Method for renumbering many channels?

[prothed]

Another ex-MCE user here.
I have set up NPVR with DVB-S and DVB-T tuners, and EPG Collector to get guide listings. All good - no problems.
Then set up a front end with Kodi/LibreELEC running on a RPi3. Again (eventually) everything works.

But I think there is a problem with Kodi because it randomly forgets my painstakingly organised TV channel line-up (that is, the channel numbering sometimes reverts to whatever the NPVR channel scan produced).
I would like to renumber the channels in NPVR and then use the 'get channel numbers from backend' option in Kodi as this seems the cleanest solution.

I know I can edit the channel numbers one by one in the NPVR channel settings, but knowing my luck I would renumber fifty channels and then realise I need to slot BBC1HD in between BBC1 and BBC2...
Google has not been my friend with this one - I've found a few similar queries but no efficient solution.
I've played around with trying to write out the contents of the npvr.db3 database file to edit the channel numbers but I'm not sure that is the way to go.

Is this an issue or am I just not seeing something obvious? :confused:

Thanks.

[sub]

In the Settings->Channels screen you can click the 'Bulk Map' button. Then double click the channel number of each channel, and type a number.

[prothed]

Thanks Sub. I have just moved a couple of channels using 'bulk map' and the results are reflected in Kodi. Good.
I'm still thinking though that if I renumber channel 99 to channel 3, then I should renumber the previous channel 3 to 4, and 4 to 5, and so on for all the remaining channels...

(I've just noticed that you can have more than one channel with the same number, and numbers like 3.1, but I can see myself getting very confused when working through 80-odd channels).

Is there any other approach to this?

[Reddwarf]

This is a problem I also struggled with in the early days, eventually i gave the channels numbers in increments of 5 (ie 1 - 5 - 10 - 15 etc) so I gan slot in new channels without hassle.

[prothed]

Ok, done it.
I went through my channel list and moved each channel up or down with the +/- buttons at the top of the window.
A thousand clicks later I had my ordering done.
I then used the Bulk Map window to renumber the channels as Reddwarf suggests.

...and... all good! Hopefully that job is now done. And the RSI will wear off.

Thank you both for the guidance.

[FangerZero]

Curious would the issue of Kodi just reorganizing channels belong here? My Kodi Clients reorganize the channel whatever way they want. But Kodi that is on the same box as NPVR does not reorganize... it's confusing.

[sub]

If you want to control the order they're shown in NextPVR, you'd need to do that in NextPVR.