TV Overlord is a semi automatic command line tool to download and manage TV shows from newsgroups or bittorent. It will download nzb files or magnet links.
It searches multiple sites simultaneously and combines the results into one list to select from.
TV Overlord keeps track of which shows have been downloaded and what shows are available to download.
For each new episode of a tv show you are tracking, you are given a list of possible downloads to choose. If you use a torrent search provider, a magnet link is passed to the default bittorent client. If it is an NZB search, an NZB file is placed in a folder that is configured in the configuration file.
For torrent files, you can also have your shows organized after downloading. If you use transmission or deluge, those clients can be configured to call a script when each torrent is complete. This script will extract the video file from the downloaded folder, rename it, and put it in a separate folder organized into sub folders named for each tv show.
There are several bittorent search providers and two NZB search providers and new ones can be added fairly easily. See the search providers README.org, or by making a feature request in issues or a pull request.
Semi automatic means that you manually run it and select from a list each episode you want. The reason for this is that not all torrents follow a naming convention that is parsable, especially for more obscure shows. So instead of writing a ton of code to try and figure out information about an episode, I’ll use the parser built into my brain. Also I like that it runs when I like, its light weight, and there are no background processes.
- Keeps track of downloaded shows.
- Show a list of shows available for download.
- Gives you a list of torrents or nzbs you can choose from.
- You can add new shows from the command line.
- Will display info showing what show will be next and how many days till broadcast. This list can be filtered and sorted in various ways.
- Displays a calendar of upcoming episodes. You can also specify a range of days to display, past or future.
- The ability to query download history and re-start a download.
- Organize you tv show downloads into folders.
Python 3.4 (or higher) – on Linux, OSX, or Windows
TV Overlord is a python 3 application and can be installed via pip3.
sudo pip3 install tvoverlord
After its installed, you run it by typing:
tvol --help
The first time it’s run, it will create the appropriate config dir for your platform and put the database and config.ini there.
After that you can start to use it, type:
tvol add 'Doctor Who'
If this is the wrong show, try again but add the year:
tvol add 'Doctor Who 2005'
Then
tvol download
To get help for each command, you can use:
tvol download --help tvol add --help # etc...
If you use Bash as your shell, you can have tab completions. Add this to your .bashrc file:
eval "$(_TVOL_COMPLETE=source tvol)"
If you use Transmission or Deluge as your bittorent client there is a script for each called transmission_done and deluge_done. These will take the episode that was downloaded and copy it to a folder where it will be organized by how the template string in config.ini is configured.
Setup and configure post download scripts details
TV Overlord looks for the database and config.ini in the appropriate
directory for your platform. When tvoverlord is first run, it will
create a tvoverlord directory there.
- OSX
- ~/Library/Application Support/tvoverlord
- Linux
- ~/.config/tvoverlord
- Windows
- C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\tvoverlord
This screenshot shows the providers list command and downloading using
an NZB search provider.
This shows using a bittorrent search provider to download.
This shows the calendar.
This show the info command.
This will show all the available shows for the current week from Sun to Sat.
tvol calendar --days -$(date '+%u'),7 -x
To bulk import shows from a csv file (showname can’t have a comma in it).
while IFS=, read showname season episode
do
tvol add --bulk "${showname}" --season=${season} --episode=${episode}
done < allshows.csv