Update November 11th, 2025:

Two new changes have been made to the script:

1. There is a new ENV variable (Docker) or standard variable (Native) to change the name of the output file. (See parameter list below)
2. Using both Radarr and Sonarr are not required anymore. Simply leave out ICAL_URL_RADARR or ICAL_URL_SONARR from the ENV variables and it will not process that app. Malformed or invalid URLs will now be skipped rather than erroring out.

Update March 4th, 2025:

Note: This script has been updated to include Sonarr listings. It will show when a new series or season starts for a television show. You will need to update your environment variables to change the Radarr variable and add a Sonarr variable. See the "docker cli" and "docker compose" sections below for new variables.

"Coming Soon" Pre-Roll Creation Script

This is a Python script for generating a "Coming Soon" pre-roll using data from Radarr (Radarr must be in use to use this script).

The way it works is it grabs the current iCal calendar from Radarr, then parses through the data to find upcoming digital releases and creates an intermediate text file listing the releases. It then overlays the text file onto an input video of your choice using ffmpeg and outputs the final file for your use.

Radarr

To obtain the link for iCal, go to the Calendar tab from the left menu bar, then click on the "iCal Link" button on the top of the page. Keep "Show as All-Day Event" unchecked, but you can choose if you want "Include Unmonitored" checked or not. Leave the Tags blank and copy the text from the iCal Feed box into the string in the Python script.

Docker

Docker image location: chadwpalm/coming-soon

The only current tag is "latest".

Example

An example template: Template

Example of processed final video: Final

Usage

Note: docker cli requires quotation marks for parameters and docker compose requires no quotation marks.

Everything needed for the script to run is in the Docker image.

docker cli

docker run -d \
    --name=coming-soon \
    --network host \
    -e CRON_SCHEDULE="0 0 * * *" \
    -e TZ=America/Los_Angeles \
    -e INPUT_FILE="ComingSoonTemplate.mp4" \
    -e OUTPUT_FILE="MyFile.mp4" \
    -e FONT_FILE="times new roman.ttf" \
    -e ICAL_URL_RADARR="http://x.x.x.x:7878/feed/v3/calendar/Radarr.ics?apikey=******************" \
    -e ICAL_URL_SONARR="http://x.x.x.x:8989/feed/v3/calendar/Sonarr.ics?apikey=******************" \
    -e FONT_SIZE="70" \
    -e FONT_COLOR="white" \
    -e X_COORD="300" \
    -e Y_COORD="150" \
    -e CENTER_TEXT="false" \
    -e LINE_SPACING="10"
    -e START_TIME="5" \
    -e END_TIME="13" \
    -e UID="1000" \
    -e GID="1000" \
    -v /host/config/dir:/config \
    -v /host/output/dir:/output \
    --restart unless-stopped \
    chadwpalm/coming-soon:latest

docker compose

  comingsoon:
    image: chadwpalm/coming-soon:latest
    container_name: coming-soon
    environment:
      - CRON_SCHEDULE=0 0 * * *
      - TZ=America/Los_Angeles
      - INPUT_FILE=ComingSoon.mp4
      - OUTPUT_FILE=MyFile.mp4
      - ICAL_URL_RADARR=http://x.x.x.x:7878/feed/v3/calendar/Radarr.ics?apikey=********************
      - ICAL_URL_SONARR=http://x.x.x.x:8989/feed/v3/calendar/Sonarr.ics?apikey=********************
      - FONT_SIZE=70
      - FONT_COLOR=white
      - X_COORD=300
      - Y_COORD=150
      - CENTER_TEXT=false
      - LINE_SPACING=10
      - START_TIME=5
      - END_TIME=13
      - UID=1000
      - GID=1000
    volumes:
      - /host/config/dir:/config
      - host/output/dir:/output
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: "host"

This UID and GID should match the user and group setting used on the host so that the generated files are for the same user/group as the host account and prevents any permissions issues. These values both default to 1000 is not entered.

Building Docker Image

If you want to make modifications and rebuild the Docker image for yourself you need to edit the app-docker.py script as this is the one that gets built into the image.....not app.py.

• Clone the repo
• Go into the directory (probably "coming-soon" unless you changed it during cloning)
• Run the command docker build -t <image-name>:<tag> . (Make sure to add the period at the end. It represents building from the Dockerfile in the current directory, not the end of a sentence)

Native Install

Ignore everything below if you are using Docker

For native applications use app.py (app-docker.py is only used during the building of the Docker container and can be ignored in native applications). The script is commented to help guide you through the setup.

It is recommended to automate the running of the script at least once a day to keep the pre-roll up to date. This can be done through a cronjob or any other scheduling method of your choice.

The version of ffmpeg included in this repo is a verison that has been compiled with the necessary libraries to work with adding overlays to video files. Other versions may not work for you. You can substitute the font file with anything you want, you just need to make the filename change accordingly in the script.

Important

This Python script uses the library "icalendar" to parse the iCal information received from Radarr. You will need to install the library onto your system using pip. This may also require you to install the pip package on your system. I won't go into any Python or Linux usage details here. Google or ChatGPT is a good resource for helping in these situations.

Typical install for the library would be:

python3 -m pip install icalendar

Note: This package serves as a starting template and I will not be entertaining any pull requests or issues. This comes as-is and it is up to you to modify and use it however you please and have a somewhat working knowledge of Python and Linux.