Some Movies show up twice

[Dennis_L]

Some of the movies show up twice even though there exists only one file. For instance, some, but not all of the Rocky movies (under Franchises) show up twice and everything in the details appears correct but duplicated. Some movies (like Rocky I) I have a 4K version and that appears twice but the 4K version and the HD version are correctly detailed.

I did a search of the entire directory using Mac's Spotlight and could not find any duplicate Rocky movies.

Other movies also appear more than once. What am I doing wrong?

[Dennis_L]

Well, I found the answer, I think. The duplicates are movies I downloaded with the PlayOn App. The App puts the movie in a temporary directory (in my case an SSD) and then I move it to my NAS server. The Channels Movie directory has only the NAS movies and I have no idea how it is finding the temporary directory on the SSD. But the directory doesn't exist. I have been deleting them one-by-one but there's a lot of them. Any suggestions??

[maddox]

If you delete them from disk (or move them from their path) you can just run the prune action and it will remove anything from your library that does not exist anymore.

[Dennis_L]

I tried the prune but it still shows duplicates. For example, I have three Star Trek II icons and one is not there (after pruning)'

[Dennis_L]

It seems every movie I bought through PlayOn shows up twice and only one of them is playable. There must be a second file location in the metadata ---

[maddox]

Submit diagnostics from your Channels DVR Server, and we'll check it out.

[maddox]

Did this issue just all of a sudden start? When did you notice this start happening? What actions had you recently taken before this started?

[Dennis_L]

I just started looking at movies as my Emby app seems buggy. But it is only PlayOn movies…. And I have Emby and Infuse movie apps and neither of them duplicate the PlayOn movies.

FYI … PlayOn copies movies on Netflix, Prime, etc for a fee and you can download them. I get the file in a temporary directory and then move it to my NAS …. But Channels picks up the temporary directory which is empty.

[Dennis_L]

Ok

[maddox]

Are you using the PlayOn app, (records on your computer)? Or are you using PlayOn Cloud (records in the cloud and downloads the result)?

[Dennis_L]

The movies record in the cloud and then I download them

[maddox]

OK.

What happened

I see that you at one point enabled the PlayOn Cloud integration in Channels DVR Server.

That integration automatically downloads PlayOn Cloud results directly into Channels DVR Server for you.

You can learn more about it here: Channels — PlayOn Cloud

This is why you had them in your library twice. Channels DVR Server was grabbing them, and you were manually downloading them and adding them to your personal media.

You then removed the integration, and deleted the files from disk, which left them in your library, but with no files on disk anymore, they can't play (of course).

Why

The issue is that PlayOn downloads don't get removed when you remove the integration (for obvious reasons), and you deleted the files from disk, instead of from your library, and finally, the Prune action for Personal Media doesn't effect items added from PlayOn.

What to do

In your Channels DVR Server web admin go to Settings > General > Library Database > Maintenance > Manage Recordings Database > Missing/Deleted, and you’ll be shown recordings that are in your library but the physical file is missing. You can clear them from there.

Alternatively, if you are comfortable, you can do this all at once by hitting the unofficial API like this:

curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:8089/dvr/pruner/deleted

This will remove any NON PERSONAL MEDIA IMPORT items (recordings, playon downloads), that have no file on disk.

This is like the pruner, but for recordings, vs pesonal media. This is not available in the UI because it can be dangerous if used incorrectly.

[Dennis_L]

Wow thanks…I forgot about the PlayOn integration