General

Is tinyMediaManager free to use?

You can download tinyMediaManager and use it for free in a limited way (FREE version). If you want to unlock all features you need to buy a license for the PRO version. They key differences are:

  • FREE version:
    • base functionality of tinyMediaManager (update data sources, scrape, write/read NFO files, rename, edit, export, command line interface, …)
    • TMDB scraper
  • PRO version:
    • all other scrapers (IMDB, OMDB, Universal, Kodi, …)
    • trailer download
    • subtitle download
    • Trakt.tv integration
    • FFmpeg integration

If you want to unlock the PRO version of tinyMediaManager, you can buy a license.

Why did we switch to a subscription based model?

With the pace of the ever evolving technology world, the software development task is never finished. There is always a new change in the APIs we consume, media centers we feed with our NFO files. In addition to this, we also need to pay for services and hardware we use to develop, test and deliver tinyMediaManager.

Due to this, we needed to change to a subscription based model to help us pay for the continuous cost and time required to develop, maintain, test and deliver tinyMediaManager.

Does tinyMediaManager modify files from my library?

tinyMediaManager will not alter files from your media library unless you force it to by using:

  • scrape meta data (NFO files and artwork files will be created/overwritten)
  • rename (the media files including all necessary files like artwork and NFOs will be renamed according to your settings)
  • delete (the media files (including all meta data files) of the selected movie(s)/TV show(s)/episode(s) will be deleted from the file system)

tinyMediaManager does not alter your media files in any way (beside changing the filename if you use the renamer)! This includes embedded metadata in MP4/MKV containers.

I needed to reinstall tinyMediaManager - can I import old data?

Since tinyMediaManager is designed in a portable manner, all data is stored inside the tinyMediaManager folder itself. To use your data from the old installation, just copy the folders data (configuration files and databases) and cache from the old tinyMediaManager installation to the new one. Make sure your media is accessible via the same paths (mounts) or the entries from the database point to the wrong destination.

I messed up my database/settings - how can I undo those changes?

tinyMediaManager creates a backup every day in the backup folder of the tinyMediaManager installation. As long as you did not rename or remove the files on your storage, you can simply roll back the database/settings to an old state by extracting the contents of the desired backup file into the data folder of tinyMediaManager.

Re-import NFO changes in Kodi

Once a movie or TV show has been imported into Kodi, Kodi does not react on (external) changes to the NFO file. You can force Kodi to refresh the data by following the steps on the Kodi wiki.

How to handle bonus content

Bonus content like cut scenes or some extra clips may cause some import problems when not having the right name scheme (tinyMediaManager detects them as additional movies).

The best way to put bonus content to your movie is to create a subfolder called extras inside the movie folder and put all bonus content inside this folder.

Another way would be to add the string -extras (or -behindthescenes, -deleted, -featurette, -interview, -scene, -short) at the end of every bonus content file like Aladdin Cut Scenes-extras.avi. This way tinyMediaManager knows that these files are extra files for your movie and assigns them to the corresponding movie rather than creating a new movie.

Import watched state into Kodi

By default Kodi does not import the watched state from the NFO into its internal database. You can force Kodi to import the state by following the steps from the Kodi wiki.

License

What are the advantages of buying a license?

You can unlock the PRO features of tinyMediaManager like:

  • all scrapers (IMDB, OMDB, Universal, Kodi, …)
  • trailer download
  • subtitle download
  • Trakt.tv integration
  • FFmpeg integration

Is the license limited in some way?

Buying the license will unlock all PRO features of tinyMediaManager for 1 year (starting from the day of purchase). After this period has passed, you need to re-buy another license. There are no plans to offer a lifetime license

Will the license renew automatically?

No - with buying a license you do not create any subscription. When your license is about to end, tinyMediaManager will inform you to buy another license. By using the same data (name and email) at Paddle, the remaining days of the old license will be added to the new license.

Is there a lifetime license?

Unfortunately no. We thought a lot about a lifetime license but offering this would need a stricter license checking system (online checks) to fight piracy issues. We decided against such a system for several reasons. Nevertheless - if your annual license has expired, you do not lose anything except the optional features (which are mainly for scraping new items).

Where do I enter the license code?

You can enter the license code either directly in tinyMediaManager (Unlock button on the right side of the toolbar or via the menu Info -> Register tinyMediaManager). If you use the command line version, just paste the license code without any extra spaces/newlines into a file called data/tmm.lic inside your tinyMediaManager folder.

Can I use the license on more than one tinyMediaManager instances?

The license is per user - you can use it on as many tinyMediaManager installations as you wish.

Where is the license information stored?

tinyMediaManager stores the license code in a file called data/tmm.lic inside the tinyMediaManager folder.

