Print

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

[stricko]

Hi there, I'm looking a upgrading from MC14 to 15, and need some help understanding what might be the best way of using the software on my network.

All of my media is held centrally on a server (30k images, 1000 albums, 2000 videos/DVD images). MC runs on a HTPC in my lounge feeding a plasma. Apart from occasional maintenance the thing runs solely in Theater Mode. Both machines are old P4 boxes, with plenty of memory, running W7. Network is wired gigabit.

Currently MC14 on the HTPC loads the media directly using network addresses. This seems to be getting slower and media volumes increase, and I often have to manually trigger a library update to get new stuff to load.

But could I have it better. Might it be better to run some variant of MC15 on the server itself, looking after the database, which MC15 on the HTPC could then pick up remotely. I've got other media players that could use the MC15 UPNP service (instead of Media Player at present)

I reckon that I may have asked this question before didn't seem to get any feedback.

Cheers

Paul 

[JimH]

Skip directly to MC16 now.  It's on the MC16 board here.

Run Media Server at Windows startup.  It's a small footprint of MC itself.  See the "Servers" article on our wiki if you need more.

In Options on the server MC, set Media Network options on for Library Server and for DLNA (3x).  Generate an Access Key in the same place.

Use the Access Key on the clients to connect to your server.  Both clients and servers appear under Playing Now in MC16.

We have a Media Network board here, where you can read more.

(If you decide to use MC15, you will still receive an MC16 license when you upgrade.  That has been the case since Jan 1 of this year.)

[stricko]

Okey dokey, looking good so far, MC16 up and running on both the server and a client. Looks quick.

Next question then, I have a bunch of custom fields and queries with expressions in them. Am I right in assuming that I should should add custome fields (and any logic which builds them) on the server side, but can still build queries that use the custom fields on the client side.

Eg (and this may have changed at MC15 or 16), the genre field. I create a new field called Genres which is justa copy of Genre, but as a list. Should I specify this on the Server or the client?

Further to this, I've done some more playing. Using my Genres field above, this seemed to work OK when I defined it on the server, but not quite in the way I expected. I had hoped that the expression would exist only on the server, and that the client would see only the calculated value, not the expression. But the opposite seems to be true. On the client, the additional field is still shown as a calculated value, and therefore I assume that the client is doing the calculation.

This isn't an issue for this field but, I've some more complicated ones.

[stricko]

Further to the above, is there a way to run a scheduled task, that could, for example, populate a custom field with the results of an expression. I can see how to do this on-line, but as this will be running on an unattended server, it could run daily, as a housekeeping task.

[Alex B]

Next question then, I have a bunch of custom fields and queries with expressions in them. Am I right in assuming that I should should add custome fields (and any logic which builds them) on the server side, but can still build queries that use the custom fields on the client side.

Eg (and this may have changed at MC15 or 16), the genre field. I create a new field called Genres which is justa copy of Genre, but as a list. Should I specify this on the Server or the client?

When a library server client connects it downloads a temporary copy of the server library. Everything that is on the server library is replicated on the client, except the file names which are converted to streamable network addresses. The clients used to be read-only, but recently an option to upload the changes to the server was added. However this option is somewhat limited. I have not extensively tested the feature, but it may not be able to do things like adding new views or fields.

In general, I'd recommend to do any fundamental changes on the server and just upload the field value changes from the client.

Further to this, I've done some more playing. Using my Genres field above, this seemed to work OK when I defined it on the server, but not quite in the way I expected. I had hoped that the expression would exist only on the server, and that the client would see only the calculated value, not the expression. But the opposite seems to be true. On the client, the additional field is still shown as a calculated value, and therefore I assume that the client is doing the calculation.

This isn't an issue for this field but, I've some more complicated ones.

Could you give a detailed example? What is the problem exactly?

Further to the above, is there a way to run a scheduled task, that could, for example, populate a custom field with the results of an expression.

MC has the Scheduler feature, but I don't know if it can be used for what you want. A calculated field value is kept up-to-date automatically in real time. Why would you want to use scheduling?

I can see how to do this on-line, but as this will be running on an unattended server, it could run daily, as a housekeeping task.

