Running it · Chapter 17

Subtitles with Bazarr (beta).

Bazarr looks for subtitles for your movies and series. It only knows Radarr and Sonarr, so nexcrate answers it as both: movies as Radarr, series as Sonarr. This is the one place where nexcrate imitates the interface of Radarr and Sonarr, and it is still beta. This chapter shows how to connect Bazarr and what happens to the subtitles.

Connecting Bazarr

1. Switch it on

   Open “Settings › System › Bazarr” and switch on “Answer Bazarr”. It is off out of the box. Once on, Bazarr may read the library with a key, and nexcrate records the subtitles Bazarr writes. When you switch on, nexcrate looks once for subtitles that already lie next to the videos.

2. Make a key

   Under “Settings › System › API keys” use “New key” to make one of its own for Bazarr, with “Read” only. Copy it right away, because nexcrate shows it only once.

3. Enter it in Bazarr, twice

   In Bazarr you switch on “Radarr” and “Sonarr” in the settings, both with the same address, the same port and the same key. They differ only in the base URL: for Radarr it is /bazarr/radarr, for Sonarr /bazarr/sonarr. If nexcrate runs under a sub path, it comes first, for example /nexcrate/bazarr/radarr.

4. Check

   The “Bazarr” page in nexcrate shows under “In Bazarr” the exact values for “As Radarr (movies)” and “As Sonarr (series)” with address, port, base URL and SSL. Beside them it says whether Bazarr is already connected “live since …”, when it last asked, or that it is “not seen yet”.

Settings › System › API keys

If Bazarr runs in the same Docker network as nexcrate, the container name often fits better as the address than the one you open the interface under.

How Bazarr sees nexcrate

• Live. Bazarr keeps a connection to nexcrate and hears of a new or replaced file within seconds.
• Every version is an entry of its own. A movie in Full HD and in 4K shows up in Bazarr twice. The name of the version comes along as a tag, and through Bazarr's tag mapping each version can have a language profile of its own.
• Subtitles go with the video. nexcrate records what Bazarr writes next to a video. It renames the subtitles along with it and, on an upgrade or a removal, moves them to the recycle folder as well, see Downloads.
• Paths. Bazarr gets them as nexcrate sees them. If Bazarr sees the media under other paths, enter path mappings in Bazarr. Bazarr also needs write permission in the media folders, otherwise it cannot put subtitles next to the videos.
• What is left out. Versions that a Radarr or Sonarr connection still feeds are left out for Bazarr by nexcrate.

What beta means

nexcrate imitates the part of the interfaces of Radarr and Sonarr that Bazarr reads. It has been tested with Bazarr 1.6. An update of Bazarr can break the connection until nexcrate catches up. If that happens, tell us on GitHub. Bazarr sends the key in the address, as it does to Radarr, so nexcrate masks it in the log. Programs that otherwise hang on Radarr or Sonarr, such as Seerr or Recyclarr, are still left out.