Deleting unwanted recordings through Frigate api (events)

[mbronstein1]

Frigate Version 15-beta4

Is there a good way to remove unwanted recordings segments through the api? I have an application that interacts with Frigate through MQTT and the API and determines whether an event is useful or not based on my specific use cases. This means that Frigate is usually saving a large amount of recordings that may not be useful to me (based on specific parameters like time of day or other additional context that Frigate cannot provide beyond the detections).

I am currently using the events mqtt topic to get individual events from Frigate, and I know that the Frigate devs have pivoted to using reviews instead to negate duplicate recordings for multiple events at the same time. However, for my use case, event-based processing is typically better.

Any ideas on how I can delete unwanted recording clips based on the event ids I don't care about? This would help improve retention and storage space TREMENDOUSLY, which has been a recurring problem, as I would like to set the retention to a long time (about a year) and then just remove recordings/snapshots/events/etc that aren't useful to me. I noticed that the only easy way through the api to delete video segments was to delete the review. It seems deleting the event just removes the snapshot (which makes sense because multiple events might need the same recording).

One thought I had was to also subscribe to the reviews mqtt topic, and on "end" types cross-check all detection/event id's associated with that review w/ my application's saved events. If none of those id's exist, delete the review (which would delete the recordings). It also looks like associated events do not get deleted via the DELETE review route so I'd probably need to hit the DELETE events route as well.

I would love to hear from others w/ possible ideas or if anyone has solved this use case on their end. Or if any contributors (who obviously know their codebase way better than I do) have a better approach.

Thanks!

[NickM-27]

In general, I think a new API will be needed that allows for deleting recordings for a given timeframe

[NickM-27]

If you plan to submit a PR then I'd suggest making a discussion. I think the biggest consideration is how a user deletes recordings. Is it just a timeframe based or should there be other options as well.

If recordings are deleted then the review items within that time frame would need to be deleted and any events that are entirely within that timeframe also need to have has_clip set to False

[mbronstein1]

Would the new discussion be under "Ideas"?

[NickM-27]

Sure, sounds good

[mbronstein1]

I actually have a quick question about "Reviews", as I'm not 100% sure the delete by timestamp will be useful for me. If I were to delete a Review before it has ended, will a new Review start immediately after? Would it have a new id?

[hawkeye217]

Since this functionality doesn't currently exist, we would have to discuss what makes the most sense. Whatever it is, it would be something that would have to be handled gracefully and the behavior made clear by the docs.