Manual Recording Feature

Channels DVR Server Feature Requests
#37

Hey, here's a perfect example! Golf channel has moved up the broadcast of the second round of the Tour Championship to 10 a.m. tomorrow to avoid potential thunderstorms, will that be reflected in the guide? Maybe, maybe not.

But a manual recording would take care of this. And I can't easily hack around some extended recording of what Golf channel is showing in the guide now because it's some ladies golf tournament that doesn't correlate.

Man, this would be so much easier if I could just do a quick schedule with the web UI...

I'm going to keep bumping this with more examples in the future! Lol.

2 Likes
#38

Your dream has now come true! I started the project last year and then took a break for more than a year because life happened but, finally, here it is!

Truly a plug and play solution. Just install the extension, refresh the schedule page and you should see the new "Manual Recording" button on the web UI.

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1 Like
#39

thank you for your efforts on this.
To be clear this would be for web interface only, and not via the apps.....

1 Like
#40

Correct, this is an extension that works in the web browser on a desktop only.

To be more precise, it has been tested in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and the Brave browser.
Basically, any web browser that supports Chrome extensions.

1 Like
#41

clicked on the link, went to the page, please tell this newbie what to do next,
do i need to sign in
what to i click to add this extension?

1 Like
#42

Another thing too is that it will only work in a browser on a desktop computer.

Even though you may use Chrome on your Android phone, extensions are not supported on a mobile device. Just to clarify.

If you go to the Chrome Web Store page for it:
Channels DVR Extras - Chrome Web Store

You should see a "Get" button. In my case, it says "Remove" because I have already installed it.

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2 Likes
Looking for Help: How to Record by Channel + Time Block (Not Show-Based) in Channels DVR
#43

manual recording successfully done

thank you!!!!!!!!

#44

Thanks!

#45

I want to give a shout out here because yesterday the Tigers/Mariners game was delayed and eventually moved off of FS1. I was able to use manual recordings on both FS2 as well as MLB (the guide data would never update quickly enough)

THANK YOU

#46

I saw that too but just did it the quick and dirty way - recorded the supposed soccer game on FS2 in progress and extended it by 3 hours.

1 Like
#47

cant extent that far on the app (limited to 120 minutes),

so if i am going to run to the PC, might as well use the manual, and also retitle it to my liking

#48

No need to use a pc, phone works great for web admin. But I get your point, I could have set up a manual recording. For me it was just as easy to watch and record it from the guide then mod the padding from the web page. I was doing it while it was in progress in other words. For future manual recordings like rainout reschedules or bad guide data I use the new feature.

1 Like
#49

I see what you did there, going to the web interface via Phone.....

#50

However, keep in mind that when viewing the web interface on your phone, you won't have access to this manual feature. You can't install the extension on a mobile device.

#51

manual = PC only
extend way far out = learned i can do this on my phone as well

1 Like
#52

I also made something which you can host yourself: GitHub - giejay/channels-dvr-manager: Channels DVR Manager - Manual scheduling and more

Features:

  • Create manual recordings with custom start/end times, multiple channels, and repeat options

  • Search and select channels with logos and filtering

  • View, filter, and manage all scheduled recordings in a data table

  • Edit or delete individual or multiple scheduled recordings

  • Dark/light mode toggle with automatic detection

  • Proxy support for secure API access to your Channels DVR server

  • Docker-ready for easy deployment
#55

I was able to create an advanced pass using the Time contains "12pm", etc. to record whatever airs in a timeslot. It works fine except for one specific corner case. If there is a program scheduled that you have already recorded, the pass skips that time slot. The only way to catch it is to mark the recorded show as not recorded, something that the advanced pass can't do. Of course you can do it manually, but that's not ideal. I'm working on a script to do this, but I'm wondering if anyone else has already combined those two features; unconditionally recording a time slot (even 24x7), and also proactively marking existing recordings in the same time slots as not recorded?

#56

That's the problem with using a pass. The scheduler is looking at the ProgramID.

Sounds like you want to create recurring "curl based" manual recordings.
That way the scheduler doesn't care what's airing at the time of recording. (As long as you don't use both SeriesID and ProgramID in your json payload. I just use SeriesID for grouping)

In fact, I created a "curl based" manual recording to record the same thing from two different channels and they both ended up recording to the same file. How to create a Manual Time/Channel based recording job - #21 by chDVRuser

Another option (which has been brought up before and gained no traction) is to allow a pass to record "everything" that meets its criteria. TiVo had this (New/New & Repeats/Everything).

#57

Not exactly. I think it will help to explain why I would even want to do it in the first place, because there are multiple reasons that a manual recording may be desired.

The problem is that when an important news event takes place, like the shooting at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, I want to start recording and not stop for a while. The schedule data is incorrect because all scheduled programming is preempted. In this case, I don't want the DVR logic interfering with the directive to record everything. This has been happening enough lately that I have been recording my favorite news channel 24x7, but it has holes because of the rerecord logic embedded in passes.

So, one solution would be to add support for a time-based pass with a "dammit" checkbox (don't skip the time slot because the apparently scheduled program was already recorded).

The ultimate solution would be for Gracenote to notify that something's up (programming data is invalid due to breaking news or whatever), and Channels has a "when somethings up do this" capability.

#58

I've never understood why this simple fix was not implemented. Change the 're-record deleted' pass flag to everything and implement it, problem solved as long as the guide data is correct.

But ultimately, a simple manual recording UI should have been added which allows for repeating days etc. There's an extension out there by @mjitkop that does this for us, but it really should have been in the web admin. As posted above, there are times when events are moved or preempted and you want to schedule a simple manual recording to override the guide.