Configure CouchPotato with Usenet and Torrents

couchpotato CouchPotato is your personal PVR for long video files. It will download a list of video titles for you automatically from usenet or Torrents. For torrent clients it will use uTorrent, Deluge, Synology Download Station, Transmission, rtorrent and others. Downloading from usenet, CouchPotato will communicate with Sabnzbd and NZBGet. CouchPotato will send you notifications when movies have downloaded, automatically get subtitles in your chosen language and update your Plex or XBMC library when a video file has completed. This guide walks you through setting up Transmission and uTorrent as the rest of the torrent clients are similar – I do recommend Transmission over uTorrent for Windows and Mac users. For usenet I show you how to set up both Sabnzbd and NZBGet to work with CouchPotato.

Usenet Provider
Backbone
Retention
Speed
Connections
VPN
Monthly
Annual
UsenetServer
UsenetServer
3199
Unlimited
30
Yes
$10
$95.40
Newshosting
Newshosting
3199
Unlimited
30
Yes
$10
$99
Frugal
Frugal
3000
Unlimited
20
No
$4.16
$50
Usenetlink
Cloudgate
2000
100 Mbit
30
No
$15
$140

Configure CouchPotato with Usenet and Torrents

If you are using torrents please use a VPN to prevent copyright letters or try Usenet (see Compare Usenet and Torrents). If you are using torrents and do not want to seed (which is against torrent philosophy) then you can configure Transmission to stop seeding automatically as well as uTorrent.

Usenet Configuration

Sabnzbd Configuration

Open up the Sabnzbd configuration at http://ip.address:8080/sabzbd/config

Click Categories and then modify your movies category to have the Folder/path point to a temporary location which CouchPotato will monitor for new movie downloads. You must put a ‘*' at the end otherwise Sabnzbd will create a job folder and it will confuse CouchPotato's renamer. I have used the example /mnt/usbstorage/couchpotato* but on Windows it could be C:\Downloads\CouchPotato.

You can create the category using this method. If you are already using a movies category with sorting you will want to create a new category called couchpotato instead.

Put movies or couchpotato in the Category column and input the Folder/path which CouchPotato will monitor for new downloads to rename and move. This movies or couchpotato category directory overrides the default Sabnzbd completed downloads directory.

Click Add

Make sure you do not have Sabnzbd sorting enabled for this category!

This directory you have set here will be your CouchPotato From folder for the CouchPotato Renamer

configure couchpotato sabnzbd add category

You can modify the existing movies category using the same technique, if you do click Save.

configure couchpotato sabnzbd category

You need you Sabnzbd API key for CouchPotato to add nzb files to its queue

Click General and find your API key and copy it to the clipboard or somewhere safe.

configure couchpotato sabnzbd get API key

NZBGet Configuration

Open up NZBGet at http://ip.address:6789 and click Settings, then Categories

Under the Movies category make the DestDir a temporary folder that CouchPotato will monitor for complete downloads (e.g. C:\Downloads\Couchpotato or /mnt/usbstorage/couchpotato). This should not be the final location you want your movies to end up in (that will be taken care of in CouchPotato's renamer settings)

This directory you have set here will be your CouchPotato From folder for the CouchPotato Renamer

Scroll down and Save all Changes and then Reload NZBGet

configure couchpotato nzbget category

CouchPotato Settings

Go to http://ip.address:5050 to open up your CouchPotato web interface

If it is the first time you have logged in just scroll to the bottom and click the big green button

couchpotato finishing up

In the top right corner, click Settings under the Settings cog

configure couchpotato click settings

Click General

Set a username and password to access the web interface

couchpotato general

Enable Searcher

Click Searcher on the left and choose usenet as First Search.

Add KickAssTorrents and Torrentz as free providers, you can enable private trackers as well.

couchpotato searcher usenet then torrents

If you only want to leech then set your Seed Ratio and Seed Time to 0

On private trackers you usually need a seed ratio of 1 or seed time of 48 hours, adjust appropriately.

couchpotato searcher enable leech

Scroll down to set usenet search providers.

Check off Newznab, in the Host column enter the API URL (which you can get from your indexer's FAQ or help page) and paste your indexer's API key (not your Sabnzbd API key) in the API Key column.

For OZnzb the Host is https://api.oznzb.com and I have put my API key (an old one just as an example).

You can also check off NZBClub if you want but the releases you find will probably be less reliable.

configure couchpotato usenet providers

Click Categories, here you can adjust the filters that CouchPotato uses, you can have several keywords separated by commas.

You can tell CouchPotato to prefer releases with certain words if there is a group that you like or groups that embed subtitles (e.g. DKSubs or SWEsubs). Put those in the Preferred box and CouchPotato will try and get these releases first.

If there are releases with keywords that you require add them to the Required box, no other releases will be downloaded unless they contain these keywords

In the Ignored box you can put keywords for CouchPotato to ignore, if there are groups that release stuff that you absolutely hate, add their names here.

couchpotato searcher categories

Adjust CouchPotato Qualities

Click Qualities under Searcher

Here you can adjust the quality settings, by default Best tries to get the highest resolution possible and then starts settling for lower quality. It searches the qualities from top to bottom.

You can rearrange the quality priority by hovering over the 3 lines next to the quality setting. You click and hold and drag up or down.

If Finish is checked next to the quality then it will stop searching for the other qualities on the list.

configure couchpotato move quality setting

You can also delete quality settings by clicking the red x

configure couchpotato delete quality setting

I have removed 1080p and 720p settings because I only wanted to find SD quality releases that are not huge.

configure couchpotato quality made sd

If you scroll down you can change the order the quality settings will be shown in the dropdown box. For convenience you should drag your default quality preference to the top. This is why I modified the Best quality because it sits at the top by default but I could have just as easily moved the SD profile to the top in this section.

