Installing & Configuring SickBeard

SickBeard is an amazingly powerful Addon for SABnzbd+ that allows you to select your favorite shows and have them automatically downloaded for you. It is very customizable and will allow you to maintain your TV collection with ease. Having said that, actually getting it up and running can be a bit on the tricky side. This guide breaks down the process into several different steps which are easy to understand. Follow the instructions and you will have all of your favorite shows being downloaded for you automatically before you know it!

Section 1: Install Cheetah

1. The first thing that you need to do is install a program called “Cheetah” which you can get from this link: http://www.cheetahtemplate.org/download.html

On the download page there should be a link that says something along the lines of “most stable release,” click this and you will be brought to yet another page where you will see a link that says “Downloads.” Click this link and then, finally, you will see a file that looks like this “Cheetah-2.4.4.tar.gz”. Click this and Cheetah will download to your computer. It should automatically unpack itself, leaving you with just a folder called “Cheetah-2.4.4″.

2. Open the Terminal application which is found in Applications > Utilities. A white window will pop up that looks like the following (although it will be a lot taller than my window):

Type ‘cd’ and then add a single space. Next, you want to drag and drop the Cheetah-2.4.4 folder into the window and then hit return. Your window should now look like this:

3. Now that you are ‘in’ the Cheetah-2.4.4 folder, type the following (or copy/paste it):

sudo python setup.py install

Done correctly, your window should now be asking you for your password and look like this:

4. Enter your OSX administrative password and then hit enter. Please note! You will not be able to see what you type! This is done for security purposes, nothing is wrong with your computer. If you enter the correct password your computer should stall for 1-5 seconds and then spit out a ton of information on the screen. None of this text is important, the only thing you need to see is the very last line which looks like this:

5. Quit the Terminal program.

Congratulations, you just installed Cheetah! There is still a lot more work to be done though, on to the next part where we download Git!

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Section 2: Install Git

6. We now need to download Git for OSX which can be acquired here: http://git-scm.com/download

We are on OSX so you want to select the Mac OSX release, you should see an icon for icon for it on the right side of the screen. Another window full of links will pop up on your screen, don’t be alarmed! You want to select the second link from the top. As of writing it is “git-1.7.6.1-x86_64-snow-leopard.dmg”. That will bring you to yet another page where you have to click the link again (in the middle of the page, you can’t miss it). This will begin your download.

7. Open the Git disk image and run the installer (it’s the file that ends in .pkg). It will ask for your administrator password and then install everything. Close the installer when it completes.

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Section 3: Install SickBeard

Now we can finally install Sickbeard! Unfortunately, it is not like a normal application you just drag and drop, which is why we just went through all these steps above.

8. Open the Terminal application again, type ‘cd’ and then add a single space. Now we are going to drag and drop the folder into Terminal where you want Sickbeard to be installed. For me it is my Applications folder and I recommend that you place it there as well. Once you have dragged the folder onto the Terminal window, press enter.

9. Type the following (or copy/paste it) into the Terminal window, then hit Enter:

git clone git://github.com/midgetspy/Sick-Beard.git

You will see in the Terminal window that it is downloading and installing files to your computer. When it is finished it will say ‘done’. You have just created and installed a folder into your Applications folder named ‘Sick-Beard’ (unless you selected a different folder).

10. Still in Terminal, type the following (or copy/paste it), then hit Enter:

cd Sick-Beard

Then type:

python sickbeard.py Hit Enter.

This should open up a new browser window with Sickbeard running! If for some reason a window didn’t open you can access Sickbeard through your browser at this address (http://www.applemediacenter.com:8081). Congratulations, you have just installed Sickbeard and run it for the first time! While we are done with the installation, we are far from being completely done.

At this point you have a fully operational installation of Sickbeard that has not been configured. Additionally, due to the way that Sickbeard runs, if you restart your computer it is not turned on by default. To manually turn it on upon restart you need to open Terminal, ‘cd’ into your Sick-Beard folder and then type ‘python sickbeard.py’ as we did above. That will turn it on.

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Section 4: Configuring SickBeard

After successfully installing Sickbeard you should have a window that looks like what you see below. Before we start adding our shows we want to set everything up so that it is secure and so that it works without any problems down the line.

Everything that we are going to fiddle with is in the Config menu that is at the top of the Sickbeard screen. Only adjust the options that are mentioned and leave everything else as is.

Config – General

- Don’t touch anything in the Misc section.
- Make a username and password. I recommend using the same one used with SABnzbd+.
• Click ‘Save Changes’

Config – Search Settings

- Search Frequency: I have mind set at 15 minutes, but you can change this.
- Usenet Retention: Depends on your Usenet provider. PowerUsenet is 1119 days!
- NZB Search > NZB Method: Change this to SABnzbd and insert the rest as follows:

SABnzbd URL: http://www.applemediacenter.com:8080
SABnzbd Username: Your Username for SABnzbd
SABnzbd Password: Your Password for SABnzbd
SABnzbd API Key: Go to SABnzbd > Config > General. You should see it. Copy/Paste it here.

- Click ‘Save Changes’.

