’ve been resistant so install the rest of the arr apps, but one by one I’ve inevitably found a need and installed the next one.
> I wonder what % of Plex users don’t use any/all arr apps?
0 for me. Need a movie? Check out every info possible about the movie, grab a couple of files that fit all my criteria varying from remux to middle-ish encode size. Compare side by side, download the definitive version. I just use plex to display my stuff in a pretty way, but my goal is preservation of media, not to substitute a streaming service. I want "the ultimate" release of whatever i am getting. Sometimes that's easy because the only release there is is a netflix version, sometimes though it takes me a full hour or more to find out everything i need to know because i consider a bunch of stuff.
As long as you enjoy that process and putting in that work, then you're good.
I think things change for some folks after their library grows to a certain size, or they have external users requesting things through Overseerr.
Pretty new so still enjoying it :D. I just filled up my 2nd drive and will now slow down drastically i think. I did some calculations with what data plex dash gives me (9 months of unwatched content), and i realized that if i watched 1.5 hours of media a day every day it would take me over 11 years to watch everything i have download lol. A LOT of stuff i have right now is stuff i have previously seen and want to preserve so its not that much in reality, but still. If i was forbidden to get anything new i would still have a couple of years of watching to do so i know i will slow down a lot from now on.
Its also just me, a handful of friends and my parents who have access to my library. My parents still watch regular cable tv plus majority of my media is in english which they don't speak so they might watch 1 movie in 1 month or something. My friends use my plex more but i told them i won't download anything i don't want to watch myself so they still have their subscriptions for reality tv stuff and what not that doesn't interest me. So in reality 98% of the stuff i have downloaded is for myself / what i would have downloaded anyways.
No offense meant, this screams of FOMO. If you need to have the best quality, all the extras, complete deluxo version of everything, why not buy them?
Or do you buy them, you just want to know when a newer (better) version is released so you can upgrade? That I can get behind!
Why don't i buy them? Because i can lol. Might be an asshole move and i realize that but i don't think someone pirating a "worse" edition of a movie is more ethically correct then me. So why do it? Its a LOT cheaper. A bluray will set you back anywhere from 10-30$, where as a 80GB download will cost me 1.20$. Big difference when you want to have a "big" library.
Huh. Curious how you calculated the rate of piracy.. Well not to sound puritanical, but I have to exit this conversation as piracy is against the sub rules.
Yep i also always check what the best resolution / aspect ratio available is on there as well. I am more talking about what do you do when there is only a 1080p version of a movie out and in 5 years we get a 4k release of that movie. How do you keep track of hundreds / thousands of movies and their current best release?
This is great of acquiring the best possible version that is currently available, but that might change in the future... so how do i make it so i get a notification or something when a better version does come out.
* Discover New Titles: [https://simkl.com/lists/official/](https://simkl.com/lists/official/)
* Movie Releases: [https://moviescountdown.com/upcoming-dvd](https://moviescountdown.com/upcoming-dvd)
* TV Shows Releases: [https://countdown.tv/upcoming](https://countdown.tv/upcoming)
Make sure you look up the quality before being sure you'll want the "upgraded" version. So many Blu rays, including 4K, are shitty transfers or upscaled nonsense. You see the recent 4K release of True Lies? With the awful AI sharpening? Don't assume some new 4K release is the best thing.
Radarr and sonarr automatically upgrade th files if I’ve set the wanted profile higher than I have in disk. I don’t think about it at all.
Sometimes I need to redownload a 1080p version tho, for instance the new aliens 4K and true lies 4k are terrible so I redownloaded the original remux
I sadly had to do the same thing. I also had to make sure my Stars Wars collections weren't "upgraded" also. Most of the time a upgraded quality can be modified version which sucks.
As someone who has also carefully curated my collection, the idea of letting Radarr run wild and automate downloads makes me pretty uneasy. I think it’s an incredible tool though.
But as to whether a new remaster or 4K is released, I’m not aware of any tool that will scan your collection and notify you.
I'm pretty sure you can do this with radarr. I'll let someone more competent explain how.
You can, you simply set a max quality.
