DVR cleanup

After files have been deleted from the TV or movie folder they are still showing up in the channels app is there a way to have channels DVR to check to see if the file is still there?

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Yes… right now you have to go into the show on web ui Recordings tab, click the gear icon, click Prune deleted.

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So no way to do this in bulk?

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No, I planned to add that but forgot about it. Let me check it out this week.

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Awesome thanks!

You can do this right now from powershell:

Invoke-WebRequest -Method Put http://127.0.0.1:8089/dvr/pruner/deleted

or same thing on mac/linux terminal:

curl -XPUT http://127.0.0.1:8089/dvr/pruner/deleted

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Still plan on making this availible via gui?

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@tmm1 This going to available soon?

Was looking for a button in the GUI to do this also. Seems like an important feature on any type of computer based DVR where the files are accessible outside the DVR software.

A button that just says [Scan Library] or [Refresh Library] would be helpful. It might even be nice if it could work in reverse to add a show back into the DVR recordings section. Although I realized that may add a whole new set of functionality for shows coming from outside of the guide listings.

I hope we will soon have this available, thanks.

Somebody please enlighten me? Why would one delete files out from under the DVR software, rather than use the DVR software?

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It way faster and easier for me to delete it via command line than go through the GUI. I don't though, since I know Channels doesn't like it, but it is a lot faster that way.

A bit of a bump on this. Another vote for adding a button or similar to the settings page in the Web UI to trigger the pruner. Just easier than dealing with curl commands.

@jseymour my use case is: I have 50 episodes of a show, and want to delete 40 of them. Channels makes it easy to delete all episodes, or individual episodes. But if you need to batch delete episodes, deleting the files directly is much much easier. I'm still relatively new to Channels, so not sure if there is a better way I am unaware of.

:+1: I totally get that. We just need better ways to batch delete.

If we did this, it would probably be via the web admin and not the client though. It's a LOT easier (and universal platform wise) to implement this via web than it is with native UI.

Adding this kind of UI would just clutter up the UI of the client apps. The web admin should be considered just that, administration UI, so we don't mind cluttering it up a little.

I don't think dropping to the web admin to do some serious managing would be that big of an annoyance to everyone.

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Any updates on this? @maddox @tmm1

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Bump.... I'm rarely home when I admin my media server. Need a remote way to do this also.

I would also like this. I decided to delete files manually from Windows Explorer and that backfired as the software isn't capable of scanning for its own files when it starts up (or on occasion otherwise) which seems a bit strange.

Is there still no update for this a couple years later? If there is something in the web interface, I'm not seeing it.

How about a button that says "Update Database", at the top of the Recordings page, right above the Shows, Movies and Recordings sidebar?

No, there is not a user-facing option for this. Channels expects that it is the only program/user managing recordings, its saved/recorded files, and its database.

For those "intrepid" users who choose to circumvent Channels' file management, the developers have provided an API endpoint to cause Channels to rescan its files and update its database.

Short answer:

If you're expert enough to manually cull Channels' files, then you're expert enough to open a command line to manually tell Channels to update its database.

Well if they don't want to make external deletions easy or discoverable, they need to create a bulk select/delete option within the interface. It's tedious to need 30 clicks to remove 10 movies.

Another alternative to having a forward facing interface would be to have a setting that tells Channels to just make sure the database it accurate whenever it adds a new recording or periodically every "x" hours.