DVR Streaming Directory - Configurable?

Channels DVR Server
#1

Greetings.

This has been discussed previously, many times, and it has been on the 'TO DO' list since at least 2019 [1], wondering if it could make its way closer to the top of that list?

It is very desirable to have this directory be on a ramdisk, and in normal installs one can just symlink it & be done with it however it is not straight forward for Docker installs, usually you need to add not only the symlink but also where the symlink leads (as the exact same path that it appears on the host) so the container can resolve it properly and it would just be overall cleaner if this directory could be configurable.

Thanks!

1 Like
#2

Please don't put this directory on something that is not persistent. The m3u8 directory contains important indexes that improve the performance of remote streaming.

#3

I have my Streaming Directory on an SSD and have a symlink in the Channels DVR directory pointing to it.... Is That OK ? My Recording are in a 12TB Usb Drive. which is Robocopied/MIR to another 12 TB drive when nothing is recording.

#4

I disagree:

docker run \
  ... \
  -v /mnt/hdd/dvr:/dvr \
  -v /mnt/ssd/streaming:/dvr/Streaming \
  ... \
  fancybits/channels-dvr:tve

If /mnt/hdd is where you mount your spinning hard disk, and dvr is the directory where you want your recordings stored, and /mnt/ssd is where you've mounted your solid-state drive for the Streaming directory for Channels to use, it's pretty simple. Just make sure that within the container you tell Channels that /dvr is where it should put its DVR directories.

#5

That's fair, more specifically I was after a configurable directory for the temporary transcode files, those perform best on a ramdisk.

#6

You are correct, that would indeed work, I will switch to doing that.

Although I've never had an issue I will admit I was unaware that there is possibly other stuff in that Streaming directory:

So I'll go back to my original request - a configurable directory for the temporary transcode stuff.

#7

What problem is it that you're trying to fix?

If you have your Live TV Buffer set to 2 hours and are watching OTA or cable, that could be at least 7-14GB of data/memory just for this single stream. And if you make the ramdisk too small, it's going to cause you problems when you run out of disk space.

Is this 1-2MB/s of reads and writes really hurting anything?

The reality is that with how all modern OSs deal with IO caching, the reads and writes are being fulfilled out of RAM because it is being written and read in short succession. It just means you don't need to manually manage the amount of disk space or RAM being allocated for this purpose.

#8

I understand what you are saying and I could certainly take a little time, put it back on disk & see if the behavior tracks with how you've described.

But that all said, this hardware is older and I have other things that do transcoding running on it (tdarr, plex, etc.) and I have always noticed things are snappier and perform better when I put the transcode directory on a ramdisk.

I have a bit of memory to play around with, I just cap the ramdisk at 64GB, just so if something gets carried away it doesn't take anything else down, but so far this size seems to be more than enough for my usage.

I had asked previously about this and it was said that this was planned:

And others have asked as well:

So I thought I'd check in & see if it was still on the list and maybe if it could be bumped up a little, however I can understand your reluctance to implement a feature that no one is clamoring for (at least no one recently).

I can always keep symlinking it or, as mentioned above, just overlay it.

Thanks again!

1 Like
#9

To be honest, it's something that still hasn't reached anywhere near the top of our list of priorities and I don't really know when it will be. Sorry I don't have better news.