Config – Providers

This is where you let Sickbeard know where it should search for files. If you don’t have access at any NZB websites you have nothing to worry about, just select ‘Sick Beard Index’ and you are good to go. It’s free and it works. Having said that, if you have any of the accounts listed, you can configure them in the ‘Configure Built-In Providers’ section which is directly beneath the Providers.

Free is always good, but I still suggest you get an account at NZBMatrix ($10). There are a lot of other features that this site will go into which relies on having an account at NZBMatrix. But if you are new to this, feel free to stick with Sick Beard Index.

Config – Post Processing

- Uncheck “Keep Original Files”
- Renaming: This section is really up to you and how you like your shows organized. These are the settings I changed for my setup:

Number Style: s01e02
Multi-episode Style: repeat
Season Folder Format: Season %0d

- Click ‘Save Changes’.

I highly suggest changing the Season Folder Format. With the default value it will make a new folder such as, Season  1, with two spaces in between Season and the #. No idea why that is the default, but it is. I’m anal retentive about this stuff so I changed it to match my existing folder structure.

Congratulations, we are done configuring Sickbeard! However, we need to make sure that SABnzbd+ knows what to do with the information it receives from SickBeard, so we need to add the appropriate scripts (it’s easier than you think!)

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Section 5: Getting SABnzbd+ to talk to SickBeard with Scripts

If you have been installing everything as I have, you should now have a folder called ‘SickBeard’ in your ‘Applications’ folder. Open the SickBeard folder up and you will see another folder (among others) called “autoProcessTV”. Open the folder and you will see a few other files. We now want to take all of these files and move them to the following location (see note at the bottom of this section if you are on using OSX 10.7):

~/Library/Application Support/SABnzbd/scripts

Now that you have moved the scripts to the right location you will need to edit the file “autoProcessTV.cfg.sample”. The first thing you will want to do is remove the extension ‘.sample’ so the file is named “autoProcessTV.cfg”. It will ask you if you want to keep ‘.sample’ or change it to ‘.cfg’ and you want to change it to ‘.cfg’.

The next step is opening that same file with TextEdit. If double-clicking the file doesn’t do it by default, then right click the file and select “Open With” and select TextEdit. You should now be presented with the following (blank) options. Please fill them in accordingly:

host=localhost
port=8081
username=(the user name you made in Config – General from Section 4)
password=(the password you made in Config – General from Section 4)
web_root=(LEAVE BLANK)

Save the file and close TextEdit. We are done fiddling with scripts, but now we need to tell SABnzbd+ to use this script when SickBeard sends files to SAB. To do this you will need to open up SABnzbd+. By now you should know how to do this on your own. Once SABnzbd+ has loaded, you will want to click the ‘Config’ option at the top of the page. Once in the Config menu you will want to select the ‘Categories’ option on the left side of the screen. Your screen will look a little differently than mine (pictured below) but the main thing you want to do is make sure that your ‘TV’ section has “sabToSickBeard.py” selected under scripts:

Make sure to hit the “Save” button on the far right of the screen, and then you are done! Now SickBeard will send the files to SABnzbd+ and it will download them. Now we need to just make sure that SickBeard is aware of the shows that we already have. On to the next section!

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Section 6: Adding Existing TV Shows

Most of us already had TV collections before SickBeard, so what we want to do in this section is ‘teach’ Sickbeard what shows we have and how we want each show handled. Don’t worry if you goof up during this section because when you are done you can always go back and change things. If you don’t have any shows, you can skip down to the next section where we will learn to add new shows.

11. Select ‘Add Shows’ from the Home menu.

12. Click the large button that says “Add Existing Shows”

13. Click the ‘New’ button under ‘Manage Directories’. A window will pop up with a lot of stuff you are most likely not going to be familiar with.

External Drive: If you are storing your TV episodes on an external hard drive, scroll to the bottom and click the ‘Volumes’ button. In this folder you should see the name of your external hard drive, click it and then continue navigating until you get to the main folder where all your TV shows are stored. Then click the ‘Ok’ button in the bottom right corner.

Internal Drive: If you are storing your TV episodes on the internal hard drive, scroll until you see a button that says ‘Users’. In this folder you should see your OSX user name(s). Navigate these folders until you get to the main folder where all your TV shows are stored. Then click the ‘Ok’ button in the bottom right corner.

If you have more than one location/hard drive/etc where the files are stored, repeat this process until you have added all of the locations that your TV files are stored.

14. You should now see a list of all the TV Shows that were contained in your TV folder at the bottom of the window. Click ‘Submit’ at the bottom of the page.

At this point, Sickbeard is going to go through every show that it has found and have you run through the options for each show. It is doing this because, depending on how you name your files, it may or may not be able to understand what TV shows you have. This is where you can correct it so it knows exactly what shows you have and what it should get. If it can’t find your show, read the section “Sickbeard Can’t Find My Show” at the bottom of this tutorial.

15. Your first show should show up in the search box and it should have a search result underneath it. Normally it will only present one option, if there are more options, select the option which matches the show you have. Click ‘Next’.

