More > Media Center 17
Further Client/Server development?
glynor:
--- Quote from: Mars on October 25, 2011, 07:05:57 am ---I agree, it is not the most convenient way to manage it, even worse when the Server is actually the HTPC and you have to interrupt playback or catch the focus.
--- End quote ---
I realize this doesn't solve the problem with MC itself, but for the current situation... You may want to consider moving the server elsewhere if possible. Of course, you probably can't do this if your only "client" machine is a laptop that needs to be able to go offline and to sleep and whatnot.
But... If you do have another PC in the house, or can rearrange things, you might really get a better experience with MC as it is now running the HTPC as the client and having the server somewhere else.
I originally ran my HTPC as my server because that's where the cable box was, so that's where my capture devices were, and so that's where big hard drives were, and so on and so forth. But not long after switching over to using MC's Library Server functionality, it became clear that this was impractical for many of the same reasons you listed. Doing all of my view configuration on the "big screen" was an ergonomic nightmare, and annoyed my wife who just wanted to listen to music while she worked or watch a little TV.
Plus, all of that crap in my living room was an eyesore. Thick coax cables (and splitters, of course) power cables and USB cords making a nest behind the systems, an ugly blinking cable box from Time Warner, a desktop-style PC case lying on its side, and plus the HTPC was much louder than it needed to be with all those hard drives (and that requirement was only getting worse over time).
So I moved it. I ripped out all of the coax cable from the living room. I moved the cable box down to the basement man-cave. My server PC can be as loud as it wants, have as many hard drives as it wants, and cables hidden away under a desk and behind my monitors. I built a little shelf for my cable box and the HD-PVR, and I have docking stations and external RAID array boxes for gobs and gobs of storage capacity.
And my wife is VERY happy with the new setup in the living room. I have three boxes under the TV, total. My HTPC (in a nice Lian Li HTPC case), my receiver, and a small battery backup (which is hidden away behind the TV). There are WAY fewer cables behind the setup (and I just got some nice flexible corrugated conduit that I'm going to wrap up all of those with here shortly). Only two cables (one power and one HDMI) go up to the TV itself.
It is very quiet. I didn't go crazy... It still has fans (so John Siracusa could certainly hear it with his bat-hearing), but they're big ones and they rotate slow. And there are two hard drives in it (boot and backup) but they don't get hammered on like the big storage drives except at boot and when Acronis runs the backup in the middle of the night. Plus, when SSD's price-per-GB gets down a bit more in a year or so, I'll drop a 256GB SSD in it and that noise will be gone too. I can't hear it at all in my normal listening environment.
And, a whole bunch of those management problems you're having go away. I can sit at my desk in my man-cave and do the library management and most of the tagging "heavy lifting". The big storage drives are local down there, so Rename, Move, and Copy operations go way quicker than they would over a network drive. I don't bother anyone upstairs unless I want to reboot the server (which is rare). Managing the views is easier with a regular mouse and a regular keyboard an a regular monitor.
And, perhaps most importantly... For power. I have one machine, in one room (with all of it's assorted peripheral boxes) that I need to leave on no matter what. I can shut down or reboot the HTPC whenever I want. Like when I leave home on a trip! The server stays up and keeps recording and serving my stuff, but everything else is off upstairs.
It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. ;)
flac.rules:
--- Quote from: glynor on October 25, 2011, 11:27:39 pm ---Every single one of those things would be fantastic, obviously. The only ones I have any concerns about are last two. I'd really like to see them, but I can say as someone who does use (and helps manage) a multiuser Digital Asset Management system at the office...
The UI to configure those things is not trivial. That mocked-up dialog box MrHaugen posted is a perfect exemplar. That's a dialog box only a computer science major or open-source geek could appreciate, and it is (IMHO) not appropriate in an application targeted at consumers (certainly high-end, technically adept, "pro-sumers", but consumers all the same, not system administrators only).
