Can someone explain generating video index?

#1

I noticed that when I add a movie or TV Show the DVR will perform "Generating video index for file-67056:" then it will list the name of the TV Show or Movie after the colon.

I searched the forum and I see mentions of it being recommened for some trouble files to manually run it as a possible fix or for some other uses but I can't seem to find anywhere that says what exactely it is or what it does and why Channels is running it automatically on every file I add.

In fact, a few months ago I had to re-add my movies and it ran this process on all of my movies and it took over 24 hours to do every one of them. I have over 900 movie rips on my NAS.

#2

These video indexes record the location of "keyframes" in the video files which allow us to be more efficient in how we handle transcoding. It makes our adaptive bitrate transcoding better and more efficient and can sometimes allow us to avoid even using ffmpeg for some remote streams.

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Regenerating Video Index
#3

Excellent. Thank you for that explanation. I am familiar with what keyframes are in a video file from using Avidemux so that makes sense.

It was one of those things I'd noticed and it was just bugging the heck out of me that I didn't know exactely what it was or did. lol

#4

If you're familiar with an m3u8, take a look at your /Streaming/m3u8/{RecordedFile#} folders for the stream.m3u8 file for each recording/import.

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Regenerating Video Index
#5

Thanks. That was pretty cool. I love knowing these things and how things work on the backend.

#6

Is there anyway to have that generation paused? I have the PI server with your image on it. When it is regenerating the index things really slow down. It is a problem when I am trying to copy several files over to it. Once it sees a new one it starts the regeneration, which causes problems for copying the other files. So is there any way I can turn it off. Then when I am finished copying turn it back on?

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#7

Yeah, this is crushing my Channels VM too. I'd even just like to see what it's the queue so I know how much longer it going to take. I'm figuring a week or so at this rate. It's been 24 hours and has only gotten thru 3 of 50 TV Series.

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#8

I just had to move my Channels DVR over to another PC yesterday (my Beelink was making some kind of weird smell and started acting up). My TV Shows scanned and regenerated the video index fairly rapidly. All of my movies and TV Shows are on a seperate NAS device (TNAS).
Now I need to move the DVR computer to a different room and I am afraid of shutting it down while the generating is going on. While this harm anything in the files?

Another question: is it normal that while the generation is happening that it uses so much CPU on my NAS? It is ranging from 80% to 95% while it's happening. If I try to move any other files to that device it is very slow. It's not this slow normally.

#10

Mine is a result as a move too. I wish there was a way to get in there and minipulate it manually. Its all because paths went from drive letters to lknjx mount points. The rest of the paths and files are the same. I wish Channels could regonoze that and not rerun this process.

#11

It’s no problem to shutdown the DVR when the generation is happening. It will be retried later.

We’re thinking about ways we can make this process less disruptive going forward.

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#12

Thanks for the response.

I am glad to hear it is on your radar. Some type of schedule would be cool. Hopefully I don't have to have this too often since I don't plan to keep reinstalling the server! lol

#13

Once I got my VM speed issue figured out, it wasnt a problem, there was plenty of horsepower the chug thru them.

#14

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