16. Step 2 is just verifying the folder where that show is. Click ‘Next’.

17. Step 3 asks some very important questions, I will address each of the three options by paragraph:

The first option is a pull down menu that is asking you how you want missing episodes for the selected show handled. The options are Skipped/Wanted/Archived/Ignored. If you have a show that is missing episodes which you want, I suggest you select Wanted. If you don’t want Sickbeard to download old episodes, leave it as Skipped. If you select Ignore it also won’t search for it and we will discuss Archive a little further down in this tutorial.

The second option asks you about Season folders. This will NOT change the current folder structure that you have for your files. If you leave this unchecked, it will put all new files into the main TV Show’s folder. If you check this, it will create a new folder when a new season starts. I personally have this checked off for all of my shows.

The last option asks you what quality you would like to download the shows in. There are four options: Custom/SD/HD/Any, I’ll go over these in reverse.

Any: This option will simply grab the first file it sees, it could be SD (standard definition) or it could be HD. You may think that this is the option you want to select, but if you are trying to save your shows, you may end up with a ton of files, all of which are different sizes.

HD: If you simply want everything to be in high definition, select this, but keep in mind that not everything comes out in HD, and the HD file size is roughly 3x the SD file size. I personally have a few shows that I like to get in HD, while I keep the rest in SD.

SD: This is decent quality at a reasonable file size. If you are unsure what to select, select SD.

Custom: This is a very cool option, should you be semi-nuts like me. Under the ‘Initial’ list, you can select as many of these options as you would like by holding down the ‘Command’ button and clicking them. The same goes for the ‘Archive’ section, which is optional. A good use of this would be to select SDTV and HDTV under Initial. Sickbeard would then try to download your show in SD when it sees it. But if an HD copy comes out shortly thereafter, it will then get rid of the SD copy and download the HD copy. The real wow factor comes in when you flag one or several shows as ‘Archive’ which we mentioned above. If you do that, it will then keep trying to find your show until it is in the archive quality that you selected. So 6 months later when the Blu-Ray rips are out, you can be sure that your collection will be in amazing quality… and you didn’t have to do a damn thing.

When you are done selecting the various options, click ‘Add Show’ at the bottom.

18. Repeat this for all of your shows. When you are done you should be presented with a complete list of your shows like this:

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Section 7: Adding a New Show

So now your library is organized and all your shows download instantly after they air, it certainly is gratifying. But what about a new show that you want to add? Believe it or not, this part is easy!

19. On the main screen, click ‘Add Shows’. Then click ‘Add New Show’ on the following window.

20. Search for your show. Select it from the list (if there is more than one option) and then click ‘Next’ just as you would do when adding shows you already have.

21. If you have more than one TV folder, select the folder you would like it to go to from the list, otherwise just click ‘Next’.

22. If you simply want every episode to be downloaded, select Wanted from the pull down. Sickbeard will get to work trying to find every episode, no matter what. It will also continue to get any new episodes that come out. If it can’t find certain episodes (or any for that matter) it will just keep trying until it does. If the show has lots of seasons, you may want to leave it as ‘Skipped’ and then manually go into that show and select the episodes/seasons you do want. This is useful if someone tells you to watch a show, and you only want to get the first season before committing to getting all of them.

A million congratulations, you are ACTUALLY finished!!! From here on out, as long as Sickbeard is running it will get your shows for you. You will soon realize how sick sickbeard is!

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Extra 1: SickBeard Can’t Find My Show!

So your favorite show isn’t showing up and you don’t know what to do? Don’t worry about it! What happened is that you named the folder that your show is in in a different way than Sickbeard’s search engine has it listed. Getting back on track only takes a few steps:

1. Go to http://thetvdb.com/

2. Search for your show, but keep in mind, it didn’t find it the first time around so try to use fewer words, or make sure it is spelled correctly. For example, the show ‘BBC David Attenborough Madagascar’ that I have is actually listed as just ‘Madagascar’.

3. Once you have found how thetvdb lists your show, go back into Sickbeard, insert the new correct name of the show and click the ‘Search’ button. It should now give you the right option, or a list of options that contains the right option.

4. Continue as you would normally with a show that Sickbeard found.

5. Success!

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Extra 2: Pruning Your Library

Every time Sickbeard searches for new shows, it literally searches for each and every one of the shows you have. This is fine when they are actually airing, but some shows, like Seinfeld, aren’t coming back. It certainly doesn’t hurt for Sickbeard to do a search for shows that have ended, but it also doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Deleting the shows that have ended from Sickbeard will only help speed up the searches for the shows you do want, so let’s prune our TV library!

1. Click the ‘Manage’ button at the top of the Sickbeard screen. Oddly enough, you have to actually click ‘Manage’ and not select any of the pulldown options for this to work.

2. You should be presented with a list of your shows, and most importantly, a ‘Status’ column. Click the ‘Status column so that all the ‘Ended’ shows are grouped together.

3. For all of the shows that are listed as ‘Ended’ select the check box in the ‘Delete’ column (the last one on the right). Do this for all of the Ended shows.

4. Click the ‘Submit’ button and all the shows that have ended will be removed. That’s it