Channels missing from Channel Collection guide, but all else is good - how to fix?

Channels DVR Server Troubleshooting
#1

I have a Channel Collection that leverages a couple of "Custom Channels" sources that supply M3U files, as well as similar files I leverage for Pluto, for example. In the last few days I noticed some of my channels were missing. I've had a few instances of that in the past which seemed correlated to the fact that if I filtered on that source in Guide, those channels did not have EPG data. Usually I could refresh the epg xml data or remove and re-add the channels and they worked fine.

For the last several days I've been missing some channels again, but all the EPG data seems to be pulling fine. I can filter the guide on those sources and the missing channels are there, with EPG info, and I can stream them. I've tried removing them from the channel collection and re-adding, doing database rebuilds, removing the appdata altogether and doing a restore of the container and appdata, etc., and the channels still don't show when I choose my Channel Collection guide. I'm stumped. Any ideas on how to fix?

#2

So I've worked around most of my issue, but still an issue or two and I want to understand what's going on.

I removed the source and re-added it with new starting channel numbering to see if it would fix it - now my channels showed, but the logos were all way off despite the fact I know the source has the proper ones. My theory is that some sort of channel numbering conflict had caused the missing channels issue, but that the logos issue was cropping up because Channels was using the logos for an old lineup I'd had long ago in the same channel range as this "new" list. So...I changed the starting number to a new range and now all the channels are there and the logos are right.

How can you resolve the initial issue more directly without renumbering, and how do you clean out old channel number to logo mappings that Channels is retaining? These are all set to pull logos from the m3u, so it is very odd that Channels would allow this to happen in any case.

#3

Can someone please answer these questions? Should I open a support ticket to get the answers?

#4

Rach channel needs a unique channel-id= tag in your m3u

#5

@tmm1 They do have them. I can see them in the m3u, and in the Channels gui IIRC, but clearly there's some sort of leftover mapping when you delete a source and its channels because using a previously-used-by-Plex-channels range of numbering caused all of the logos to be off (showing Plex ones despite the source providing the correct ones). Using maintenance to delete and recreate the database, and removing/readding the source didn't fix this.

Is there a way to clean out these old, bad mappings short of deleting appdata and starting from scratch? I definitely don't want to have to go through the trouble of recreating my channel collection, if possible.

#6

My recommendation would be to let Channels DVR assign the channel numbers on all your sources.
Use Channel Collections to organize them.
Anytime you change things on a source, add or delete a source, do a delete and recreate guide database.

#7

I would absolutely do that with only one concern I can think of at the moment. I have two m3u sources which have many of the same channels. I'm not aware of any way to treat them as a primary with automatic fallback, so I have to choose one or the other to avoid duplicates in my EPG. To better track which is which when mixing them in my guide, I typically name the sources something like 5000-SOURCE1 and 9000-SOURCE2, with starting channel #s which match those names. That way when I'm looking at the guide I can tell if a channel is coming from SOURCE1 or SOURCE2 based on the channel # shown.

Do you see a way to address some or all of this if Channels is auto-assigning for all my sources?

#8

I do know if you have the same channel-id in multiple sources, it causes issues.
I don't have that issue in my setup, but I assume this would solve the problem for you

If not, maybe one of the developers has a suggestion.

1 Like
#9

I haven't had a chance to verify this fully fixes my issue, but it sure looks promising - amazing, even. Thanks for the pointer!

#10

PLM/SLM has been pretty amazing so far. Thing is, it seems that I didn't have duplicate stream-id issues, so I don't know what the problem was before. It's clear Channels has some residual stuff hanging around because assigning channel numbers that match a previous range from a source that's not even in the GUI any more was causing the EPG for those channels to show the previous range.

I think PLM/SLM is pretty self-contained. Is there a way to retain my channel collection, blow away all of the Channels container appdata and img, then reinstall, add PLM/SLM back into sources and import my channel collection?

#11

I call that CRUFT (Belly Button Lint, etc.)
There are settings stored in the databases that don't get cleared.
Best to blow away your guide database and recreate it.

#12

Best answered in that topic