I cannot copy & paste the license code into the Docker version

Because of security restrictions in the browser, your client clipboard cannot be synchronized to the clipboard of tinyMediaManager. To copy data from/to the remote connection of tinyMediaManager, you need to invoke the clipboard feature of noVNC. Just open the control panel of noVNC from the left side of the window and use the clipboard feature from there to copy the data.

I did not receive any license

If you did not received an email from Paddle please check your Spam / Junk Email folder (if you use a desktop application, please check that folders on the web interface too). If you have not received any email at all then you have likely mistyped your email address or your mail server is rejecting emails. In this case, please contact contact Paddle with name, email and payment details so they can look up your order and resend your license confirmation.

I have lost my license code

If you have lost your license code, please contact Paddle with your name, email and payment details so they can look up your order and resend your license confirmation.

Common errors/problems

File corrupted error

If tinyMediaManager has been shut down in an unsafe way (e.g. killing the process via task manager, hard crash of the JVM, …) while writing to to internal database, your database can get corrupted. You will get the error java.lang.IllegalStateException: File corrupted on the next startup of tinyMediaManager. Unfortunately there is no way to repair the database, but tinyMediaManager creates backup files which can be used to replace the damaged database file(s):

  • Go to the backup folder inside your tinyMediaManager installation (macOS users: right click the tinyMediaManager.app -> Show package contents -> navigate to Contents - Resources - Java)
  • extract the database(s) (movies.db and/or tvshows.db) of the desired backup file into the data folder of tinyMediaManager
    • if the latest backup does not work, try the backup from the previous day

Java Heap Space errors

If you got a large library, the preserved memory (512MB default) for the tinyMediaManager process can be reached. You are able to increase the memory by a dedicated setting (Settings -> General -> System) or by editing a config file directly:

  1. Navigate to the content folder of tinyMediaManger: Just use the action “Tools -> Open data folder” and you file manager will open. Just navigate to one folder above this data folder (this usually contains several folders like data, logs, backup, cache). You can also navigate manually to this folder:
    • If you have a portable installation, the content folder is also the tinyMediaManager folder
    • Windows: C:\<username>\AppData\Roaming
    • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/tinyMediaManager
    • Linux: ~/.local/share/tinyMediaManager
  2. open (or create if it does not exist) the file launcher-extra.yml
  3. add (or modify) the following part in this file:
    jvmOpts:
    - "-Xmx1024m"
    

    (where 1024 is the amount of megabytes you want to preserve for tinyMediaManager; you can change it as you want. Be aware: if the value is too high for your system, tinyMediaManager may reject to start at all

v3: You can create (or edit if it already exists) a file called extra.txt in the tinyMediaManager install directory and add (or modify) the following line -Xmx1024m (where 1024 is the amount of megabytes you want to preserve for tmm; you can change it as you want. Be aware: if the value is too high for your system, tinyMediaManager may reject to start at all

Java needs this amount of memory to be available on startup of tinyMediaManager. If there is not enough memory available on your system, Java prevents tinyMediaManager from starting without any message. If you encounter this problem, just try to lower the memory setting.

The upgrade to v4 did not work

Sometimes (depending on your setup) the upgrade from v3 to v4 does not work, but there is a manual way to upgrade the installation.

You can also go to v3 again, if v4 does not work for you - just make a clean v3 install, and extract the contents of the file data/v3-backup.zip into the new v3 install folder.

Scraping does sometimes not work

Sometimes we receive garbled/unparsable responses from the meta data providers (or some devices along the connection to the servers like gateways). Since we are using some sort of HTTP caching, these unparsable responses are cached for a while with a result, that a further scraping will also result in an error.

If you encounter that problem you can try to clear the cache via the menu

  • Tools -> Clear HTTP cache

tinyMediaManager won’t start

We’ve built tinyMediaManager as fail safe as possible. But there are always combinations of Java/OS/configurations possible which could prevent it from starting. Have a look at the OS specific sections or at the Java Heap Space sections if there are any hints for getting tinyMediaManager to start.

If the hints did not help, please collect the following logs which are produced by two steps of starting tinyMediaManager:

  • The updater, which fetches the latest version of tinyMediaManager directly from the web (launcher.log)
  • Launching of tinyMediaManager itself (logs/tmm.log and/or logs/trace.log)

In the case tinyMediaManager won’t bring up his own UI, please create a bug report at GitLab and attach the log files there.

org.tinymediamanager.license.DecryptException: Could not get token

This is a common error if you cannot build up a connection to the TVDB API servers - some device on the route to the TVDB API servers is blocking your request. You may need to use a VPN if you encounter such an error.