Definitely an option. But, I was really looking for something different. I appreciate the suggestion.
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Yeah. At first glance, it looks like an option. I do also run Plex. And, in this particular case I ended up with Bob's Burgers in both environments with a few episodes missing in each, but a lot of overlap. So, reconciling them and glancing at this post, it looks helpful. I'll give it a good read. Thanks.
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You will lose CC if you transcode the Video best is to extract subtitles then transcode just an FYI unless you do not care about CC.
I use an 8 TB drive to store all the recordings and imports. I then use BackBlaze to keep that drive backed up to the cloud since I know that one day my external drive will fail. BackBlaze is only $7 per month for unlimited storage or you can save a little by paying for 12 mos service, much like Channels DVR service.
I will say that it took BackBlaze several weeks to back up my 6+ TB of files, but now it runs continuously with no issues.
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Thanks for this. I’m currently using IDrive mainly because it makes it easy to backup across environments, but I don’t think it’s that cheap. I will look into backblaze, but agree that changing is super painful. Would love better upload speed. But really don’t want to rip everything again.
I agree with a lot of sentiment on here.
- Compress video. Always choose multipass, takes longer but better quality.
-or- - Buy bigger hard drive. Stop caring.
I think it depends which group you are.
- I cut cable to save $$. Therefore im working on budget. This is where i started
-or- - Data Hoarder (where I am now). And you start buying 14TB drives, max your internet out. max out antenna recording. All so you can store media you will most likely NEVER watch. Seriously. I dont EVER watch my plex content. Yet I add over 1000 revordings of shows and movies every dang month.
Its like a book. If i buy a book I either read it immediately. Or it sits on a shelf for 10yrs gathering dust. It will never be read.
Please dont become option 2. Try to stay in option 1. Its a disease.
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Why would I want to Compress Video all that does is lower the Quality. Spend all that horsepower to compress the Video only to reduce the quality ... no Thank You. I want to enjoy high quality Video and sound ... not compressed Video and transcode audio. That is one of the reasons I stopped using playon.
I think just the opposite that folks who want to compress videos tend to be the hoarders. I prefer having large amounts of space because I tend to binch watch... So I might have a full season recorded before I watch it.... sometimes I delete full seasons without watching as the show gets canceled at the end of the season.
The OP goal is to reduce disk space. That can be achieved 1 of 2 ways. Compression or deletion.
The alternative is to increase storage capacity which cost money. I think everyone can agree more storage is better solution. But may not be in everyones budget.
That is often the case. Many data hoarders do compress. I think that would of been much more true years ago. But as diskspace has gotten cheaper, many are foregoing compression. So I think its a blend now. Either way when I went into topic of data hoarding I veered off the OP topic of using less disk space.
Lol. That probably describes a lot of people. Personally, I only have a few things I'd keep long term. The rest I will watch and delete. For my wife and I, a show like Bob's Burgers can fill a 20-30 gap when it's too early to go to bed and not enough time to watch what we really want to watch.
I don't hoard much. In fact, before I built my new NAS, I cleaned house. I deleted about half of my movies. Just keep in mind, they are not gone forever. You can "buy" them again later if you changed your mind.
Quality matters to me in most circumstances. But, if I'm watching Shark Tank, I doubt I'd notice any sound quality loss and probably not much video quality. Once I'm done watching it, I'll delete it. For some content, I just don't care that much.
I've got plenty of storage. I just built a new NAS that has 24TB in RAIDZ2. I'm in the process of bringing data in from my old NAS and so I'm tidying things up.
I don't hoard much. I'm sure I have some things that I'll probably never watch, but they are probably already a respectable balance between quality and size.
You're right. Reducing the space is my goal. I didn't need to post to figure out how to use ffmpeg. I was thinking more big picture, like what tools do you use, do you remove commercials permanently (if you previously had them marked for skip), how do you name them, do you leave them in their current location or put them in imports and stuff like that. My first video that I compressed and renamed wouldn't show up in the Library anymore. So, felt like I was missing something. I could always use Plex or something else to play it. But, I was trying to see how everyone else did it and I felt there was probably a typical pattern people followed.
As I mentioned in other posts, I have plenty of storage space. I think I'm just more OCD about keeping uncompressed video hanging around if I can compress it and not miss the loss of quality.
For things from Channels DVR i want to keep permanently I use MCEBUDDY to strip commercials. I mainly do this for movies i get on HD antenna. I used to allow it to compress videos. Now i just use it to strip commercials.
In Channels DVR Web UI there is a tool for modification of comskip file to fix incorrect markings. There are probably better tools. I just use the one built into Channels.
I used this guide from forum for my settings when i first setup. These are not the settings i currently use, but was a good starting point.
This renames file with incorect file name so channels still sees it. With the incorect file extension I have not had any issues with Channels, plex or vlc not playing.
Alternative is move them to imports.
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I didn't realize there was a way to edit commercials in Channels. I just tried it and I can't quite get it to extend a commercial it detected an extra 15s.
@tmm1 also mentioned MCEBuddy. But, it's windows only software. I dual boot Windows and Linux. But, I usually have so much going on in Linux that it's never a good time to reboot.
Dual booting is so old school.
Try a virtualizer like proxmox. Its bare metal virtualization software. Not much performance penalty. As long as your running a modern-ish cpu it can handle multiple OS running at same time.
I then combine proxmox with parsec
Its a remote desktop software that can do 1080p very well.
Could MCEBuddy run on Wine? If not im sure there has to beva linux equivalent of software.
I am old school.
I use Proxmox for my NAS. But, I prefer to run my desktop on bare metal, which is a Ryzen 9 3900X. I use QEMU/KVM to virtualize on it.
I do need to give that a try.
That's a thought.
Be nice if the Channels software allowed some kind of buffer so that it doesn't use up the whole hard drive. Just start to purge older files once the Disk Size - Buffer amount is reached..
Maybe I misunderstood your point. But, uou can limit the number of episodes it keeps.
I think the OP meant is to reserve an amount of DISK Space to be used by Channels DVR and not the whole drive.
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Yes @Edwin_Perez that was my point.. If the DVR software could ensure it doesn't use up the entire drive and allow a buffer of XX GB. I realize an external drive is super cheap, however I kinda like my current setup that is using an internal SSD drive as my setup run nice and quiet - and my DVR machine is in the same room as my main TV. Hooking up an external spinning drive would be too loud