This is a new feature in v0.9 of TubeSync and later. It allows you to mark existing downloaded media as "downloaded" in TubeSync. You can use this feature if, for example, you already have an extensive catalogue of downloaded media which you want to mark as downloaded into TubeSync so TubeSync doesn't re-download media you already have.
Your existing downloaded media MUST contain the unique ID. For YouTube videos, this is means the YouTube video ID MUST be in the filename.
Supported extensions to be imported are .m4a, .ogg, .mkv, .mp3, .mp4 and .avi. Your media you want to import must end in one of these file extensions.
As TubeSync does not probe media and your existing media may be re-encoded or in different formats to what is available in the current media metadata there is no way for TubeSync to know what codecs, resolution, bitrate etc. your imported media is in. Any manually imported existing local media will display blank boxes for this information on the TubeSync interface as it's unavailable.
Add your source to TubeSync, such as a YouTube channel. Make sure you untick the "download media" checkbox.
This will allow TubeSync to index all the available media on your source, but won't start downloading any media.
Wait for all the media on your source to be indexed. This may take some time.
You now need to move your existing media into TubeSync. You need to move the media files into the correct download directories created by TubeSync. For example, if you have downloaded videos for a YouTube channel "TestChannel", you would have added this as a source called TestChannel and in a directory called test-channel in Tubesync. It would have a download directory created on disk at:
/path/to/downloads/test-channel
You would move all of your pre-existing videos you downloaded outside of TubeSync for this channel into this directory.
In short, your existing media needs to be moved into the correct TubeSync source directory to be detected.
This is required so TubeSync can known which Source to link the media to.
Execute the following Django command:
./manage.py import-existing-media
When deploying TubeSync inside a container, you can execute this with:
docker exec -ti tubesync python3 /app/manage.py import-existing-media
This command will log what its doing to the terminal when you run it.
Internally, import-existing-media looks for the unique media key (for YouTube, this
is the YouTube video ID) in the filename and detects the source to link it to based
on the directory the media file is inside.
Edit your source and re-enable / tick the "download media" option. This will allow TubeSync to download any missing media you did not manually import.
Note that TubeSync will still get screenshots write nfo files etc. for files you
manually import if enabled at the source level.