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Author Topic: A bunch of beginner questions.  (Read 2094 times)

jcisbig

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A bunch of beginner questions.
« on: January 31, 2014, 08:16:16 pm »

Hey All,

I have a few questions about some thing.  I've had JRiver for about a month now, and I'm really enjoying its features!  But if I could get some help with the following issues, that would be great!

1)  Is Gizmo on Android only for streaming content from a library server?  I was bummed to find out that I apparently couldn't play the audio files that I had synced to my phone from within JRiver.  If Gizmo can't play local files, what's the best media player to use on my phone?

2)  I have my main library and server on my desktop computer.  I also have a laptop that I like to use for listening to music at work.  Ideally, this is what I would like:
- I'd like to have my desktop remain the "master library"
- I'd like to have my desktop's master library "sync" to my laptop and put all of it's files onto my laptop (including all the metadata)
- I'd like to have all of the playlists that I've created on my desktop synced over to my laptop
- Bonus: I'd like any rating/metadata changes I make to files on my laptop be reflected on my desktop computer after a sync

What is the best way to accomplish the items above?

3)  When I click on a video file in my library to play it, it fills the width of my MC19 window, but I can't seem to find an easy way to make the video full screen?  So far, all I've figured out how to do is to right click on the video, detach the video, then double click that to make it go full screen.  Any faster way to do this?

Thanks in advance for the replies!
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jmone

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2014, 09:41:17 pm »

Hi - Couple of Ideas
Gizmo: Yup it is only a streamer at this stage (but will cache ahead an audio playlist).  So you can kick it off at home, and it will cache up to 10 tracks (see the Gizmo options).  The other option is to "sync" using the Handheld option and then use any of the Players for Andriod (even the default one).  There has been discussions about expanding the feature set of Gizmo to also make it a local player but this is on the "one day" list.

Playing Now Screen:  Check your Tools --> Options  --> General --> Behavior --> Jump on play (video) settings.  Is it "Display View"?

Thanks
Nathan
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InflatableMouse

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2014, 03:59:29 am »

2)  I have my main library and server on my desktop computer.  I also have a laptop that I like to use for listening to music at work.  Ideally, this is what I would like:
- I'd like to have my desktop remain the "master library"
- I'd like to have my desktop's master library "sync" to my laptop and put all of it's files onto my laptop (including all the metadata)
- I'd like to have all of the playlists that I've created on my desktop synced over to my laptop
- Bonus: I'd like any rating/metadata changes I make to files on my laptop be reflected on my desktop computer after a sync

I think what you're trying to accomplish kind of defeats the features MC is offering you. MC doesn't offer the sync features you're asking for, not for its library nor for the media files.

You should connect your work laptop as a client to your home library to remotely play your music from home.

You can try this first at home over wifi or wired network. It should work out of the box. When you enable media network it gives you a key. On your work laptop, type in this key adding a new library and it should find its way to your desktop computer.

Next what you'd need to do to make it work at work is forward a port on your router to your desktop computer running MC's mediaserver.

Forwarding ports on routers can be a little fiddly but the support website of your routers' manufacturer should have some help on how to accomplish that.

Chances are that your work environment has internet access through a proxy server which doesn't allow ports other than 80 and 443. In that case, you could setup your router to forward port 443 to 52199 and connect from work on port 443.

The wiki has several topics on this:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Server
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Network
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Server
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Server_Startup_on_Windows_Boot

Work through these and if you have any questions feel free to ask.
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MrC

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2014, 11:58:46 am »

MC will copy files and playlists over to a remote MC using Library > Sync Library.
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csimon

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2014, 06:25:54 pm »

If Gizmo can't play local files, what's the best media player to use on my phone?

Good question! I've also been looking for a decent music player for either an Android or iOS device that can be used in the car and out and about, after synching the files from MC. Not found one to my satisfaction yet! I don't think my criteria are unreasonable but it's difficult finding something that fits, even more unbelievable when you think that music players are basically how the mobile device started (Walkmans, iPods etc) and should have matured by now.

1. a good usable & attractive UI
2. knows about Album Artist and doesn't group all your albums by contributing artist
3. easy to use queue manipulation
4. shows albums and artists under Genre instead of a track listing
5. sorts albums under artist chronologically not alphabetically
6. easy to operate Playing Now screen
7. handles pre-defined Playlists and allows you to create and save new ones
8. runs on a device that has a decent amount of memory or is expandable (tends to rule out Apple devices!)

The closest I've got so far are, on Android, BubbleuPnP (used as a local player rather than a controller) and Best Music Player, and on iOS LeechTunes. The default Android and iOS music players are terrible.

Gizmo and JRemote would be fantastic as local media players, but therein lies the difficulty of adding to them the synching of not only physical media files but also things like custom views (which is one of MC's major advantages) which need complex indexing and is probably the reason why most media players are so limited in that regard.

If, however, you don't really need custom views and can handle the defaults that mose media players give you, then actually there's quite a lot of free and paid ones around, just have a look in the app store.
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jcisbig

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #5 on: February 01, 2014, 09:56:22 pm »

Thanks for the replies everyone, you've helped me get most of my issues sorted! 

- How do you get MC19 to ignore contributing artists when sorting by artist?  For example, with Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" album, my MC is currently lumping "game of love", "motherboard", and "beyond" separately from the rest of the tracks.  Any ideas?

Thanks!
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MrC

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2014, 10:00:40 pm »

Set Album Artist for all tracks as Daft Punk.
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jcisbig

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2014, 01:04:01 am »

Wow MrC, that was a "duh" moment for me!  Thanks!
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JimH

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Re: A bunch of beginner questions.
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2014, 07:59:46 am »

Please re-post any remaining questions, using a subject that describes the question. 
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