Compressing videos... "Recording Fot Found (-13)"

Channels DVR Server
#1

Since memory is not cheap, I thought I'd look into compressing my videos. I am tinkering with unmanic to compress by mpeg2video files into hevc files. The compression part is working great. I can get the file size down by nearly 80% in some cases. But the Channels clients can't seem to play the files due to the "Recording Not Found (-13)" message.

The files are recorded from an HDHomerun and dropped into the /mnt/disk/dvr/config folder. Then I compress a file and it's name changes from <Show Name>.mpg to <Show Name>.mkv. Running ffprobe on the file shows it encoded as ...

Stream #0:0: Video: hevc (Main), yuv420p(tv, top coded first (swapped)), 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 1k tbn, start 1.702000

I know that Channels can play this format because I have copied the compressed file into my personal media folder with a different name and it shows up and plays just fine.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a way to compress the files in place so that they are picked up by the Channels server? Do they need to keep the same name with the .mpg extension? Can I tell the Server to rescan the list of files?

#2

They have to be the same name. The database is defending specific file names. If you changed them, then yeah, the file is missing and won’t play back.

#3

So, if I compressed them and moved them to my personal media library would that work? If I'm not mistaken I can't put the hevc into a .mpg container. Maybe I could compress to h.264 and put it in .mpg? Hmmm.

1 Like
#4

If you rename the .mkv you created to have the .mpg extension (so the file name doesn't change) it will work with the DVR.

#5

Oh, so easy! Why didn't I think of that. Thanks Eric!

#6

Be sure to refresh its metadata after, via the web admin, or the library will have completely wrong details about the video file.

#7

I find it's less steps and more reliable to delete the recording and place the compressed video into imports. Besides compressing, AVI has much better compression.

#8

BTW, in case anyone else stumbles on this thread and wants to do the file rename automatically in unmatic, it's pretty easy. Just use the "External Post-processor Script" plugin and set the command field to mv -- "{output_file_path}" "{source_file_path}". Make sure this happens after the transcoder step in the post-processor flow.

#9

Wait, tell me more about the Imports folder. The documentation talks about putting links into that folder. Can you also just drop a video file in there and have Channels put it in the right place? This could be handy for me to import content I'm pulling from my TiVo.

#10

You should read the actual Channels DVR document. The primary use of the imports folder is for video files you place there. Typically 3 subdirectories: movies, tv shows, and personal videos. TV shows should each be in there own subdirectories. Read more for naming conventions. Yes everything will go to the proper library

#11

OK, I'm already doing that. It sounded like there was a way for those files to be pulled into the main Channels database.