Uncheck any qualities you are not interested in.

configure couchpotato qualities chnage order

Disable Blackhole as a Downloader

On the right click Downloaders

Disable BlackHole by unchecking it unless you use a torrent client which monitors a watch folder for new .torrent files.

configure couchpotato disable blackhole

Enable Transmission Torrent as a Downloader

You need the WebUI enabled so CouchPotato can communicate with it. My linux guides for Transmission cover this, for Transmission on Windows go to Edit -> Preferences.

transmission open preferences

Click the Remote tab and check Allow remote access

Enter a username and password, Only allow these IP addresses is a security measure, if you want remote access to Transmission from any computer disable it by unchecking the box.

You can click Open web client to view the Transmission web interface.

transmission preferences remote tab

On the right click Downloaders

Enable Transmission by checking it. Add your username and password for transmission. In Directory, choose a directory for the downloads to go to, you do not want this to be the final directory the movies will end up in. Instead you want it to be a temporary folder that CouchPotato monitors for new movies which it then renames and organizes nicely for you.

This directory you have set here will be your CouchPotato From folder for the CouchPotato Renamer

In Host put your host and port for transmission, the default is http://localhost:9091 if it's on the same machine as CouchPotato.

Click Test and you should see Connection successful.

configure couchpotato enable transmission

Enable uTorrent Downloader

Note: The label system in uTorrent is quite buggy so I recommend using Transmission for Windows instead.

uTorrent uses labels to sort downloads much like Sabnzbd and NZBGet use categories. You need to open up uTorrent to do some configuration first before enabling it in CouchPotato.

Open uTorrent and go to Options -> Preferences

Click Advanced and then WebUI

Check Enable WebUI and enter a username and password

Check Alternative listening port and pick a random port that is not being used, I use 7070

Click Label on the left pane and check Use Label and Directory Rules

In the Label box enter movies and in the Contains box enter movies and click the + sign.

configure couchpotato utorrent custom movies add label

Now you can choose movies from the drop down menu in the bottom left corner.

Click the button and browse to your temporary download location that CouchPotato will monitor for new releases, it should not be your final movie destination directory, that will be taken care of in the Renamer. Click the + sign to add it to the list.

configure couchpotato utorrent custom movies add label directory

Now you should see your movies label in the list. Click Apply and OK.

configure couchpotato utorrent custom movies label added

Back in CouchPotato click Downloaders and check uTorrent

Input your Host as localhost:7070 or replace 7070 with the port you used in uTorrent

Enter the username and password for the WebUI you just configured

Enter the Label movies and click Test.

Enable CouchPotato Renamer

To help understand CouchPotato's renaming here is a diagram. No matter which program you use to download via CouchPotato, CouchPotato will monitor that folder as the From folder and move files to your final destination the To folder. It will make sense in a minute.

couchpotato-renamer-post-processing

Click Renamer

CouchPotato will monitor your From folder for new video downloads and post process them. When they are post processed the video will have its own folder in the To folder. The From and To folder must be different for the Renamer to work.

If your Sabnzbd or NZBGet category for CouchPotato download folder is c:\media\couchpotato or /mnt/usbstorage/couchpotato, specify that as the From folder.

The To folder is your final destination folder that you use with Plex or Kodi, it can be your NAS, samba share or local hard drive.

You should also check Unrar in case the movie you download is packaged in rar files.

configure couchpotato enable renamer

By default torrented movie downloads will be symbolically linked to your To folder. This is so you can still seed the torrent. If you are not interested in seeding click Show advanced settings and scroll down until you see Torrent File Action and change it to Move. If you are private trackers you probably need to seed so leave it as link if that's the case.

configure couchpotato advanced rename torrent file action

CouchPotato Notifications

Click Notifications

I have enabled Pushbullet notifications by copying my access key from the Pushbullet settings page. Click Test to make sure it works.

Here you can also enable Plex and XBMC library updates. For XBMC you will need to have the web access enabled.

configure couchpotato notifications

CouchPotato Automation

CouchPotato can automatically import your imdb watchlist. This means you can just add movies you want to see using the IMDB app on your phone or in a browser and CouchPotato will add these items to your wanted list.

Click Automation

For personal IMDB watchlist importing to work you will have to make your IMDB watchlist public.

The URL has this format http://www.imdb.com/user/urxxxxxxxx/watchlist that you should paste, remember to tick the box next to the URL

configure couchpotato automation imdb watchlist

Scroll down to the Automated section

You can have CouchPotato automatically add all new popular movies from IMDB that meet your criteria.

You can adjust the minimum rating, which year the movie was released and so on.

configure couchpotato automation imdb import

It is now best to restart CouchPotato

In the top right click the Setting cog again and choose Restart

configure couchpotato click restart

Add CouchPotato Videos

Click the magnifying glass icon in the top right

configure couchpotato click search icon

Type in your video name, I am using Night of the Living Dead which is in the public domain.

If there are multiple movies click the correct one

configure couchpotato add movie

Then it will change so you can choose the quality preference from the dropdown, click Add

configure couchpotato add movie click add

You will see a message saying it has been successfully added.

configure couchpotato movie added

In the bottom right hand corner you will get some messages that CouchPotato is searching for the movie on your torrent trackers or usenet indexers, then snatching it (downloading the torrent file or nzb file) and passing it to your torrent or nzb client for downloading.

When it's done it will rename the video nicely and put it in your archive folder.

You can check the status of your video list by clicking Wanted

The off green color means the movie has been snatched and sent for downloading, once it has been renamed and processed it will turn a nice green color.

configure couchpotato wanted list

Enjoy your CouchPotato torrent and usenet system for automatically downloading long videos.