What do you do with all those holiday movies?

After years of saving Christmas movies, I have about 1000 of them, with many new ones being added every year. Since they're only pertinent to me for a few months a year, I'm wondering if it makes sense to keep all these movies in the Library all year long. After all, it makes it even that much more difficult to find non-Christmas movies the rest of the year.

So to those who have a large collection of Christmas movies - how many is too many to manage in the library all year long? Is there a useful way to put them into a location that "hibernates" from the Library for many months a year? Or is that just a huge waste of resources?

You mean like this:

I'm not sure. My understanding is that when a movie is added to a collection it still remains in the main library as well for any who are not using the enhanced library. Also, wouldn't that mean that I have to add each of those 1000+ movies to a collection? That seems like a fair amount of work, but maybe I don't have a choice regardless.

Yes. If you recorded it, it's in the Library.

That's why you create a collection using a keyword or genre ("Holiday") as your input; that way it updates itself using guide data.

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Okay, that sounds pretty cool.

I see that most of the Christmas movies in my library have the "Holiday" tag in the metadata, but not all. I'm envisioning a number of movies not being added to that collection and it may not be easy to identify which ones they are. Is there a way to find out if they have the tag without looking at the metadata of each program?

You can set the Library Visibility of a movie to Hidden, and it will still be available in Virtual Channels and Collections.

This way you can clean up the library a bit while still using them in Channels.

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Sorry to jump into this thread, but wow, I had no idea I could do this! This would actually solve some frustrations I have with duplicate movie listings between 1080p and 4K movies in my main library and let me just put them in a collection. I missed this somewhere!

That could be incredibly powerful and seems exactly what I need. I'll give it a try.

Thanks!

I do this for my 80s wrestling channel :joy:

They do not need to be visible in my library.

I've ended up with duplicates by seeing something in the guide that isn't indicated as recorded so I record it just in case. Later if I search the program name in the library and I may see 2 or more of them so I can get rid of the one(s) I don't want. If a program is hidden, will it still show up in a library search even though it doesn't show up for browsing?

No. It won’t show in search.

Do you have another method to deal with duplicate recordings?

It’s not really something that’s ever come up.

Are there any measures you take to prevent getting duplicates in the first place?

Much of the time the guide indicates when something is already in the recorded library, but probably half of the time it doesn't. I suspect this may occur for files that I've moved from their original recorded location to another drive that is in a Local Content path and has been added back in by the library. Is there a correct way to move recordings to a Local Content path so that doesn't happen?

Local Content is for external recordings. If you're moving recordings to another drive you should use the Additional Storage feature.

I've only been using Channels DVR for a few years, but I've been collecting recordings from many, many sources ever since using ATi All-in-Wonder video cards in my PCs back in the '90s. For years I was saving recordings from our ReplayTVs, capturing Comcast DVR and HD-VCR shows over firewire to transport stream files, and in 2008 switched over to TiVo when they finally provided TiVo-To-Go functionality. I've also got many thousands of wtv recordings from Windows Media Center using HDHR tuners and many recordings ripped from my digital disc media.

Most of my viewing of these recordings over the last decade has been via PC or tablet, and my own folder structure was easier to use than any of the media managers I tried. I typically use VLC on my PC or MX Player on my phone or tablet - even to view most of the recordings made with Channels DVR when I'm at home. However, Channels DVR functionality has me transitioning to doing more viewing while traveling or in the house on a TV, so I'm slowly bringing more and more into the library.

All that to say that I'm just trying to merge the media I would like to manage in the Channels library the best I can, so most of the files I'm moving out of the Storage Folder(s) are joining many other non-Channels recordings for off-line organization purposes - which is why they're landing in Local Content folders.

I know it's not ideal, but I was hoping that if I had almost every Friends episode recorded in WMC already, that I could have Channels DVR only record the ones I didn't have and be able to keep them ALL together in one place.

Are there any situations where a Local Content location can be converted to a Storage Path? What would be the limitations?

No, they serve different purposes.

  • Storage Paths are for content that the DVR has already recorded, but is no longer present in the primary DVR storage location. (The content is not in the primary path, but the DVR has a reference to it in the DVR database.)
  • Local Content is for additional media you would like to access through Channels, but that has not been recorded by the DVR. (This material is additional/separate from the DVR database, because it was not recorded directly by Channels. … or if it was, you have modified the recording in some way and it is no longer the original expected file.)

I have a bit of a dilemma. The Host PC for my Channels DVR is an older but still very capable HP Z400 workstation from a company that unloaded them after completing a contract with Microsoft several years ago.
Screenshot 2022-12-27 230207

The biggest challenge is that it has very limited accommodation for extra hard drives. The OS is on a smallish 150GB SSD drive and I added a 5TB drive that I eventually used to set up Channels DVR on. About 9 months ago I added a 8TB drive to this PC and threw a whole lot of recordings from many sources into \Channels\Movies and \Channels\TV (with subfolders for show names and release years) folders - including many made with Channels DVR - which I added to Channels' Local Content paths.

Now I have this additional 8TB drive that I would like to use as a Storage Path to exclusively contain Channels DVR recorded content, but I don't really have a way to physically add it to the host PC.

It doesn't make sense to me for it to live this way, but perhaps now I have no choice but to have the other large drive on the host PC hold only Local Content (as currently defined) and to put this additional 8TB drive somewhere ELSE on the LAN to serve as a Storage Path.

I sure don't like the idea of segregating "Storage Paths" so much when there's a drive sitting in the same box relegated to "Local Content" duty, but it looks like that's where I'm headed.

Are there any other options I could consider?

Okay - I think I have a solution. I will put the freed-up 8TB drive in another location on the LAN and set it up to be a Local Content source. I'll leave the 8TB drive that's already in the host PC there, but create an additional "Channels" folder that is named something more like "ChDVRstore" and make it a DVR Database Storage Path. I will then begin to relocate all the Local Content on the 8TB drive in the host PC over to the freed-up 8TB drive elsewhere on the LAN.

This will mean copying nearly 7 TBs of "Local Content" files and creating new library data for them, but at least then I would have my additional Storage Paths on the host computer, which is my preference.

Maybe this isn't the best idea. If anyone is convinced it's better to have additional Storage Paths on separate hardware, please warn me before I go too far down this path. Thanks.