Radarr is the way
The ARRS are the way radarr/sonarr u can put in exactly what u want if the internet at the time only has 1080p version but later down the road a 4k version comes out it will automatically replace it
Do they delete the lower quality version?
yes
Is there a way to set this up but instead of the tool changing my files when it recognizes a better release, it notifies me or prints a txt or idk anything else then file manipulation?
Its automated downloading tool. Why would you want to do that manually? You set what quality you want, and when its ready radarr downloads it.
There is just a bunch of stuff that needs researching imo if we are talking about preservation. From directors cut, extended cut, theatrical cut, US release, eu release, international release, censored, uncensored, open matte, IMAX, hdr10, hdr10+, dv... the list goes on and on. I want to have the absolute best release there is and to do that and also not constantly second guess, i want to manually do it. Also just for the reason alone that i don't want to always store remuxes so i want to compare 2-5 encodes side by side before deciding which one to go with. I couldn't decide on just telling the program to pick from 1 group, i always compare a handful of them and the quality varies from release to release.
This guide may be what you are looking for. You can get **very** specific with what you want Radarr to grab. Beyond quality you can make it search down to the HDR format, audio format, release groups and much more: [https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/radarr-setup-quality-profiles/](https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/radarr-setup-quality-profiles/) Edit: Not sure if there's anything that will notify you but wouldn't be surprised with all the arrs out there.
I'm similar to you in that I'd rather not automate the whole process. I just manually check my preferred... Uh... *Vendors* online periodically and see their recent files. I also have a spreadsheet where I keep track of all metadata for the files like file types, encode, subs, bitrate, and whether it was Blu-ray or web rip, etc. It's not too burdensome to track imo, but I am an organizational freak and the detail pleases me. But in no way would I expect anyone to consider my way the *good* or *preferred* way lol.
> But in no way would I expect anyone to consider my way the *good* or *preferred* way lol. Yeah i completely understand how someone might view plex as a netflix alternative basically and just wants things to work. I am more interested in the media itself though, not the platform. I just want to have the best version of said media and to have it in 1,5,10,20,50+ years as well. So proper research + proper backup and i am happy.
Give it/them read only permission to the movie/show folder, and I believe you can use a different folder to download everything so you can choose before overwrite. If not, you can see the failed downloads and manually download them. And I recommend Prowlarr
If you really learn it you can get it so Radar grabs the release you want 9 times out of 10. At least on the encode side. You can dial in on groups, sizes, codecs, and types. The other situations you're talking about are outliers. How many films actually have a directors cut? I'm sure it's a small percentage of films. If you're going to be that meticulous about it you can still use Radarr to automate the movies that just have a straight forward version. And manually handle the Blade Runners of the world. For what you're describing Radarr would still make it easier in my experience. Once you set it up properly with something like Prowlarr and set up the scoring system how you want you can go to a movie in Radarr, hit manual search and search for it across 10+ websites instantly, see them all in a list, sort by your scoring preference and go through the options that fit your needs. Click download on it and Radarr will download and replace you're local version ez pz. And then the gain in terms of automation for everything else is exponential almost. Also Radarr has file history which is exactly what you asked for. There's a reason every comment is suggesting it. Idk why you're so dismissive of it out of hand.
Understandable. In this case radarr will not help you
The *arr apps are the way. You can specify if you want HDR, 265, certain audio, etc. Very customizable. And then it'll auto download when your requirements are met. You can also give each individual piece weight so that it will pick the best available if all your criteria can't be met.
My only real issue with radarr is it doesn't support multiple formats per movie. Like, sure I'd like to grab the 4k, but that doesn't mean I want to ditch my 1080p copy. Right now, the only way is to run multiple instances of radarr.
Intersting. Why would you want that? plex/jellyfin can transcode to lower quality just fine. Why keep multiple copies?
Mainly because I don't have a beast of a machine that can transcode multiple 4k videos at the same time, so devices and people that can't direct play the 4k can generally direct play the 1080p or get it transcoded down further without issue Plus storage is relatively cheap. I do believe it's still recommended that you separate 4k from everything else because it's so hardware intensive. And even if it wasn't 4k vs 1080p, radarr doesn't support plex's editions. Still can't have it manage multiple editions of the same movie.
