Dry run means vodmatic does all of its thinking and none of its writing. It scans, reads filenames, looks up metadata, works out categories, builds the playback addresses and composes the exact SQL — and then does not run it. Everything is recorded on the Activity screen as if it had.
Your instance starts with dry run on. That is on purpose.
What to do while it is on
- Let a scan finish and a few hundred files go through.
- Open Activity and read some entries. Each one shows what vodmatic concluded, why, and the statements it would have run.
- Check the things that are expensive to get wrong:
- Are titles being read correctly?
- Are films landing in the categories you expect?
- Are the playback addresses right? Confirm one with the Preview screen.
- Are seasons and episodes numbered as they should be?
- Fix what is wrong — a layout, a URL template, a category mapping — and let it run again.
Nothing you do in this phase can hurt your catalogue, because nothing is reaching it.
Switching writing on
Settings › Write mode. Turning writing on asks you to confirm, and checks the licence allows it.
When you do, everything the dry run only reported is queued for real. On a large library that is thousands of files, and it takes a while — the button is not instant, and the screen says how many were queued.
Switching it back off
One tap, no confirmation, no licence check. Stopping is always allowed to be easy: the reason anybody reaches for this switch in a hurry is that something is going wrong.
Turning dry run back on does not undo anything already written. It stops anything further from being written.
Reading the label the right way round
The setting is called dry run, so dry run: on means writing is off. The panel and the app both state it as "Writing: on / off" for that reason. If you are ever unsure, the Status screen says it in a sentence.
When to use it again later
- Before adding a large new library folder.
- After changing a URL template or a layout.
- Any time you are about to do something to your media at scale.
