Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[DWAnderson]

The URL below is a link to a post I just made about some of the frustrations I've encountered trying to keep a central media libary accessible from multiple devices. I have much praise for MC and some frustrations as well, but thought the topic might be of general interest to many of those here.

http://thunor.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!71C238B5E0E3724D!244.entry

[Osho]

Actually this is a very much solvable problem presuming

1. you have the media on a drive which is accessible from all the different devices.
2. All devices are using the same version of MC12.

I wrote a description of how one can keep Libraries on multiple computers same. Here is a link to that

http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/DVD_Library_in_Media_Center

You may want to skip the DVD part - you can jump down to "Synchronizing MC library across multiple computers" section. I am also using unison with scheduled tasks that runs at 3am at every night which makes this process completely automated. The every night synch action takes just few minutes now. Now all my computers have the same Library with the latest tag/file changes all the time and I don't even have to think about it.

Osho

[Osho]

About the

"There is no good way to rip new music or add other media to its index (called a "library") from a client PC while the central server application is running. So I am forced into other less elegant solutions, the least kludgy of which is to add new media to the appropriate location on the server and wait for Media Center's auto import function to notice it. The problem with this approach is that it takes hours for the new media to be noticed and added to the index."

on your block. If you never add stuff on the main server pc you may be able to do the following:

1. Keep your library on a shared drive. Use Shared library feature rather than Server-Client. This will require that all "clients" have reasonably quick connection to the library that is on the shared drive (gigabit ethernet is best - 802.11n wireless may work but 802.11g is definitely slow).
2. Run MC12 on your central server in "read only" mode. Also keep all the client MC12 who are sharing this library in "read only" mode except for one which you use to import/add/change tags etc.
3. On that one client you can import/add/remove/change tag etc. without worrying about library corruption. All clients should see the changes right away.

Osho

[Alex B]

Run MC12 on your central server in "read only" mode. Also keep all the client MC12 who are sharing this library in "read only" mode except for one which you use to import/add/change tags etc.

Actually MC12 does this automatically. If the same library folder is accessed by more than one MC12 instance only the first instance can alter the database.

All clients should see the changes right away.

This is slightly incorrect. When an already opened library is connected MC downloads a read-only copy of the library and uses it until the next connection (i.e. next startup or a library selection change with the library manager). If the library is updated by another MC instance then a reconnect is needed for getting the changes to show up.

In this sense the shared library function is not different from the old Library Server & clients approach.

The important difference is that the first MC instance (that can fully alter the database) can be any of the MC PCs. Another advantage is that the media files are not streamed over the network connection. This makes possible to play all file formats on the clients because they access the files directly on the shared network folders. (Some file types cannot be streamed properly with the Library Server.) Though, there is a possibility for a file access conflict (a read-only client reserves a file that another MC instance is trying to alter), but I have not stumbled on this. Perhaps MC can queue the write process until the file is free again.

[DWAnderson]

I don't disagree that the problem can't be addressed, my frustration (perhaps to strong a word) is that the solution isn't more elegant. As you'll note from the full post, MC does a much better job with this that Vista Media Center does with extenders. A more robust client- server system would be preferable. That being said, I realize that this is a $40 product and that my situation isn't typical-- so I can't really blame J River for not implementing this. But it would be nice...

I found that making the Media Server instance read-only created several problems for me:

-- Media added from other PCs wasn't reflected in the Media Server library, becase the library only updates when the Media Server instance starts and I keep that running 24/7 as it is on a server in the basement.

-- The Media Server and and client PCs would both try to download the same podcasts, creating duplicate files.

Having the server auto-import new media appears to work, albeit slowly.