Added TV shows from my Plex drive. Is there a way to filter recorded shows from imported shows?

Channels DVR Server
#1

I've been using your truly excellent Virtual Channels feature, for which I've imported all my TV shows from my Plex drive. However, it's now made my DVR basically unmanageable in terms of deleting old recorded shows I no longer need.

If I go to Library > TV Shows > More, I see a list of all the media grouped together by show but there's no filtering to separate recorded from imported. I have no desire to delete any Plex media in the channels interface, all I care about is being able to easily find and delete recorded shows.

I know I can go to DVR > Manage and filter the recorded shows there, but in this view they're not grouped into episode groups and it's very tedious scrolling down a 1.5TB list of recorded shows one by one.

Is there something I'm missing here? Or is this a feature that could be added? Thanks!

#2

In addition to selecting Recordings in DVR > Manage, you can also select a show
Screenshot 2021-10-31 at 18-32-20 Channels Manage Recordings

#3

Channels doesn’t differentiate items in the library. Recordings, imports, stream links, they’re all just different ways content gets into the library.

What you might want to do is check your Keep settings of your passes. Set them in a way that Channels will manage deleting things so that you never have to worry about it.

#4

Well perhaps there should be a way to differentiate? I see my 'Plex' library of ripped TV shows as permanent shows that I want to save / archive. I see my DVR library as things I just want to keep around temporarily until I've watched it, and on rare occasions I might save them permanently. They are not the same thing in my eyes, despite both being collections of TV shows.

This issue is compounded by the fact that about a year ago I switched from a cable HDHomeRun to an Antenna version. I deleted all my old cable passes but forgot to delete the shows themselves (or just wasn't ready to delete them yet). So any of these cable show passes that had settings like "keep the last 10 shows" etc will now just keep the last 10 shows forever. So I'm just looking for an easy way to prune these out.

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#5

In addition to selecting Recordings in DVR > Manage, you can also select a show

This isn't very user friendly though as it's just plain text list and there's like 300 shows. I find it much easier to navigate the library view with the thumbnail posters.

#6

This isn't technically true though. You do provide a way to filter them in the DVR > Manage page, so I think it would be great to be able to do this in the Library view too.

Screen Shot 2021-10-31 at 7.16.04 PM
Screen Shot 2021-10-31 at 7.16.04 PM698Ă—436 49.9 KB

1 Like
#7

You can disable the delete button on imports via settings

#8

I did, but deleting all shows and sending everything to the trash (except imported) is the nuclear option haha.

I feel a better way would be to just temporarily remove the imported shows, prune the recorded shows, then reimport the Plex shows. Wish there was an easier less dumb way haha.

#9

As the web admin is considered a management interface, adding a filter in the big tv filter bar seems legit. We’ll look into it.

When we say “channels doesn’t differentiate” we mostly mean in the apps’ presentation.

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#10

I understand and agree with your point about how it doesn’t differentiate, so I think perhaps we had a misunderstanding — I like that the client UI apps don’t differentiate, I was more concerned with the difficulty of managing it from the web interface. Thanks for considering the idea.

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#11

I went down road you did. Imported 15 TERABYTES of content. After 2 months, I went back to plex.

You can set ChannelsDVR so clients can't delete imported shows. And set shows as "favorite" for quick find or use voice search. But after importing that much content it becomes way to cluttered.

Anyway after a while I relized. Let channels do what it does best. That's basically act like a cable box / dvr.

Let plex do what it does best. Manage downloaded content. It just does it better. It's what it was originally made to do.

That's OK. I used to want ChannelsDVR to be my "everything app". The thing is, that's not what ChannelsDVR was originally designed for. Though I think given time, they are moving into that direction.

#12

I agree it gets too cluttered after a while. I also when back to plex for my imported content and playon content. I move my Playon Cloud content to a Plex library.

#13

Did you try Enhanced Browsing mode?

#14

Yes I had enhanced browsing enabled. It does a o.k. job. But plex just did it better.

Problems I had using channels as 100% plex replacement
*can't import subtitles
*playback issue with content sourced from. Bit-torrent sometimes.
*incompatible with Nvidia shield AI upscaling
*It did ok at organizing but not as good as plex
*Does not handle extras as well (I remember it was kind of new feature, I haven't retested.)
*Didn't do as good at finding source match for foreign TV/movies. Like did this very poorly. Also usually obtained on bit torrent
*No photo gallery
*No music

What channels does best.
*Being a cable TV recreation. Which is exactly what I want
*Wife approved
*Combines OTA, Pluto, Samsung, Pluto, Stirr, Playon all into 1 unified TV guide
*DVR on my local storage
*Fast response from the devs themselves
*Fast play (plex doesn't do this for videos)

I love channels. It does what I think it set out to do, FLAWLESSLY. Every other feature is just icing on cake. But plex was designed to house all my illegally obtained content and make sense of it. Channels struggles with 15+ terabytes of random bit torrent media.

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#15

Thanks! This is great feedback. We're hoping to be able to have better "after the fact" subtitle support in the future. Extras are something we're also experimenting with.

Just as an FYI, we have zero plans to ever support Music or Photos. We consider this a feature :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

As for the formats that weren't playing back well, we'd love if you could open a new topic with some mediainfo details on those videos, so that we can ensure even better support for formats.

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#16

This is exactly why I love channels. Dev feedback and rapid response.

I'll post like to perfect strangers. It won't playback any video. O tried hw, sw, blended. Ill do tonight when I'm home

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#17

Please, never ever put pictures or music in this thing. Don’t turn into plex.

Preferably, make it more minimalistic.

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#18

So, while working on adding a source filter for the browsing view for Movies and TV shows it occurred to me why this was never added before. While movies (actual files) have information attached to them that signify how they were added, TV Shows do not. Only their episodes (actual files) do.

1 Like
#19

Try using Kodi with the PlexKodiConnect and Channels DVR add-on's.

#20

Would love to hear your great ideas to make Channels more "minimalistic"?