I’ve been ripping my anime bluray collection and wanted to have an easier way to sort it for Jellyfin, so I wanted to try Shoko Server, but it’s not recognizing any of my anime. It sees the actual files, but categorizes them all as Unrecognized, making the entire idea of using it for automated sorting pointless. I’m struggling to find guides on this and the documentation is quite lacking. I don’t know what I’m wrong. Are there certain rules I need to be following in order for Shoko to hash correctly? Does it hash the name? The actual ripped files?
My folder structure is setup in a way that Jellyfin properly recognizes it (without using the Shoko plugin yet), so like so for example:
- Fate/stay night: ubw (2014)
---- Season 01
---------- <episode> S01E01
- Fate/stay night: ubw (2015)
---- Season 01
---------- you get the idea
Since multi season anime often are separate entries, each season is usually its own main folder (which is one of the reasons I wanted to try Shoko to see if I could combine them into one so that I don´t have multiple entries for what is really only 1 anime series).
Anyone here that uses Shoko and have some tips?
EDIT: thanks for the information and tips everyone. Seems like Shoko might not be what I’m actually looking for.
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Am I the only one here successfully using Sonarr to take care of Anime? Sonarr has the ability to sort by absolute/relative episode you just need a profile for it.
If I really need to bother with any renaming, I’ll use “RenameMyTVSeries” to mass-rename things, and drop them in the folder where Sonarr wants; or usually just have Sonarr grab the anime itself and apply its renaming rules.
Jellyfin is going to want:
- Show Title (YEAR)
- – Season 1
- ---- Episode Name - S01E1234
- – Season 2
- ---- Episode Name - S02E1234
Grouping seasons into a series folder doesn’t work well in some cases, because that’s not the way they are released in Japan. A new season is (most of the time) effectively an entire new show entry. Show seasons are mostly a north american thing. No matter which software you use, there’s always going to be some minor issues if you group seasons into one entry.
In instances like this, you simply use a single Season 1 folder, with absolute naming for episodes. It’s really that simple.
I use Sonarr, but it does mess up sometimes for shows even when you mark it as an anime to use absolute numbering. It most often happens with older shows that have lots of OVAs that are sometimes listed as episodes and sometimes listed as specials, depending on the database. So, if you are having Sonarr manage your downloads, then it can grab the wrong episode if its database (I think TVDB) and the release (usually using MAL numbering) disagree.
I’ve never had a problem with how Sonarr handles anime. It works just as well as anything else.
Jellyfin is going to want:
This is the main problem I have right now. The example I gave in the post for example. I currently have to list them as entirely separate entries, both with season 01. Not one entry with season 01 or season 02, because that’s not how it is in AniDB or Anilist. As I said in another comment, I may checkout Sonarr if Shoko doesn´t work out.
I don’t understand why you’re naming stuff that way. You use a single FSN:UWB(2014) folder, because the year represents the date the show started. There is no FSN:UBW(2015). It all goes under UBW(2014), even if the episode was released decades later.
I’m naming it that way, because otherwise Jellyfin can’t handle it properly for me. Season 2 will not show up with the proper metadata if I put all of it in the same folder. My guess is that because 2014 (season 1)and 2015 (season 2) are two separate entries in both Anilist and AniDB and not grouped together under UBW, that it wants it that way in Jellyfin too.
You’re causing your own issues here because you’re wanting to name it all the Japanese way. I use AniDB and everything too - and it works just fine as a single series, with a single year, with all 25 episodes in a Season 1 folder with proper metadata download and everything.
Jellyfin doesn’t see it because it doesn’t know what the hell an “Unlimited Blade Works” released in 2015 is…because it wasn’t released in 2015. You need to use AniDB as a secondary provider for Metadata, not a primary provider, because it doesn’t match up with how Jellyfin and other English-made programs work.
Interesting. I’ll have to look at it again then. I figured that since AniDB also has UBW split between season 1 and 2 (listed as 2014 and 2015) that I had to list them separately too. This does work by the way, but it’s just really cluttered. Which metadata provider should I primarily use then if not AniDB or Anilist?