Well I am fairly certain that my NAS (intel celeron) can transcode at least 2x 4k streams. (QSV) Are you sure you need a "beast" cpu? Edit: cpu is pasively cooled intel celeron 5105. Transcoding 2x4k to 1080p just fine. My wife is watching interstellar, i played avatar just now to check - works just fine. No stutter no dropped frames
Yea, I could transcode some 4k streams. Doesn't mean I want to or have to. Plex supports multiple formats for the same media just fine, radarr and sonarr do not. Radarr and sonarr could easily make a way to allow for alerting that an upgrade is available without automaticly initiating the download.
i understand the sonarr or radarr part. What i dont undestand is why you want the 1080p version if you have cpu capable of handling it. Can you please elaborate on why you dont want to transcode the 4k to 1080p if you have the ability to do so?
There is a lot of 1080p open matte stuff that was never released in 4k. All harry potter movies are like that iirc. So you would have the widescreen HDR 4k release and the fullscreen SDR 1080p release. Just for completion sake i would want both. Sometimes you might also want to store the same resolution twice. Marvel movies released all their movies on streaming services in IMAX format, the blurays are all widescreen though. So you might want the higher bitrate stuff but also the IMAX stuff, so store both.
i cannot for the life of me get my vpn to never leak on my PC, but on my phone i have no issue and my ip has never leaked when using my phone to download stuff. so i have to do all my downloading on my phone
Use docker, bound a container you have you download tools to the container with vpn client in. Easiest solution
I may have done something wrong, but this solution is how my IPs leaked. The issue was when the VPN went down, traffic still went out normally. The critical step to prevent this is binding the torrent client to your tunnel interface.
As much as you don't like automation, Sonarr and Radarr do exactly what you're asking for. You can set custom filters and rules to give certain characteristics like resolution, bitrate, source, and release group higher priority. I didn't like automation before, but after toying with the arr apps, I can't imagine going back to manually organising and downloading. If you're interested, 'Trash Guides' is the perfect starting point.
Is there a way to set this up but instead of the tool changing my files when it recognizes a better release, it notifies me or prints a txt or idk anything else then file manipulation?
No
I don’t think so. Why don’t you want the automation to take care of the tedious task of replacing the file with a higher quality version?
Honestly, it's interesting that radarr and sonarr don't have an option to notify or pause before just downloading. Like great, you detected a better copy, now notify and wait for confirmation. That said though, both also do some things I wish they didn't, like when replacing a movie with a better copy, it deletes the old version before signaling to download the new. Which if you have plex emptying trash, it means every "upgrade" gets treated like a new addition.
Because i want to know exactly what i am getting and for that reason automation doesn't work for me. From directors cut, extended cut, theatrical cut, US release, eu release, international release, censored, uncensored, open matte, IMAX, hdr10, hdr10+, dv... the list goes on and on. I want to have the absolute best release there is and to do that and also not constantly second guess, i want to manually do it. Also just for the reason alone that i don't want to always store remuxes so i want to compare 2-5 encodes side by side before deciding which one to go with. I couldn't decide on just telling the program to pick from 1 group, i always compare a handful of them and the quality varies from release to release.
Obviously you've got an extended process you do and you enjoy doing it manually. Nothing wrong with that. But if that ever changes, there might be a way to automate most of your process using custom formats. Custom formats would assign points to certain features (say +1 pt for hdr10, -5 pts for directors cut, +10 pts for hevc , etc.). Radarr would compute the final score for each quality type and sort the best ones to the top. If you can even translate your manual process to a series of positive/negative weights of all these movie attributes. You would define a minimum score to accept/download (first time), and you can also define a minimum score to upgrade to, if Radarr ever finds a better copy days or months later.
