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[DrKNo]

Alright, long post warning, thank you for your patience. I have been using MC for years, and think that I still have not understood how to properly use the media network, and I have been unable to find the specific information that I need. I recently got a Raspberry PI and I want to finally I use the network "the way it's meant to be used" from a design perspective. I would highly appreciate your help.

So, situation, as it was before:
- Music and Videos reside on a NAS
- NUC hooked up to TV has a local library, configured to be reachable with Gizmo from the Interwubs
- Other PCs in-house have their own local library running, but are also configured as servers
- DJ laptop has a local copy of the music
- Several Raspberry PIs should ideally serve as library-less targets for playback

Ideally, I would like to be able to control all zones from all PCs AND with Gizmo. So I figured the "proper" way to do that must be that all media center instances load the library of the NUC. However, I cannot figure out how playback zones are shared in the network. Some show up, some don't, so I figure I am missing something that I do not understand.

Furthermore: How would I configure MC for the NUCs? I have had great success installing everything and making it all runnable with the respective posts in the forum - but I still don't know whether that nuc should have a library at all? load the NUC library? or somehow just expose its playback zones to the network? I suppose that is the problem after all - I am unclear on the difference between sharing libraries and how to configure sharing of playback zones.

If someone could line out the "proper" solution, that would be very helpful. Thank you in advance!

[JimH]

It would help if you could use the right terms.

A machine that has JRiver serving your media is a server, usually Library Server, if your other machines are running JRiver.

A machine you're playing to is a renderer.

A machine that connects to the server and plays locally is a client.

Gizmo is a controller or control point.  Or simply a remote.

Reading this may help:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DLNA

But the bigger picture is here:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Network

DLNA is one part of Media Network.

Using MC to control MC is called Tremote.  It's described in the link above.

Start with the simplest things and master them before you try to do everything.  It can get confusing.  Reading those two topics until you really understand them will help.

[DrKNo]

Thank you for your time, Jim. I made sure to study your links again - I misused the language, but I am mostly aware of DLNA and loading of libraries using tremote (although I didn't know the word. I have - in my opinion - configured the components correctly. One thing that keeps bothering me is that my server, the nuc, has a local playback zone (my amp), that is not visible on one specific client: the office pc - and vice versa: local playback zones of the office client (headphones) are not visible to the server. Even if i connect using tremote, the zones are not shared. Bot systems use windows. Using the mac notebook to connect via tremote to the server shows the server's local playback zone (amp), but not the office client's (headphone) - which is probably sensible since it is now discovering zones trough the server? Using the mac to load a local copy instead of connecting to the server via tremote discovers the headphones, but not the amp.

I suppose there must be a misconfiguration on my part, but I cannot figure out what for the life of me. I tried adding windows defender exceptions, to no avail. Any additional ideas? I am pretty stuck on this.

Edit running Windows 10 and currently still JRiver 24
 

[mattkhan]

look at Option > Media Network > Advanced and you'll find checkboxes for

DLNA Server
DLNA Renderer
DLNA Controller

and  Option > Media Network > Client Options to find

Show Playback zones from the server on the client

You'll need to adjust these options, on each MC instance, to suit your particular needs.

[DrKNo]

Thank you, but these options are all set to the same values - all zones should be displayed =(

Edit: The NUC (amp) is configured as server, renderer and controller, the office one is only configured as renderer and controller. Both have "show playback zones from the server" checked.

[JimH]

Thank you, but these options are all set to the same values - all zones should be displayed =(

Edit: The NUC (amp) is configured as server, renderer and controller, the office one is only configured as renderer and controller. Both have "show playback zones from the server" checked.

You could enable all 3 on both machines.

[DrKNo]

That was my starting situation - didn't help.... Im halfway wondering whether this is an MC issue at all, unfortunately I have no idea what else could be the reason. What really fazes me is that the amp doesnt show up as "There:Amp" when I connect to the library server on that particular client only. I'll have to dig deeper I guess.

[DrKNo]

Holy buck, I found it:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=103451.0

I loaded the library from a backup, apparently the zones were conflicting. I deleted the playback zone on the office server and created a new one, now it works flawlessly. And since I copied a few other instances as well, that actually solved all my issues (for now. I tend to paint myself into corners)

I think this is something that could easily happen to another user. Jim, do you think it would be sensible to add a warning if colliding zone configurations are detected? Either way, thank you for your support, as always.