Hello all,
I am pretty excited to use the new virtual channels feature. However, I do not want to pollute recordings made by ChannelsDVR with my local library. I simply have too big a local library to import and then try to sort through to find my new recordings. I would love to point a virtual channel at a folder or collection and not have any of that show up in my recordings.
Is this something I am just missing?
Thanks!
You’re not missing anything. Virtual Channels work by using items from your library. You’re going to have to import things to use them.
Thank you for the reply. 
Bummer.
Is there a way to hide or segregate my local stuff from the "recordings". In my use case, local stuff is permanent, recordings are transient.
Why exactly are you afraid of mixing recordings and your local content?
I don't think afraid, more ignorant.
I don't want to see local content when I am looking at recordings. But I would love to see virtual channels in my guide.
¯(°_O)/¯ in Channels we believe it’s all just content. It just comes from different places.
There’s things in place to help your browse large libraries and see what’s been added recently.
Enhanced Library Browsing, for example, gives you better views while browsing your movies and shows.
If you add your local content, you can remove it just by removing the directory you added. It’s worth a try to just try it I guess.
I understand. However, I would say, like channels in the guide, virtual channels shouldn't require all of the actual files be added to the recordings. None of the content from the guide is automatically injected into the recordings listing, unless it is recorded.
Seems like, since the virtual channel is more like an entry in the guide we can choose to watch or not, it more closely follows the "live tv" paradigm rather than the "library" paradigm.
I love this tool and appreciate your responses.
Except, if you choose to watch the program listed in the Virtual Channel, the content to display has to come from somewhere. With a virtual channel, the content is your library.
Everything has to be physically accessible, OTA, previous recordings, M3U content, everything. My argument is: Not everything is in the ChannelsDVR managed library. OTA and provider content certainly is not. My understanding is this is a virtual representation mimicking OTA and provider representation. In this way, this content is a lot more like guide-based content in that ChannelsDVR should not have to manage the actual content, but rather know where it can find the content, exactly like OTA and provider content is found.
In order to create the virtual guide, the DVR needs to know what each piece of content is, including how long and what show and episode etc. To do this, it needs the content to be imported first.
That's just how it works, and its unlikely to change.
If you really don't want to import your content, I guess you could explore alternatives like DizqueTV.
Thanks everyone for all the responses.
I understand the situation and appreciate the opportunity to add my two cents.
For what it’s worth, I have done exactly this. I didn’t import my entire media collection but instead chose a lot of content that makes sense for Channels DVR and the way my family and I use it. We specifically wanted nostalgia for Virtual Channels, content to play in the background. These are great when I only have a few minutes and don’t want to spend time hunting around for something to watch. But that particular content doesn’t need to clutter the library either… so I change the visibility of those imports to “HIDDEN.” They still work great in their Virtual Channels.
Might this help you out?
Good morning. Yes, I think it might. I realize ChannelsDVR must scan and catalog content to provide a reasonable virtual channel, my objection was: I simply didn't want to have my short lived (recordings) and long lived (local content) mixed together, we are talking WAF here. She wants to record something, watch it, or not, and then delete - think local news.
I was not aware I could hide my local content. I will give this a try and see how this works. I will let you know how it goes. Thank you!
You can disable the ability to delete local content, too. That way the only items that get the "Trash" button are DVR recordings.