Tips & Best Practices¶

Small habits that keep your server fast, tidy, and reliable.

Name files well¶

Good captions are 90% of a smooth experience.

Always include title + year + resolution for movies.
Use S01E04-style markers for episodes.
Let the app clean the junk — you don’t need to strip tags yourself, but a clean caption matches faster.

Recommended

Movie Name 2023 1080p WEB-DL.mkv and Show Name S01E05 720p.mkv are the sweet spot — enough for perfect matching, nothing missing.

Add a TMDB API key early — it improves matching and unlocks language/OTT catalogs.
Fix wrong matches promptly with a caption URL override or Scan Metadata.
Run Dead Links cleanup occasionally to remove entries whose files were deleted.

Export your config JSON before big changes or migrations.
Snapshot your MongoDB databases on a schedule. See Updating, Backup & Restore.

Add extra bot tokens if several people stream at once — it spreads the load.
Prefer direct streaming (no proxy) unless you specifically need a proxy for geo/IP reasons; a slow proxy adds buffering.
Put the app behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS for the most compatible playback.
Enable Replace Mode so you don’t accumulate duplicate qualities.

Use case	CPU / RAM	Notes
Personal (1–2 viewers)	1 vCPU / 1 GB	Free tiers or a small VPS are fine
Small group (a few viewers)	1–2 vCPU / 2 GB	Add 1–2 extra bot tokens
Community (many viewers)	2+ vCPU / 4 GB+	Several bot tokens + good bandwidth matter most

Good to Know

Streaming is limited far more by bandwidth and Telegram rate limits than by CPU/RAM. Prioritize a host with good network throughput.

When a storage database nears its size limit, add another from settings.
Only remove storage databases from the end of the list to avoid breaking references.