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[Renegade]

Started checking out the media server last night.  Overall it looks pretty cool.

Is there anyway to speed up the access times between tracks?  Personally, I would only ever use this on my local lan and waiting for the next mp3 to buffer is unbearable.  I undetstand it has to buffer in the next song, and if I'm switching tracks alot it won't be able to keep up.  But couldn't there be someway to have it start prebuffereing the next song while playing the current one?

I was testing it last night between two of my PC's using a 100mb switch and I still couldn't stand it.  If I access those same files from my Windows share there is no noticable delay between tracks.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[JimH]

On that LAN, you shouldn't have any delays.  Maybe switching a lot is causing confusion, but I can play APE files across a 11Mbps wireless LAN without significant delays.  But I start a list playing and walk away.

[Renegade]

Huh... well that doesn't make any sense then.  I'll play around with it a little more and see what happens.

There isn't a huge delay in between tracks, but it's definitely there... say 3 - 5 seconds.  What doesn't make sense to me is there's no delay (well maybe 1 second) when playing the same files off the share.  

[JimH]

I don't really know what's happening, but sometimes 100Mbit cards doing "autosense" decide they should do 10Mbit.  In their configuration, you can force them to do 100Mbit.

I also might not notice 3 seconds between tracks.

[RhinoBanga]

Do you have a hub/switch that shows network thruput?

I had an issue where copying large files from my fileserver to my local PC was taking ages on a 100mbit LAN.   But on another PC it was instant.

Monitoring my hub (which does have a network utilization gauge) showed that from my PC I was only using 5% of the network whereas on the other machine it was 100%.

Changing the NIC solved that.

If you are on WinXP it has a software network utilization gauge in the task manager.


It may not be your issue but it's somewhere to start.

[Renegade]

Well, I've been playing with it a little more tonight.  And there definitely is a noticiable difference between using the mapped share and media server.

Both are going across the same NIC so I wouldn't think it would be a utilization problem.  Just in case I've been keeping an eye on the utilization with the built in XP stuff.  (Thanx for pointing that out by the way)  Playing mp3's off the share the utilization doesn't ever seem to go over 1%.  I can force it to go higher if I start switching songs alot.  While using the shared library with Media Server it seems to hover right around there too.  Except while switching songs, it shoots to around 2%-4% usually.  This would seem to me, that it should be performing better.  Or that it's having a problem getting the stream off the remote PC.  It's really kind of a toss up, depending on how you look at it.  

On the plus side though, if I don't switch tracks and let them just finish on their own.  The delay in between them goes down to no more than 3 seconds.  Considering what it's doing, I can probably live with that.  It would be VERY nice if there were some options to tweak though.  Something like eat all the bandwidth you can, all the time would be nice.    Like I said, for me this won't ever see the public side of my network.  And at least currently it's about the only thing using that NIC.

I do have another question though.  Is there an "easy" way to convert a playlist I have in my default library to use the library from the Media Server?  I can recreate them, there aren't that many, but it would be nice to not have to.

[sstrick]

IF you have a public IP on one of the machines and you use an IP address to access the share you will go out to you ISP's router and back. I noticed this before I went behing my own firewall/router and started using private IPs. Try using the computer name to connect instead. This sounds like the problem since your drive mapping works fine. The drive mapping doesn't need to use tcp/ip so that traffic doesn't get routed out to the Internet. If the media server traffic has to go out to your ISP's network and come back, the bandwidth will be limited to whatever type of connection you have. Try changing the client to connect to m01p://your_mediaserver_computer_name . Where your_mediaserver_computer_name  is the netbios name of your computer. You can find out what that is by going to network places/neighborhood.

[RhinoBanga]

Reneage,

As a test get a 700mb file, say an ISO image, copy it to your fileserver and monitor the utilization.   It should zoom up to the 50/60%.   If not then there is something definately wrong with your network and/or NIC.

There are several known issues with Windows Explorer copying to/from servers (which uses the SMB protocol) so as another test put an FTP server on your fileserver and copy the file to it via that.   Sending the file via "pure" TCP/IP will elimiate that possability.

I am going out to a Christmas party tonight (waahaay) ... but if I'm sober enough tomorrow I will do some timings of media server here for you to give you a benchmark you should be aiming for.

[JimH]

Also, try the playback setting in MJ for "more skip resistant <--> more responsive".

[Renegade]

Ok, thanx for all the suggestions.

First, I changed the media library to use the PC's netbios name.  And that has helped quite a bit, which surprised me.  But then again, I guess I shouldn't expect windows to be able to do routing correctly.

The difference in delay between using the mapped share and the media library is almost not noticeable anymore.  Yeah!!  That being the case, I can disconnect that drive and just use the Media Libarary.

Anybody have a suggestion about my playlist question from above?

One last thing, I hope.  For some reason now I've gotten stuck in Party Mode.   I don't remember ever telling it to use Party Mode.  The option to turn it off in the View menu is greyed out as well.  And I tried to do the ctr shift double click from the help.  But it doesn't ever give me a chance to put in a password to begin with.

[sstrick]

Actually, this time it's not windows fault. It is just the way TCP/IP works, it sends all traffic to your Internet gateway unless you have your own router. Using the netbios name seems to keep it routed internally, although it must still use TCP if it is connecting through a port.

[RemyJ]

Even though you're using the "netbios" name, windows translates it to an ip address so you're still using tcp/ip.  If you do an "ipconfig" on the server machine, you'll see the address.

You'r in party mode because the Media Server is read-only.  Party mode keeps you from attempting changes.

There used to be a way to reference remote files in a local playlist but it doesn't seem to work anymore.  Connect to the remote library, export a playlist, reconnect to the local library, import the playlist.  The locations in the playlist will all be prefixed with the URL for the remote server.  I.E.  m01p://server:port/c:\music\artist....
Not very straightforward, granted and I think there are a few bugs in playlist export right now.