So I’ve had a Synology 1817+ NAS for a couple of months now and been using their package Video Station to index and sort the metadata of my movies and tv shows.
One of the great features of their indexing is that it utilizes some open source alternatives like TMDb and TheTVDB.
If we look at their own list of sources they claim to be using the following:
Problem is that you’re not able to choose which sources you’d like prioritized, so everything that’s automatically indexed is using the metadata of the first source that it can reach which isn’t always is never the preferred source.
A small example of the indexing gone wrong:
Which I then manually edited to use the right source:
The sources list for the particular episode looks like this:
The source that I would consider crap is one provided by Synology themselves and are chosen first by Video Station, as they are discovered before the results from TheTVDB.
So how can we fix this permanently? How can we make it so that we won’t have to manually fix the metadata for every single episode of every single tv show / movie?!
Well, I started looking into the config files for Video Station.
I found a file called plugin.conf located under: /volume1/@appstore/VideoStation/etc
In this file I found the following code:
"movie": {
"Movie":{
"prepare": [{"id":"com.synology.FileAssets", "enable":true}],
"metadata":[{"id":"com.synology.Synovideodb", "enable":true},
{"id":"com.synology.TheMovieDb", "enable":true}],
"similar": [{"id":"com.synology.TheMovieDb.Similar", "enable":true}],
"extra": []
}
},
"tvshow": {
"TV Show": {
"prepare": [{"id":"com.synology.FileAssets", "enable":true}],
"metadata":[{"id":"com.synology.Synovideodb", "enable":true},
{"id":"com.synology.TheTVDB", "enable":true}],
"similar": [],
"extra": []
}
It must have been my lucky day, I thought! I changed the value for com.synology.Synovideodb for both movie and tvshow from true to false and thought that it would solve all of my problems.
It didn’t… It was still utilizing the metadata provided by Synology, instead of data from TheTVDB. I even tried disabling and re-enabling the entire Video Station package in the hopes that it just had to reload the file, but I was still out of luck.
So I continued digging into the files of the Video Station package files via SSH and found a folder called syno_synovideodb under: /volume1/@appstore/VideoStation/plugins
I tried renaming this folder to syno_synovideodb_old to try and avoid loading the plugin used, but it had no effect.
Just for the fun of it, even though I had no expectation of it working, I tried to move the syno_synovideodb folder into another directory instead:
sudo mv /volume1/@appstore/VideoStation/plugins/syno_synovideodb /volume1/@appstore/VideoStation/plugins/temp/syno_synovideodb
I then tried to search for sources for the episode I was testing with previously:
Success!! It only found one source and it was from TheTVDB and all future episodes of any tv show added after this, was automatically indexed with metadata from TheTVDB only! Hurray!
I hope that this little hint can help anyone else tired of manually indexing all of their stuff in their Synology Video Station.
27 comments on “Synology Video Station indexing with TMDb and TheTVDB”
Punishera
February 13, 2019 at 02:37My Hero
GnaXi
February 13, 2019 at 08:44Happy that I could of help! 🙂
Matt
March 1, 2019 at 15:19You da real MVP, man! Thanks a lot for this insightful and helpful how-to. Worked like a charm. 🙂
GnaXi
March 4, 2019 at 20:07You’re very welcome!
Just make sure to keep the guide handy, as you unfortunately will have to perform the steps again, whenever you update Video Station.
I do however believe that it is worth it! 🙂
David Keating
April 9, 2019 at 01:32Spot on thanks ever so much!!
Delpy
April 25, 2019 at 13:04Thanks so much for that!
Do you know if there’s any way to bulk update all of the episodes that are named #7.2, #7.2, etc. using TVDB or do you have to do each episode one-by-one?
GnaXi
April 25, 2019 at 13:08No problem! 🙂
After you’ve followed the instructions, just remove all of the episodes from the indexed folder, so that they are no longer showed in Video Station, then put them back.
It will then re-index all of them and name them correctly! 🙂
Delpy
April 26, 2019 at 11:58Perfect! Thank you!
Kevin
May 2, 2019 at 22:03This looks interesting but I have a question.. How do you find the config files for Video Station?
GnaXi
May 3, 2019 at 09:59I haven’t been able to find any config files for Video Station either, which is why I go to the extreme here by simply moving around folders instead.
Guy
June 1, 2019 at 13:59Awesome trick, works great, thanks for sharing!!
