Table of Contents
Radarr – General Configuration Guide
Purpose: Radarr manages automated movie acquisition and lifecycle management in this environment. Much like Sonarr, the focus is not on cinephile-grade archival content, but on efficient, high-quality, highly usable media that scales cleanly and plays reliably across devices.
This environment prioritizes:
- Reasonable file sizes
- Broad playback compatibility
- Predictable automation behavior
- Minimal ongoing maintenance
High quality is important — excess is not.
—
Installation Overview
Radarr is installed natively on the Automation / Acquisition VM.
- Installed from official Radarr repositories
- Runs as a dedicated service user
- Integrated with Prowlarr for indexers
- Integrated with qBittorrent for downloads
As with the rest of the stack, containerization is intentionally avoided to keep filesystem paths simple and transparent.
—
Media Management
Enable:
- Rename Movies
- Replace Illegal Characters
- Analyse Video Files
- Use Hardlinks Instead of Copy
- Propers and Repacks: Prefer and Upgrade
- Rescan Movie Folder After Refresh: Always
Disable:
- Create Empty Movie Folders
- Delete Empty Folders
- Import Extra Files
- Skip Free Space Check
Minimum Free Space:
- 100 MB
—
Naming Configuration
All naming formats are intentionally simple, readable, and Plex-safe.
File Naming Convention
Movie Naming: {Movie Title} ({Release Year}) {Quality Full}
Folder Naming Convention
Movie Folder: {Movie Title} ({Release Year})
This structure ensures:
- Plex compatibility
- Easy human readability
- Safe upgrades and replacements
- Clean coexistence with Unmanic post-processing
—
Quality Philosophy
This environment explicitly avoids:
- Remuxes
- Disc images
- Full UHD pipelines
- Excessively large encodes with marginal gains
A clean 1080p WEB or Bluray encode represents the best balance point between quality, size, and playback compatibility.
—
Quality Profile
Create ONE profile only. Remove all others.
Profile Name:
- All Acceptable
Upgrades:
- Enabled
- Upgrade Until: Bluray-1080p
—
Enabled Qualities
| Quality | Enabled |
|---|---|
| Bluray-1080p | Yes |
| WEB 1080p | Yes |
| HDTV-1080p | Yes |
| Bluray-720p | Yes |
| WEB 720p | Yes |
| HDTV-720p | Yes |
—
Disabled Qualities
| Quality | Enabled |
|---|---|
| Bluray-2160p Remux | No |
| Bluray-2160p | No |
| WEB 2160p | No |
| HDTV-2160p | No |
| Bluray-1080p Remux | No |
| DVD | No |
| SDTV | No |
| Raw-HD | No |
| Unknown | No |
—
Quality Size Limits
These limits are critical to enforcing efficiency.
| Quality | Max Size |
|---|---|
| 720p HDTV / WEB | 5.0 GiB |
| 1080p HDTV / WEB | 10.0 GiB |
| 1080p Bluray | 10.0 GiB |
All 4K and Remux qualities are effectively blocked through both quality disablement and custom format penalties.
—
Custom Format Scoring
Scoring is based on information from TRaSH Guides, but intentionally adjusted to avoid archive-grade bloat.
Positive Scores:
- WEB Tier 01: 1500
- WEB Tier 02: 1000
- WEB Tier 03: 750
- WEB Scene: 400
- Repack v3: 100
- Repack v2: 75
- Repack / Proper: 50
Negative / Blocked Scores:
- LQ: -100
- LQ (Release Title): -100
- BR-DISK: -10000
- Extras: -10000
- Upscaled: -10000
Minimum Custom Format Score:
- 500
—
Release Profile
Single hard-block release profile:
- Name: Hard Block
- Enabled: Yes
- Must Not Contain: MeGusta
- Indexer: Any
This serves as a final guardrail against consistently poor encodes.
—
Indexers
Radarr does not manage indexers directly.
- All indexers are supplied via Prowlarr
- Jackett supplements unsupported edge cases
- Radarr remains intentionally minimal in indexer logic
—
Download Client
qBittorrent is recommended.
Completed Download Handling:
- Enable: Yes
- Redownload Failed: Yes
- Redownload Failed (Interactive): Yes
—
Operational Notes
- Unmanic is responsible for post-download optimization.
- File size and scoring constraints are deliberate.
- This configuration is designed to operate unattended.
If Radarr requires frequent manual correction, the issue is almost always upstream.
—
This page documents a real-world, production Radarr configuration, aligned with the same philosophy as Sonarr.