--- End quote ---
To be honest, I don't see the connection? The view-settings Mrhaugen posted are just as complex or non-complex no matter how many libraries you have? It's not needed to have several hosted libraries, you can just make everything as today, but being able to access more than one library on the server? I guess one can argue for both an easier approach to configuration from the client side, or a more flexible, but having the ability to share multiple libraries is compatible with both?
MrHaugen:
The illustration is just an example of how it could be done with views. I think that most users familiar with MC would know how to deal with it. It's just an extension on todays user interface. Only point with the UI illustration was to illustrate what probably needs to be done in some way, to edit views easily and copy/move things between view as well as syncing views with clients. It could probably be split up and simplified, but that is not the point here really.
A separate MC server product might be a good idea. I would purchase it for sure.
Mars:
--- Quote from: glynor on October 25, 2011, 11:27:39 pm ---The UI to configure those things is not trivial. That mocked-up dialog box MrHaugen posted is a perfect exemplar. That's a dialog box only a computer science major or open-source geek could appreciate, and it is (IMHO) not appropriate in an application targeted at consumers (certainly high-end, technically adept, "pro-sumers", but consumers all the same, not system administrators only).
--- End quote ---
Well, at first sight, I wouldn't consider it more complicated than other tweakings like those in Theater View, View Schemes, Zones, or even in Smartlists. Of course, all of them should be considered as "Advanced" or "Pro" tools, as they have its particular learning curve.
--- Quote from: glynor on October 25, 2011, 11:27:39 pm ---That's why I think the best long-term solution would be to eventually roll a separate MC Server Edition product. Without it, MC would still have all the library sharing functions it does now (hopefully with items one through five in your list above checked off). But, if you buy a separate license for (and run) MC Server Edition, it would add a whole new set of functionality:
1. Sharing multiple MC libraries simultaneously.
2. User-based access controls and user account rights management.
3. Server runs as a truly separate process, and uses MC "client" (ANY client) for configuration.
4. Server can run as a process on a headless server much more easily (running at the login window).
5. Metadata conflict resolution workflows.
--- End quote ---
I Actually had this on mind when opening the thread, but I preferred to poll a little before raising the issue. I guess there is some Market Research and Cost-Benefits Analysis tasks to do, but I agree it could probably be a step beyond for Average and specially for Professional users (you know better than me).
Mars:
--- Quote from: glynor on October 25, 2011, 11:40:27 pm ---You may want to consider moving the server elsewhere if possible. Of course, you probably can't do this if your only "client" machine is a laptop that needs to be able to go offline and to sleep and whatnot
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: glynor on October 25, 2011, 11:40:27 pm ---So I moved it. I ripped out all of the coax cable from the living room. I moved the cable box down to the basement man-cave. My server PC can be as loud as it wants, have as many hard drives as it wants, and cables hidden away under a desk and behind my monitors. I built a little shelf for my cable box and the HD-PVR, and I have docking stations and external RAID array boxes for gobs and gobs of storage capacity.
And my wife is VERY happy with the new setup in the living room. I have three boxes under the TV, total. My HTPC (in a nice Lian Li HTPC case), my receiver, and a small battery backup (which is hidden away behind the TV). There are WAY fewer cables behind the setup (and I just got some nice flexible corrugated conduit that I'm going to wrap up all of those with here shortly). Only two cables (one power and one HDMI) go up to the TV itself.
--- End quote ---
I like your solution, but, unfortunately, doesn't fit in our "minimalist" stage of life (not enough room in our tiny flat). Instead of a "Man-Cave", what we have is a romantic "Men&Wife-Cave" which reduces to the whole appartment ;D. So we have all the heavy stuff in the living room, by the TV: DSL Router, PVR, IPTV Receiver, and BD HTS at a sight and the NAS and the HTPC enclosed in a cabinet, with all the wires hidden in order to accomplish with my wife's standards.;)
The rest of equipment at home is basically composed by a pair of Laptops, two Smartphones and a Tablet. So for me the HTPC is the only option for hosting the Server by the moment, and that's why I'd like to be able to manage everything from the Client (Laptop or, hopefully, Tablet).
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