GnaXi
June 1, 2019 at 17:52You’re very welcome! 🙂
s1mwest
July 3, 2019 at 21:56I found this very interesting, after investigating why indexing was so poor all of a sudden, so thank you for putting it out there GnaXi.
It helped me work towards an alternative method that doesn’t require modifying Video Station’s config files (and thus doesn’t require repeated editing when the package is updated).
So instead I use DNS blocking to prevent Video Station from connecting to the first sources that you, quite rightly stated, are so frustratingly useless.
As I use DnsCrypt-Proxy by PublicArray from GitHub, I use the DNS blocking in there. I have two Synology boxes, both running Video Station and DnsCrypt-Proxy for resilience, so I just wanted to minimise the maintenance when updating Video Station or when performing re-indexing. It’s also great for ad-blocking (but that’s not why we’re here :D).
Anyway, I block these:
allocine.com
allocine.fr
atmovies.com.tw
freebase.com
Make sure NOT to block these (they need to be allowed):
imdb.com
thetvdb.com
themoviedb.org
This solved it for me. Hope it helps anyone that can use this method.
GnaXi
July 3, 2019 at 22:47Awesome! Thank you very much for your feedback!
This would definitely be a better solution for people that have their own DNS Server! 🙂
ElMac
September 5, 2019 at 13:48Or for people who just want to edit their hosts file in Synology box 😉
It would actually be better to do that, SO you can still access AlloCine website from other devices 😉
GnaXi
September 6, 2019 at 10:52I believe that the hosts file is reset whenever you update DSM?
If that is the case, you would have to edit the hosts file whenever a new version of DSM is released.
I could be wrong though?
s1mwest
September 10, 2019 at 15:42My point was that if you have a Synology box, you already have the ability to use a DNS server; either Synology’s own or a 3rd party one which, once loaded with your preferences i.e. zones you want blocked/allowed etc., preserves them.
One question I have is; If AlloCine is giving us useless/inaccurate information, why would you want to continue to use it?
GnaXi
September 10, 2019 at 19:26Continue using Synology’s Video Station? Because I liked it at the time and found a workaround to my issue, which I decided to share with the world! 🙂
However, I have in the meantime decided to switch to Emby, as I find it better in every way, but leave the article up for people that might want to keep using Synology’s Video Station.
s1mwest
September 12, 2019 at 12:01Maybe I didn’t word that so good 🙂 My question was aimed @ElMac; Why would you want to continue to use AlloCine, if it gives inaccurate meta data within VideoStation.
I’ve stuck with VideoStation so far and ‘only’ because there is a VS app on my Samsung TV (although it needs a simple but much needed feature: auto-play next video/file)
GnaXi
September 13, 2019 at 13:30Ah! Now it’s making a lot more sense! 😉
Yeah, I couldn’t really see what other services that you might want to use AlloCine, considering how bad their current data is.
Robin
July 8, 2019 at 12:24Thanks very much to everybody who contributed for all the information and help in here. It was a problem that was really bugging me as it kept finding Japanese TV shows or American versions of UK show. I used my router to block acces to the sites listed above and now all my information appears to be coming from thetvdb.com. Great solve althought the better solve would be to be able to select your preffered provider. Cheers.
GnaXi
July 8, 2019 at 13:09Happy to hear that you got on the right track! 🙂
And I would definitely agree that Synology should make an option for this themselves.
Wolfeur
May 13, 2020 at 09:49Any idea if there is any way to make VideoStation check for TheTVDB DVD numbers as well as aired numbers?
For Doctor Who, the aired numbers are a absolute mess but VS doesn’t understand DVD numbers for specials.
GnaXi
May 13, 2020 at 20:14No idea unfortunately. I switched away from Video Station quite a while ago now.
I would highly recommend giving Emby a try. It has much better control of metadata.
s1mwest
June 18, 2020 at 14:29VideoStation was updated today – they’ve added the ability to choose information sources Settings>Advanced>Video Info Auto Search (and allocine is not one of them :D). However, an API key is required to be registered for each….
Despite not registering any keys, mine is still happily pulling in meta data correctly.
GnaXi
June 19, 2020 at 22:25Cool, finally!
I did however switch to Emby a long time ago myself! 😛
netman58
June 21, 2020 at 02:18I already posted this info over on the Synology forum. You can see the story here:
https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/135001?page=1&reply=427012
What does seem to be the case is that “themoviedb.org” is being prioritized for TVShows (this is my problem, movies are OK) over “thetvdb.com”.
Any pointers to move on from this mess would be welcome.