Borer

My release picker for Radarr and Sonarr.

My family asks for films and shows in Seerr, and Radarr and Sonarr go and get them. Except they don't search on their own on my server, because there are a LOT of fakes out there and I never wanted the wrong thing landing in the library, which meant I did every search myself. Borer does that search now. It looks at every release, throws out the fakes and the junk, and picks the one I would have picked. When it's sure, it grabs it on its own, and when it isn't, it puts the top few in front of me and I pick with one tap.

Borer's page: Needs you, with One Step Beyond and Charade and the top three releases for each, their size, seeders, group and quality, and a Get button on each — "Needs you", with the top three for each one it wasn't sure about.

Picking like I would

Borer asks Radarr and Sonarr for their own search, so the title, the year and the season are already matched. Then it throws out cams, the wrong film or show, anything with no seeders, anything far too small or too big for its length, and anything that's only a dub (a dub is fine as long as there's also English or the original language). The rest gets scored the way I'd look at it: seeders first, then a group I've used before, 1080p, a sensible size, and English subs. It only grabs on its own when the top one is clearly the right one.

Catching the fakes

The moment a torrent's file list arrives, before any of the actual download, Borer looks inside. A program, a shortcut, an archive or no video at all means a fake, and it's thrown out and the next one picked. When a file lands in the library it checks again: there's a video, it's as long as the film, and it has English or the original audio. And a download that stops moving for a day gets dropped and replaced too.

Got: Night of the Living Dead and Nosferatu arrived with English subs, The General cancelled, McLintock! removed from Radarr, The Little Shop of Horrors stalled, and Carnival of Souls thrown out for being 31 minutes of 78 — What arrived, with what's in it, and what Borer threw out and why.

Giving back

The fewer people seed something, the more I give back. Under 10 other seeders, a torrent seeds until it's uploaded 50 times its size, and it goes down from there to twice for anything with 100 or more. Borer checks the swarm every few minutes and moves the limit with it. It also checks every finished torrent against the library, and tells me when one is the only copy I have, before I delete it.

Seeding: each torrent with how far it's seeded and its limit, its seeders and size, and D.O.A. open with Not in library, the times box, Forever, Stop and Delete — Seeding, with one that isn't in the library.

Basically, it's the search I used to do every time someone asked for something, done for me, and it only asks me when it really has to. The pictures are from a demo with public-domain films and made-up release groups.