I mostly use UltraVNC for accessing the server MC instance remotely. I rarely do anything directly on the server machine.

[stricko]

OK, this is an odd example, but Illustrates what I'd like to do. Everything I do is geared towards theatre view.

I have a field called Disc, which I use for audio albums, where there are multiple disks, or I want to create mutiple "disks", within an album. So for an album with a bonus disk, I only want one master title to be seen, but when you select it, you see both disks individually. Can be done with just Disc #, I hear you say, but I like to make life difficult, and I have alphabetic values in the disc # tag. (I do most of my tag editing outside MC, with MP3TAG). So instead of just "1", I may have "1 Original Album". I don't use it much, but I've just downloaded a 12 disk Paul Weller album........

You could argue that as I've got to edit the fields anyway, I should just create a new field, but most albums with Disc # values are simply 1, 2 etc, and I never touch them, so I looked for a way of achieving the best of both worlds. One more compliaction though, and this is very Theater View specific, using the Album/Disc structure in queries a bit of a mess. Most albums have no Disc # tag, so when a query with Album/Disc tries to show the tracks, it correctly identifies that there is a single, and in this case, blank, value, so does not show a Disc selection screen, and drops down to the tracks. But the title at the top of the screen, doews not show the album tag, but the disc # tag, which unfortunately reads "Unassigned"

So, eventually getting to the point, I created my new calculated field called Disc, which originally looked like this

if(isempty(tag(Disc #)),[Album],tag(Disc #)        (don't worry about the syntax..)

Why tag? Strangely, this brings in the alpha value of the tag on the file, ignoring the fact that MC thinks Disc # is numeric.
This then gives me in the new field either the Disc #, if there is one, or the Album name.

It wasn't until recently that I saw the performance warning about using tag(...) so preferably I'd like to get rid of this. And tag(...) does not work in a client installation as it cannot get to the original file.

So, the options I started to play with.....

1. Use a modified version of my expression, without the tag(...) on the server, and pass the value to the client. Problems 1) Without the tag(...) the expression only picks up a numeric value, and  2) the value doesn't get passed to the client anyway, only the expression.

2. Create a new string field which is updated by a batch command on the server. I'm happy to take the performance hit of using tag(...) if it's running in the middle of the night, or on demand. The value would then be passed to the client (I assume).

It's a bit of a daft example I know, but it illustrates what I'm playing with.

One final question, you say that the the client downloads a temporary copy of the server library. How and when are changes to the server library itself reflected in the temporary copy. One of my ongoing issues with my MC14 installation is that new files (on the server) don't seem to be picked up, and I have to manually run the import. I was hoping that the server copy would pick up new files automatically, and that the client would somehow know they were there. Initial testing suggested that the client is unaware of changes to the server library, and that you can't even manually run an auto-import. I had not gotten very far with that, so I was hoping that there was something I hadn't set up yet. Your comment worried me.   

[Alex B]

I can see your problem. "tag" requires direct access to the physical file tags, which isn't possible through the "HTTP style" server addresses.

Your (admittedly clever) way to use the disc number field in the physical file tags for more than just holding the numeric data may cause problems with any tag reader that treats the field value as strictly numeric data. Luckily MC seems to be programmed to ignore anything that comes after the numeric data in the beginning of the string (I guess this was implemented to avoid problems with the various ways that other taggers may use for adding the total number of discs to the values).

My disc numbers are strictly numeric and I simply use the comment field for adding any additional disc specific info.

How and when are changes to the server library itself reflected in the temporary copy.

You can restart the client or just reload the server library (on the client).

[stricko]

You can restart the client or just reload the server library (on the client).

Please tell me that there is a way to do that from Theater View.........................

[Alex B]

Actually, the automatic sync is designed to work in both directions:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62144.msg416774#msg416774

I too was not aware of that because of the used wording. (Automatically sync changes made on client back to server)

[stricko]

Same question, is there a way to initiate a server/client sync, from theatre view on the client side.

I'm guessing mc16.exe /MCC 20032, ?

Is there a parameter value? Seems to work without one