Additional Storage Locations for Channels DVR Recordings

OK, I see it

WDChannels is a single disk MyCloud

Call me an idiotā€¦going to add the full path

Thought I had sent results of above, but now I canā€™t find it.

Reran and:

IMac-4:~ Debbie$ ls -alh /Volumes/WDChannels/Recordings/TV
ls: /Volumes/WDChannels/Recordings/TV: No such file or directory

ā€œNo such file or directoryā€

Path is incorrect

Worked fine for me.

recorder.path":"/usr/local/channels-dvr/recordings",ā€œrecorder.path.extraā€:"/media/dvr1/media/channels"

It would be nice to add a path in the GUI and then switch the newest one to the default recorder path, but Iā€™m happy to have this!

Pretty sure you are the only three users who will use this feature, so no GUI is planned. The current directory picker code is complicated enough as-is.. :slight_smile:

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I have the ā€œRecordingsā€ share from the NAS named WDChannels mounted on the iMac.

IMac-4:~ Debbie$ ls -alh /Volumes/Recordings/TV
total 1077512
drwxrwxrwx 1 Debbie staff 264B Jul 1 00:36 .
drwx------@ 1 Debbie staff 264B Jul 1 01:40 ā€¦
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 Debbie staff 6.0K Jul 1 01:18 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 Debbie staff 526M Jun 6 17:00 2017-06-06-1649 House 2012-04-16 S08E17 We Need the Eggs.mpg
drwxrwxrwx 1 Debbie staff 264B Jun 6 16:49 House

IMac-4:~ Debbie$ ls -alh /WDChannels/Recordings/TV
ls: /WDChannels/Recordings/TV: No such file or directory

IMac-4:~ Debbie$ ls -alh /Volumes/WDChannels/Recordings/TV
ls: /Volumes/WDChannels/Recordings/TV: No such file or directory

So what is my path?

P.S.

I wonā€™t normally be running the iMac. The DVR is going to run on either the Qnap or Shield

Sounds like you need to set ExtraPaths to /Volumes/Recordings

So when I add a third disk location, I would have 2 /Volumes/Recordings?

Seems like I should be able to set the name of the actual drive in the pathā€¦

macOS uses share name as the path. You can navigate to /Volumes (apple+shift+G) in Finder, or ā€œls -alh /Volumesā€ to see for yourself.

Not running DVR on Mac. Running on Qnap & Shield.

Itā€™s late for both of usā€¦tomorrow Iā€™ll do some more testing :scream:

/Volumes is macOS specific. For other platforms you need to figure out where the recordings directory is and tell Channels that path

Experimented more earlier today, with no luck so far. :cry:

However, if I can get the Shield to record to a mounted network diskā€¦then I already have the path to the attached USB 3, which would then be used for the Extra-Paths statement.

Of course, early yesterday I was trying to make that external connection and botched that up. Gave up and went on to the easy (?) task of adding additional Storage location. :confounded:

Perhaps another user who can figure out how to change Shield recording path to external network mountā€¦will post results :four_leaf_clover:

In the meantime, Iā€™ll continue experimenting.

Thanks so much for adding these capabilitiesā€¦hopefully, once resolved ā€œno more 3rd party workaroundsā€ :clap:

As stated in Nvidia Shield thread, I was able to fix my error and now have this function working.

I do have one process question:

Since it has been previously recommended that local storage (versus remote) be utilized for DVR, am I correct in assuming that it is VERY preferable to attach two local disks to the Shield (DVR recordings & Extra Path recordings) rather than directing DVR storage to a NAS and attaching one disk locally (Extra Path recordings).

Originally, I was using a mac mini with DVR recordings on a NASā€¦without any experiencing any connect/disconnect problems.

The Shield has been reliable for DVR recording on local drive, however at times it has been very flaky for network discovery/connection.

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I am having a problem setting up certain secondary locations on my NAS: I can easily setup a secondary (storage) location on the the ā€œmainā€ data volume and also the attached USB3 for my NAS, however I havenā€™t been able to setup a secondary location on a mounted SMB share.

Testing on the Shield, I am able to add a secondary location directly from the Channels DVR share on the Qnap (it is mounted on Shield & also I didnā€™t have to add a ā€œIMOā€ superfluous ā€œrecordingā€ folder). In several tests, In order to achieve an acceptable transcoding rate >1 I did have to lower the transcoding settings on the DVR from 10mbps to 8 or 6mbps, several tests were OK at Hardware, 10mbps, blend.

Iā€™d really like to be able to add a secondary (tertiary) network storage location without having to mount the drive/share on the DVR device, if possible. IIRC, this is possible on SDDVR, but itā€™s been a long time (>6 mo) since I tested their offering. I will be glad to retest on SDDVR, if necessary. Just looking for any possible way to circumvent the necessity of mounting network shares to Channels DVR device, as itā€™s another potential point of failure.

Does the above behaviour comport with current program or am I making an error (entirely possible) in my tests?

The DVR only understands directory paths. It is up to your Operating System to mount network shares at a known path so that the DVR can access them. Implementing various network filesystem protocols inside Channels DVR is way out-of-scope and not going to happen. Thereā€™s also no reason to believe that direct access would be any more reliable than via a mount.

Understand completely re: beyond the scope.

Is it theoretically possible to setup a (secondary) path on the Qnap to a network share on another NAS for the Channels DVR. I assume yes, since I can mount an smb share to the Qnap to be available in Qnapā€™s File Station.

If so, I will continue to investigate the proper path statement to be used on the DVR settings. I just donā€™t want to waste my time trying to chase the impossible dream. :grin:

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Channels DVR does not know or care about network shares. All it wants is the path to a directory where the recordings are stored.

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