I can see where the DVR records on my computer. My question is: Can I put my own videos in that folder to be displayed? If so how? I know it's not as simple as formatting the video and placing it in the folder cause that's what I've tried. This would be a great thing because you could have all your own movies and videos alongside the stuff you record in one place.
Channels DVR Server does not support importing local content at the moment.
I thought you could Import Movies has that changed with the latest Betas ?
That's a shame. Definitely would be great in the future.
if you have a folder full of Movies you can Import them without copying over to Channels DVR folder from the web page.
This is not an officially supported feature. It's not even alpha.
It works 
To make that alpha feature show up in the web UI's Settings tab, you need to hold down the Update button to get a pre-release update. That means you're signing up for possible instability in your Channels DVR installation. But it does work.
It's currently intended only for movies, which it tries to match with a movie database. After one botched attempt where I somehow imported all my TV shows, and had to delete them manually one-by-one even though it was not pointed at that directory, on the second try I got it to import some home videos and a niche film. It's not meant for media like that yet, so they look funny in the apps but they play well.
I did not have to do anything on the command line, just in the web UI. For support, see this thread: Imports?
Interesting. I'll have a look when I get home from work. Thanks.
I have imported over 100 Movies and had to only manually match 2 so far.... and I was able to correctly match those 2.
This “pre-alpha” import option does work really well. While it tries to match a “movie” title and (date), any meg video Channels has recorded, i.e., TV shows, can be renamed and given a date (2020) to import. Without a match to the movie database, the import is listed in the MOVIES section of Channels DVR without a picture thumbnail. It works for TV, but provides limited usefulness for a seamless experience.
Tried it out and it works like a charm. Thank you all for your help.
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That would be great so I could get rid of Plex and have everything in one spot. I can watch tv in Plex but miss the commercial skip feature there.
It works great for movies, not tv shows. And you can add any video you want but it gets a bit messy without proper thumbnails. Not sure if you add your own thumbnails.
We can't, at least not yet. In the "Imports?" thread I asked about poster and subtitle files and was told neither is supported.
If Channels had this feature, I could not get rid of Plex until Channels supported user profiles.
I just wanted to add that I would love a feature where I could use Channels to watch videos other than what Channels has recorded.
And if I were greedy, I'd say it would be nice if I could shuffle play all the videos in a folder or loop them (or both).
You can add local content in the DVR server settings. Have you tried that?
My understanding, as per earlier posts in this thread, is that I need to use the production version of the Channels server/DVR for that and, as pointed out by a developer, that feature isn't even alpha. I like using the beta as a viewer, on my mobile devices and on Apple TV, but I don't want to go into the testing versions for the server.
Importing videos is possible on both stable and pre-release builds. There's not really "support" for it, and it is still alpha-level, but it's in the current stable release.