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[richard-ec2]

I'm trying to achieve a setup whereby my music library is on the main household PC in one room and all the playback occurs on a small, client PC connected to the hi-fi in another room. Both running MC20 in Windows 8.1.

This is all new to me so please be patient!

It's going quite well so far but as far as I can see, the client PC attached to the hi-fi can only load and play the music library from the main server PC if JRiver MC20 is open and running on the server. However, I don't want to have to keep JRiver MC20 open all the time on the server PC because that PC is the main household PC and people are using it all the time for other purposes.

I have set up the main server PC so that the media server component runs automatically on startup without opening JRiver MC20. That works well and it's very good. However, as far as I can see, if at any time someone opens JRiver MC20 on the main server PC and then close it down again when they've finished using it, it automatically closes down the media server program as well so I can no longer get any playback from the client.

So my question is, is there any way to keep the media server programme running on the server PC at all times regardless of whether the full MC20 program is opened and closed?

[marko]

Windows 8.1 here also, with media server only loading at startup, and this is not my experience.

I have set up the main server PC so that the media server component runs automatically on startup without opening JRiver MC20. That works well and it's very good.

How have you achieved this? I'm not certain that it matters, but, the correct way is to use the "Startup" settings from within MC itself (see "Tools > Options > Startup").


For me, I can open and close the main program all day long and the server component keeps on running in the system tray (or 'notification area' as it's known these days). I'm not sure why your experience is different. Is there anything else you can think of that might be affecting this at your end? Possibly other users clicking the server icon and choosing the 'Close media server' option?

-marko

[glynor]

Yeah. That's the way you have to do it.

[6233638]

Media Server is MC20.
It is the exact same process, it's just that when you "close" MC20 it hides the GUI and stops all playback. (the latter of which I wish we had the option to disable)
 
If you are killing the MC20.exe process via the task manager for example, then you are also killing "Media Server".

[mwillems]

Media Server is MC20.
It is the exact same process, it's just that when you "close" MC20 it hides the GUI and stops all playback.
 

It also releases some RAM, which is nice.

I can also confirm that in my setups opening and closing the MC window all day long has no impact on the tray widget continuing to happily chug along.

[richard-ec2]

Wonderful! They think of everything, don't they!

I'm so sorry to have wasted your time. I don't know how I got that wrong  - I must have made some stupid mistake while experimenting - but you're absolutely right, the media server DOES continue to run after closing down JRiver if you have it set to run on Windows startup.

Does that only work if you have the media server set to run on Windows startup? Maybe that's what I did wrong.

Thank you very much indeed for helping.

[glynor]

Yes.  If you choose either of the two options in there that include "Media Server" (either that alone, or and full MC) then it behaves like you want.

Otherwise, it closes when you close the application (like a normal app). More info here (this is about MC19, but nothing has changed in this regard):
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=85704.msg585795#msg585795

[richard-ec2]

Right, that explains everything - many thanks again.