Emby TV - Auto-delete recordings based on storage limits

[Kent 91]

Feature Request to add a function in Emby TV to set a storage limit and auto-delete the oldest content to remain within the user defined storage space limit.  Same function as WMC and other DVRs.

[swenth 30]

Yea would be cool to set a space limit for dvr

[blckgrffn 0]

Just paid for premiere to get the live TV setup and cannot believe that this is not a feature to set.  I just spent a ton of time going through server settings looking for it because I would be certain it exists.  I am not sure I would have spent the money on this knowing that this is not available.  The subscription for Premiere says it enables DVR, but I don't know of a single DVR that doesn't do housekeeping so that seems disingenuous to me.

I can just create a powershell script and scheduled task to delete files but really that's not cool either.

Given that I have just one drive in my PC for this and it's just going to full up and fall over when recordings absolutely fill the drive boggles my mind.

Edited November 11, 2022 by blckgrffn

[ebr 14910]

Hi.  Most of our users keep content indefinitely because storage is relatively cheap.  However, there are settings with each scheduled recording where you can tell each one how many episodes to keep if you want to do some automatic clean-up.

[swenth 30]

23 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Most of our users keep content indefinitely because storage is relatively cheap.  However, there are settings with each scheduled recording where you can tell each one how many episodes to keep if you want to do some automatic clean-up.

for me it would be useful to clean incomplete recording i use m3u and it's really instable i have pently of 1 minute long records is it conceivable for futur?

[blckgrffn 0]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  Most of our users keep content indefinitely because storage is relatively cheap.  However, there are settings with each scheduled recording where you can tell each one how many episodes to keep if you want to do some automatic clean-up.

I sincerely appreciate the quick reply.

The number of episodes feature will be something I look for on the series recordings, I didn't see it when I set up a test show so I will look again.

I still think the ability to set a quota, like MCE did about 20 years ago, would be a preferred method for me, or to be able to have the system delete oldest recordings if for some reason the drive is full.  For Live TV, capturing the latest episode is often paramount.

That said, if I delete TV recordings from the file system, does Emby rescan for these shows and remove them from it's DB or will they still look like they are there in the app but obviously fail to play if a user tries to watch them?   I will likely setup a combination of methods to ensure that there is always room for new shows.

FWIW, I am just using an older refurbished PC for Emby for TV only so the storage is the small and fast NVME drive - my main storage and libraries are being hosted differently.   I will shrink the system partition and create a different one ~100GB in size for the TV library so that at least they are separate and the OS will not be impacted by any lapses in housekeeping I might make.

Edited November 11, 2022 by blckgrffn

[ebr 14910]

16 hours ago, blckgrffn said:

if I delete TV recordings from the file system, does Emby rescan for these shows and remove them from it's DB

Yes the system will react to your changes in the file system with the next library scan (or within a minute if you have real time monitoring enabled).

 

[randallspicher 2]

I'd like to see the ability to set on the recording not only a "keep only X episodes" but also an expiration date, "keep for X days/weeks/months" like tvheadend has.  For example, when recording newscasts in tvheadend, I could set the series timer for 1 day, so the Friday Evening News was not still showing up in the list the following tuesday.   Or, for some things like talk-shows or soap operas, let them stick around for a week. The idea being the content in the show becomes somewhat stale after a certain amount of time and is unlikely to be watched.

Note, any individual recorded episode should have a "keep/don't delete"  flag on it that can be set to exempt it from automatic deletion rules. (which is a standard DVR feature available on every other DVR since the 90's)

Bonus points if you can set a separate expiration ages for Watched recording vs Un-watched recordings, although that can get complicated because of multiple viewers and profiles.

 

[mrneiljinks 3]

I'd like it to auto-delete any watched recordings with this an option to set. I know there are at least 3 other historic threads around this stretching back as far as 2014.

[visproduction 122]

Alternate solutions using Windows server and batch files:
 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17785216/batch-script-to-delete-files-older-than-x-days-based-on-creation-date-not-modi
 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/324267/batch-file-to-delete-files-older-than-a-specified-date

Edited August 4, 2023 by visproduction