Hopefully it works for my other anime too
Shoko compares a files ED2K hash against the AniDB database. The filename doesn’t matter for automatic detection. Have a look at the log to see if there are any issues. It’s entirely possible that AniDB just doesn’t have the hashes for the raw BluRay rip. In that case you can either manually link them in Shoko, connecting the AniDB episode id to the file hash, or create new file entries on AniDB with your specific hashes.
I see, so that still requires a fair bit of manual work then (especially when episodes are not ordered properly when ripped).
With bluray rips, I don’t really see any way to avoid that unfortunately, unless someone else has already added the hashes for your release. Most people use it to scan their encoded releases, which will (in most cases) have already been added to AniDB by the release group. I’m a bit surprised though, that none of your rips are recognized. Have you checked the AniDB pages for your series to see if anyone uploaded hashes for bluray rips?
There seem to be Bluray entries in AniDB, but I can’t tell if it’s the same version. I have UK region Blurays, so maybe that’s it.
But I think I’m gonna leave Shoko be and try something else
Also, if you’re reencoding the files, it’s extremely unlikely for your hash to match someone else’s
I’m not, but I can imagine the uploaded hashes might have been compressed
If you’re keeping the files as mkv, you’re reencoding them.
Am I? I have no idea, I just use MakeMKV to rip the disc. No idea how else to rip the disc. I’m not doing anything else to them. No Handbrake or whatever.
I don’t have a solution for you, but I will be watching this thread. Currently, I use Sonarr for library organization, but it doesn’t always work well with anime due to title differences and differences between how seasons/specials are numbered in different databases. So, Shoko was on my radar to try out at some point since it uses anidb.
I’ve read that Shoko works for many people, but yeah… I must be doing something wrong. Right now I’m manually renaming everything to the recommended Jellyfin naming structure and using the AniDB or Anilist plugin in Jellyfin to get the rest of the metadata. A bit of a pain… If I get no responses, maybe I’ll look into Sonarr or Tiny mediamanager
So Shoko uses anidb to match shows. It uses the hashes anidb has of pirate/fansub releases. So anidb will not have the hashes for your own rips and Shoko will not be able to automatically match them. Your use case isn’t really what Shoko was designed for. Shoko does have the ability for you to manually match files and has tools for matching files in bulk. Shoko can solve your issue with anime with multiple seasons split into multiple entries, so manually adding everything might not be a bad idea.
Ah, I see. Since they keep talking about ’ your collection’ I figured it’d be for your own BD rips too. Tbf, I was already a little unclear about what exactly Shoko does, since the descriptions are very broad. Would Sonarr or Tiny media manager fit my use case?
I haven’t really used those much but they will probably be better at matching your stuff automatically. Although it would be to TMDB’s data. TMM can do anidb but only if you pay for pro.
Why do you want to use Shouko? Yeah it can bulk-tag anime but it doesn’t necessarily do a better job than Jellyfin with AniDB plugin. Also, it tends to hammer their API like an idiot and will get your user temp-banned or even perma-banned (depending on the size of your collection), while the Jellyfin plugin has rate limits.
I used it once when I was moving my collection to Jellyfin and I barely got my account back.
I would strongly suggest using just the regular Jellyfin plugins and adding titles to the directory in small batches and taking breaks if it stops recognizing them because it means the API is throttling you.
I figured I’d use it since it’s made for anime. Renaming everything myself because the BD rips don’t name themselves properly is a pretty big chore, so I figured I’d use a tool for made for it. But it’s sounding more and more like Shoko was not the way to go
Shoko also has rate limits. The problem is that AniDB does rate limiting in an extremely stupid way for a UDP API and doesn’t even have the decency to define clear time limits.
Also, just to add on:
- they’re all mkv files
- movies are structures a bit differently. It’s either a straight mkv or in a single folder.
- I’m in the EU region, so my blurays are UK blurays
Never used Shopify unfortunately, so I can’t help you with that.
The way I tag media is using MediaElch. It requires manually going through each series and identifying it, but with your proper naming it should give decent suggestions already.
If some metadata is missing for single episodes, try changing the metadata provider, sometimes one or the other just has bad/incomplete data.
