this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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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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[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I see, so that still requires a fair bit of manual work then (especially when episodes are not ordered properly when ripped).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Also, if you're reencoding the files, it's extremely unlikely for your hash to match someone else's

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not, but I can imagine the uploaded hashes might have been compressed

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If you're keeping the files as mkv, you're reencoding them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You might be able to get the same hash if you did a backup of the disk in iso format. It doesn't matter though since you wouldn't be able to use that format to play anything.

All that to say that these seem to be the wrong tools for what you're actually trying to do.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

All that to say that these seem to be the wrong tools for what you’re actually trying to do.

Yeah, seems like it. Thanks for the explanations though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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.