In looking at my DVR hard drive, there is a folder titled "Images." There are over 3,500 images and are taking up over 1 gig of space on the hard drive. Is it necessary to keep these images or can they be deleted without any negative effect on my DVR recordings or viewing, etc.?
Also, what are the folders and files used for in the Streaming folder. I assume these are place markers of some sort for my streaming apps and need to be kept. Right?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Those are the cached images for show/movie posters and generated thumbnails for recordings. You can delete them, but displaying that content will take longer next time as the images will need to be re-downloaded or re-generated.
Those are for incoming internet/TVE streams to be buffered before being remuxed into TS containers which Channels uses. Also, they are for keeping cached copies of transcoded streams for remote or browser-based viewing. Again, you can safely delete the folder, but the next time you access something remotely it may take longer.
Yes, these are caches. If you delete them, they will just come back and things will be slower.
It’s best to just leave the directories that Channels DVR Server uses alone. We do not use disk space for no reason, and 1GB of disk usage shouldn’t be much of a concern considering it’s a small percentage of a single recording.
Thanks for the info. I will leave the folders alone.
One other question, my main drive where all of these folders exist will soon be full. I have read that a new drive can be added and Channels will find the recordings.
I believe I read that current movies should be moved to the new drive freeing up space on the main drive. Do these extra folders need to be moved, as well, and/or copied to the new drive or need to remain on the main recording drive.
Hope that makes sense. My recordings are quickly out-pacing my hard drive space.
Thanks and I appreciate the replies!
Good to hear you're enjoying Channels DVR!
I would suggest reading this tiny support article and then post if you have any questions.
It explains how to move everything to a new drive/location.
If you just want to move some (like Movies), see this thread (no support article yet that I know of)
How about the Logs folder? Seems like it never flushes itself, mine now weighs in at about 44 GB.
That depends upon your OS. The Logs folder includes a symlink to every recording it tries to detect commercials from. I bet if you actually analyzed that folder, you would either realize that the "space" was from either file references or inodes.
Thanks for all the help and replies. Promise I am not dumb as a rock, but if I move my movies from my main DVR drive to a new location, it would seem that Channels will index the movies on the new drive. But then, wouldn't I have two thumbnails for the same movie - one showing the old location (movie no longer exist there) and one showing the movie in the new location?
Will the DVR eventually remove the thumbnails for movies that no longer exist in the old location, or will I have to do this manually myself?
I have deleted movies (files) from my DVR movie folder, but the thumbnail still shows up in the library. Since I will be moving a large number of movies (files) to a new location, is there any process that will prevent the double thumbnail problem? (One would work from the new location - one would not work since the file no longer exist in the old location).
I'm still a newby using Channels and haven't yet learned all the ins and outs.
Thanks, as always, for any and all help and advise!
If you delete content from your hard drive and not through Channels, Channels won't know what you did.
When you MOVE recordings to a Channels_DVR_Additional_Storage_Location_Directory, Channels DVR will look in both the Primary and any Channels_DVR_Additional_Storage_Location_Directories for things it recorded. You will only still have one thumbnail for it and Channels DVR will find it where you moved it to if you keep the original directory structure.
i.e.
For Movies, move the contents of
Channels_DVR_Primary_Recording_Directory/Movies/
to
Channels_DVR_Additional_Storage_Location_Directory/Movies/
and for TV Shows, move the contents of
Channels_DVR_Primary_Recording_Directory/TV/
to
Channels_DVR_Additional_Storage_Location_Directory/TV/
Thank you for the explanation. I think I understand.
I have looked through all the options in the Channels server and find no way to export my files through the server. So, I am assuming that I move the files from one drive to another on my computer. Correct?
One other question you might be able to answer for me. When I put a movie or TV program in the trash though either the server on my computer or while watching TV, I know that the program or movie is removed from view. Does Channels also physically remove the file from the hard drive?
Example: A movie recorded shows it was interrupted. I put it in the trash. Does Channels remove the file fromt the hard drive once the trash is emptied or does the file remain on the hard drive even though it is no longer shown in the Channels movie library?
Thanks for the help. I appreciate it very much!
Correct. You move the files and directory structure using the OS where the files/directories are using your OS's file manager/explorer, outside of Channels DVR.
When you move something to Trash, it just marks it to be deleted from the hard drive when the Trash retention period expires. You set that in the DVR settings. The recorded file stays on your hard drive until you empty the Trash or the Trash retention period expires. It is then deleted from the hard drive and removed from the Channels DVR database.
I'm on macOS. The Logs folder has two sub-folders. "comskip" is as you describe, with lots of folders enclosing comskip.ini files, aliases to the .mpg recording, etc. That whole comskip folder is only 401.6 MB though, so I'm not focused on that one.
The other sub-folder inside Logs is called "recording" and that one has ~650 folders, all of which have exactly one file inside, called "recording.log" which all vary in size, from 100 bytes all the way up to 591 MB. There aren't any file references, aliases, symlinks or inodes. The total size of this channelsdvr/logs/recording folder is almost 44 GB.
Thanks for the explanation, but can this log/recording folder be flushed out occasionally? I'm guessing a month or two worth of logs is useful but anything beyond that seems unnecessary. And 44 GB is a lot of space for logs.
Those files (recording.log) are what the devs call recording debug logs.
They contain the complete log of TVE/M3U source stream recordings and can be deleted.
The only reason to keep any around is if you had an issue with a recording and the devs asked you for that log file.
They will not come back if you delete them, as they are only created during a TVE/M3U source recording.
And when you delete one of the recordings, its associated recording.log is also deleted.
Got it! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions! It's hard work having fun!
Hi. Getting ready to make the big move for my movies. I understand now how to move my movies to a new drive. I assume that I leave all the DVR folders on the original drive - database, dvr, images, etc. (These are not moved over to the empty drive along with the movies.) Also, I would leave the, now empty folders, movies and TV on the original drive for new recordings to be stored. Correct?
I have a large number of PlayOn movies that need to be moved, as well. Will these movies be moved to new folders with the same names on the empty drive the same way as your example you provided for me for movies and TV.?
Thanks in advance for your help!
All depends on what you want to do. You have to decide first.
I don't use the PlayOn integration, so have no idea what folder those are in, but the documentation on their website says they're put in the PlayOn directory, so I assume you would move that directory just like moving your Movies or TV directories. Of course this if for option #2 above, option #1 requires you move the directory one level above.
For option #1, see this Channels Support - Move Recordings Support Article
For option #2, see this post Additional Storage Locations for Channels DVR Recordings - #208 by chDVRuser
And what you asked about here Question changing hard drive location for movies is local content imports. Totally different.
Thanks for your reply. I am going to use the new drive as an additional location. The existing drive will continue to be the main recording location. So It sounds like I leave all the DVR folders in place (don't duplicate them on the new drive) and only move the movies and TV recordings to the new location.
I have read the support articles, but, unless I missed something, it didn't mention the DVR folders in question.
I'll move my PlayOn movies using the parameters you gave me before.
Again, I really appreciate the advise!
Correct if you mean the other folders like Database, Images, Imports, Logs and Streaming.
Those would not be moved.
Only move the TV and/or Movies folders.
Been here since January and love it.
As to these extra files and folders. I will trust the earlier comments that this stuff is okay to leave there. But, after some time, it does take space.
Maybe have an option in SETTINGS to clean certain folders. Adding a comment that it will result in slower access the next time or something so people know there is a "slight" downside.
It would be great to get rid of stuff no longer needed and recover some disk space.
Or maybe just a "How To" for those that want to clean up stuff on their own and the good and bad of each option.
Just a thought for the future.