Introduction

Sowsbetter is a script which automatically transcodes and uploads these files to bemaniso.ws.

The following command will scan through every FLAC you have ever downloaded or uploaded, determine which formats are needed, transcode the FLAC to each needed format, and upload each format to bemaniso automatically.

$ ./sowsbetter

Installation

You're going to need to install a few dependencies before using sowsbetter.

First and foremost, you will need Python 3.6 or newer.

Once you've got Python installed, you will need a few modules: mechanize, mutagen, and requests. Try this:

$ sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

If you are on a seedbox, or a system without root priviliages, try this:

$ pip3 install --user -r requirements.txt

Furthermore, you need several external programs: mktorrent 1.1+, flac, lame, and sox. The method of installing these programs varies depending on your operating system, but if you're using something like Ubuntu you can do this:

# sudo aptitude install mktorrent flac lame sox

If you are on a seedbox and you lack the privilages to install packages, you could contact your provider to have these packages installed.

At this point you may execute the following command:

$ ./sowsbetter

And you will receive a notification stating that you should edit the configuration file ~/.sowsbetter/config (if you're lucky).

Configuration

Open up the file \~/.sowsbetter/config in vim with vim \~/.sowsbetter/config . You're going to see something like this:

[bemaniso]
username =
password = 
data_dir =
output_dir =
torrent_dir =
formats = flac, v0, 320 
media = sacd, soundboard, web, dvd, cd, dat, vinyl, blu-ray
24bit_behaviour = 0
tracker = https://bemaniso.ws:34443/
api = https://bemaniso.ws
mode = both
source = SOWS

Press ins to edit it. username and password are your bemaniso login credentials.

data_dir is the directory where your downloads are stored. If you are using WSL use /mnt/[drive letter]/[path to folder].

output_dir is the directory where your transcodes will be created. If the value is blank, data_dir will be used. You can also specify per format values such as output_dir_320 or output_dir_v0.

torrent_dir is the directory where torrents should be created (e.g., your watch directory). Same per format settings as output_dir apply.

formats is a list of formats that you'd like to support

media is a list of lossless media types you want to consider for transcoding. The default value is all What.CD lossless formats, but if you want to transcode only CD and vinyl media, for example, you would set this to 'cd, vinyl'.

24bit_behaviour defines what happens when the program encounters a FLAC that it thinks is 24bits. If it is set to '2', every FLAC that has a bits- per-sample property of 24 will be silently re-categorized. If it set to '1', a prompt will appear. The default is '0' which ignores these occurrences.

tracker is the base url to use in the torrent files.

api is the base url to use for api requests.

mode is which list of torrents to search for candidates. One of:

• snatched - Your snatched torrents.
• uploaded - Your uploaded torrents.
• both - Your uploaded and snatched torrents.
• seeding - Better.php for your seeding torrents.
• all - All transcode sources above.
• none - Disable scraping.

source is the source flag to put on created torrents, leave blank if you're running mktorrent 1.0.

You should end up with something like this:

[bemaniso]
username = User
password = Pass123
data_dir = /srv/downloads
output_dir = /svr/output
torrent_dir = /srv/torrents
formats = flac, v0, 320
media = cd, vinyl, web
24bit_behaviour = 0
tracker = https://bemaniso.ws:34443/
api = https://bemaniso.ws
mode = both
source = SOWS

Press escand type :wq to save and quit.
Alright! Now you're ready to use sowsbetter.

Usage

usage: sowsbetter [-h] [-s] [-j THREADS] [--config CONFIG] [--cache CACHE]
                     [-U] [-E] [--version] [-m MODE] [-S] [-t TOTP]
                     [-o SOURCE]
                     [release_urls [release_urls ...]]

positional arguments:
  release_urls          the URL where the release is located (default: None)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s, --single          only add one format per release (useful for getting
                        unique groups) (default: False)
  -j THREADS, --threads THREADS
                        number of threads to use when transcoding (default: 7)
  --config CONFIG       the location of the configuration file (default:
                        ~/.sowsbetter/config)
  --cache CACHE         the location of the cache (default:
                        ~/.sowsbetter/cache)
  -U, --no-upload       don't upload new torrents (in case you want to do it
                        manually) (default: False)
  -E, --no-24bit-edit   don't try to edit 24-bit torrents mistakenly labeled
                        as 16-bit (default: False)
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -m MODE, --mode MODE  mode to search for transcode candidates; snatched,
                        uploaded, both, seeding, or all (default: None)
  -S, --skip            treats a torrent as already processed (default: False)
  -t TOTP, --totp TOTP  time based one time password for 2FA (default: None)
  -o SOURCE, --source SOURCE
                        the value to put in the source flag in created
                        torrents (default: None)

Examples

To transcode and upload every snatch you've ever downloaded along with all your uploads (this may take a while):

$ ./sowsbetter

To transcode and upload a specific release (provided you have already downloaded the FLAC and it is located in your data_dir):

$ ./sowsbetter https://bemaniso.ws/torrents.php?id=1000\&torrentid=1000000

Note that if you specify a particular release(s), sowsbetter will ignore your configuration's media types and attempt to transcode the releases you have specified regardless of their media type (so long as they are lossless types).

Your first time running sowsbetter might take a while, but after it has successfully gone through and checked everything, it'll go faster any consecutive runs due to its caching method.

Troubleshooting

If you keep getting errors about incorrect/unacceptable tags, edit tagging.py and replace

if check_tracknumber_format:
       tracknumber = info['tracknumber'][0]
       if not valid_fractional_tag(tracknumber):
           return (False, '"%s" has a malformed tracknumber tag ("%s")' % (filename, tracknumber))

with

#if check_tracknumber_format:
        #tracknumber = info['tracknumber'][0]
        #if not valid_fractional_tag(tracknumber):
            #return (False, '"%s" has a malformed tracknumber tag ("%s")' % (filename, tracknumber))