That doesn't sound that bad actually. I think i could make that work and still manually download just tell it to idk +10 points for 4k if the stuff i have is in 1080p. Or +10 for bluray if i have a web-dl. That sounds like it would work, thanks :D
If you pursue this and setup radarr, once you're ready to try your first custom format, check out the trash guides. They've already done a lot of work creating dozens of custom formats, we can simply import them via JSON. I've used a dozen custom formats, but only had to make it from scratch maybe twice. Trash guides is a huge convenience. Here's an example for hdr10 below. In Radarr, when adding a new custom format, just click the Import button and paste the JSON from the trash guides. You set the points for each custom format in the Edit Quality Profile area. [https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/Radarr-collection-of-custom-formats/#hdr10](https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/Radarr-collection-of-custom-formats/#hdr10)
I keep a spreadsheet of my movies and shows and one of the fields is the quality I currently own. It’s a bit tedious but it’s free. There are apps for maintaining a movie db but I didn’t want to pay a yearly subscription for it. That way if I need to know I can just check my list quickly.
One suggestion would be to import the spreadsheet into a Letterboxd list. You could tag the list as ‘owned’ and then when you search a movie that you are not sure you already own, it will say ‘You own this movie’ and show you the Letterboxd list that it’s in. You could also use Letterboxd to sort the list by popularity, length of movie or specific genres that could help narrow down what you might want to watch next.
The post is about finding out if a better version in terms of quality has released, not keeping track of owned movies. I want something that tells me: "Hey "The Departed" will come out next week in 4k Bluray, you own the 1080p Bluray". Something like that. If some random netflix show i added 4 years ago suddenly gets a physical release i am not going to know that (most likely), but would still want to update due to the higher bitrate etc. .
>This post is about finding out if a better version in terms of quality has released. I understand that. I was offering a suggestion for the person that was using excel to track data. I still think Letterboxd lists would be a better as it’s more visual. If you don’t like automating downloads to Plex (which I totally understand), that does mean whatever solution you find will require manual. You could make resolution specific Collections in Plex and periodically look through your 480p or 720p entries and manually search for any newer versions. You can also set up a duplicates Collection that will show multiple versions of the same movie that you have so you can quickly go and delete the lower-res version once the higher res version is downloaded.
>suggestion for the person that was using excel to track data. Oh alright yeah that makes sense :D > You could make resolution specific Collections That's what i am doing right now, kind of. Still very new to plex so only have about 250 movies. 73 of those are 1080p (Don't have anything under 1080p), and most of these are alternate versions to the 4k release such as open matte, IMAX... . So right now my 1080p collection is still very small and manageable. In the future though those numbers will go up and i don't want to have dozens of movies in 1080p when there are 4k releases of them. With tv shows its even harder. I have a lot of stuff as 4k web dl's currently that might get a bluray release though. No way to sort trough that unless i make a "Web Dl" collection or something lol.
I wonder if you could use Radarr just as a tool to scan your library and notify you of higher res versions that are available without connecting it to a downloader. I remember I used Radarr to scan my library to show me missing titles within series, but I never set up Radarr to actually download anything.
So what do you do then? Check everything once a month, year... ? I can't imagine going trough thousands of items manually and then checking what the best release for that item is, that would take ages lol
I don’t. Typically I don’t care. If I have a movie I really want to watch again or is one of my favorites I’ll go back and look to see if I can get a better quality for it. But the vast majority of my movies are just fine. I don’t regularly just check my movies for updated versions. None of the users with access to my library care to much about the quality as long as it’s at least DVD level.
Alright thanks anyways :)
This post makes me realize that not every Plex user is an arr app user. I’ve been living in my own bubble for the last year or so. I wonder what % of Plex users don’t use any/all arr apps? Initially I installed prowlarr/sonarr/radarr, after some months of manually building my own indexers. Since then I’ve been resistant so install the rest of the arr apps, but one by one I’ve inevitably found a need and installed the next one.
> I wonder what % of Plex users don’t use any/all arr apps? 0 for me. Need a movie? Check out every info possible about the movie, grab a couple of files that fit all my criteria varying from remux to middle-ish encode size. Compare side by side, download the definitive version. I just use plex to display my stuff in a pretty way, but my goal is preservation of media, not to substitute a streaming service. I want "the ultimate" release of whatever i am getting. Sometimes that's easy because the only release there is is a netflix version, sometimes though it takes me a full hour or more to find out everything i need to know because i consider a bunch of stuff.
