Filebot issues - Bytesized Hosting

Edit: We are keeping track of various issues related to this here.

Heya,

This weekend the version of Filebot we are running on our servers stopped processing TV Shows. I wanted to give you some details on our Filebot setup, why it stopped working and what we can do about it.

For those that don't know Filebot is an application that helps you identify files and automatically symlink (or rename/copy/move) them in such a way that other software can quickly identify the content based on a few rules. When I wrote the original Appbox software stack a few years back I made Filebot an integral part of the software. I choose Filebot at the time because it was open-source, free and portable piece of software that greatly helped Plex identify files. I made sure that apps such as Deluge, rTorrent and NZBGet all work with Filebot out of the box so no configuration from our members is needed, while still retaining the power to change our defaults if they want to.

Sadly some time ago the Filebot author decided to make Filebot a paid product only. This meant that we were locked out of future updates and we were stuck at the latest free version. Most of the time this was not a huge problem as the rename rules are pretty universal and as such new updates didn't really bring much new value except fixing a rename bug here and there. However this weekend something changed. TheTVDB.com API which Filebot uses to rename TV Shows released a new API (v3) that broke backwards compatibility with the older APIs. The free Filebot version uses the V1 API which at the time of writing is completely broken. Newer paid versions of Filebot are using the V2 API and are therefor still working.

To give our members a chance to get a working Filebot again I just pushed some code that lets you install the latest version of Filebot. Please check this wiki page to see how to install Filebot. Do note as previously mentioned this is a paid version (6 USD a year) and you will require a license to install it. You can buy one at the Filebot homepage. If you had a ticket about this issue during the weekend and had a manual upgrade done you should also install Filebot now via the apps menu so all required fixes for this new version are installed and configured. If you missed any content you can manually request Filebot to parse if once the upgraded version is installed, see instructions on the Filebot wiki page.

It's possible the v1 API gets fixed by TheTVDB.com but if not we are investigating other options since they might not. We want the default Bytesized experience to be a smooth one where things work as best as they can out of the box without having to pay for extra apps/features. Right now because Filebot is breaking this is no longer the case.

Hopefully this gives you the information you need, if you have any other questions or ideas please leave them in the comments.