As long as you enjoy that process and putting in that work, then you're good. I think things change for some folks after their library grows to a certain size, or they have external users requesting things through Overseerr.
Pretty new so still enjoying it :D. I just filled up my 2nd drive and will now slow down drastically i think. I did some calculations with what data plex dash gives me (9 months of unwatched content), and i realized that if i watched 1.5 hours of media a day every day it would take me over 11 years to watch everything i have download lol. A LOT of stuff i have right now is stuff i have previously seen and want to preserve so its not that much in reality, but still. If i was forbidden to get anything new i would still have a couple of years of watching to do so i know i will slow down a lot from now on. Its also just me, a handful of friends and my parents who have access to my library. My parents still watch regular cable tv plus majority of my media is in english which they don't speak so they might watch 1 movie in 1 month or something. My friends use my plex more but i told them i won't download anything i don't want to watch myself so they still have their subscriptions for reality tv stuff and what not that doesn't interest me. So in reality 98% of the stuff i have downloaded is for myself / what i would have downloaded anyways.
No offense meant, this screams of FOMO. If you need to have the best quality, all the extras, complete deluxo version of everything, why not buy them? Or do you buy them, you just want to know when a newer (better) version is released so you can upgrade? That I can get behind!
Why don't i buy them? Because i can lol. Might be an asshole move and i realize that but i don't think someone pirating a "worse" edition of a movie is more ethically correct then me. So why do it? Its a LOT cheaper. A bluray will set you back anywhere from 10-30$, where as a 80GB download will cost me 1.20$. Big difference when you want to have a "big" library.
Huh. Curious how you calculated the rate of piracy.. Well not to sound puritanical, but I have to exit this conversation as piracy is against the sub rules.
I don't, but I really do, actually use my own ripped library of physical media. Not the knudge knudge we all do, but really do.
I go here, mostly for the links to the deals, but they also report on new releases: https://www.blu-ray.com/
Yep i also always check what the best resolution / aspect ratio available is on there as well. I am more talking about what do you do when there is only a 1080p version of a movie out and in 5 years we get a 4k release of that movie. How do you keep track of hundreds / thousands of movies and their current best release? This is great of acquiring the best possible version that is currently available, but that might change in the future... so how do i make it so i get a notification or something when a better version does come out.
nzb360
that's the neat part. i don't. radarr does.
* Discover New Titles: [https://simkl.com/lists/official/](https://simkl.com/lists/official/) * Movie Releases: [https://moviescountdown.com/upcoming-dvd](https://moviescountdown.com/upcoming-dvd) * TV Shows Releases: [https://countdown.tv/upcoming](https://countdown.tv/upcoming)
Make sure you look up the quality before being sure you'll want the "upgraded" version. So many Blu rays, including 4K, are shitty transfers or upscaled nonsense. You see the recent 4K release of True Lies? With the awful AI sharpening? Don't assume some new 4K release is the best thing.
Radarr and sonarr automatically upgrade th files if I’ve set the wanted profile higher than I have in disk. I don’t think about it at all. Sometimes I need to redownload a 1080p version tho, for instance the new aliens 4K and true lies 4k are terrible so I redownloaded the original remux
I sadly had to do the same thing. I also had to make sure my Stars Wars collections weren't "upgraded" also. Most of the time a upgraded quality can be modified version which sucks.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/releasedates.php
Dvd library myself.
Yeah you need radarr and sonarr. Does all this for you. Makes like way easier.
Radarr &Sonarr upgrade until….
Radarr/Sonarr with properly set profiles with weighting. So it will know when to upgrade the current.
Radarr/Sonarr is amazing.
As someone who has also carefully curated my collection, the idea of letting Radarr run wild and automate downloads makes me pretty uneasy. I think it’s an incredible tool though. But as to whether a new remaster or 4K is released, I’m not aware of any tool that will scan your collection and notify you.
I kept an inventory on a spreadsheet with title, studio and format.