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[stricko]

I have a bunch of Blu-ray images stored as ISO files on my server. These were playing fine under MC20. I'd followed the wiki instructions re ISO images, and they have been playing great for a long time, maybe 2 or releases. I'm only a recent upgrade to MC21, and I've probably not tried to play any of these since the upgrade.

Now I try and play them, and have problems. The first try seemed to play but stuttered very badly. I rebooted etc, but problem persisted. Since then I've not been able to play any of them. Select the file, long pause, and then "not responding".

It's a very standard client server setup, Windows 10, Virtual Clone Drive, AnyDVD on server and client side. Latest stable release of MC21.

Any ideas, or what diagnostics can I run?

[CountryBumkin]

If you're trying to play these on the Client machine, on the Client, you should "map the drive" to where the ISOs are stored, and check "play from local file if one exists" (not exact wording) at Tools>Options>Media Network>Client Options.

[stricko]

Thanks, I dimly remember that from.the past. Not at home now but I'll try it later. Would it have become unset in the mc21 upgrade?

[stricko]

Nope, fraid not.

It was already set on. tried setting it off and then back on again. But no luck. I have 3 client machines. I think it has happened on all of them.

[stricko]

So i thought I try a different approach.

I have re-installed MC21 on my server, and on 2 of the clients (including one onto a pre MC21 system image). I cleared off VCD, AnyDVD and any other blu-ray type stuff that might have been getting in the way and re-installed bare minimum. I have rechecked the ISO instructions from the wiki, etc etc.

Nothing. Still exactly the same. From what I can see, it looks like the client is not mounting the iso.

I now need to run some diagnostics on this. What do I set on logging etc.

I don't suppose this is anyhing to do with AnyDVD switching over to RedFox?

HELP

[stricko]

Turns out I've had this problem before....

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99317.0

But sadly ther is no clue as to what is actually going wrong.........

On the new build client, I'm now getting the getfile authentication request............ as before.

[stricko]

Next thing I try is to create a new test database on the server. A few video files, including at least one ISO. I connect to the database from a new build client and first play a non-iso video file, located on the server. No problem.

I then play an ISO. First thing is a MC21 pop up saying

Downloading "internet resource"

The quotes are real. It appears to be trying to download the whole ISO, 35gb of it. I press cancel.

Pop up disappears, and next thing is AnyDVD saying it is analysing the disk. Then it finishes, and the video iso begins to play.

I've attached the log file.

[stricko]

so the bad news is that i still have the problem .

good news? the behaviour is consistent over multiple clients. ive attached a log from a second client. This is using my full database

[stricko]

please could someone take a look at the log files on my earlier posts. please

[mwillems]

Nope, fraid not.

It was already set on. tried setting it off and then back on again. But no luck. I have 3 client machines. I think it has happened on all of them.

Did you verify that the network drives are mapped on the client to the same drive letter as the server?  The behavior you're describing sounds as though the drives aren't mapped on the client.

Next thing I try is to create a new test database on the server. A few video files, including at least one ISO. I connect to the database from a new build client and first play a non-iso video file, located on the server. No problem.

I then play an ISO. First thing is a MC21 pop up saying

Downloading "internet resource"

The quotes are real. It appears to be trying to download the whole ISO, 35gb of it. I press cancel.

Pop up disappears, and next thing is AnyDVD saying it is analysing the disk. Then it finishes, and the video iso begins to play.

I've attached the log file.

So is it working then? 

[stricko]

Ok, so the drives are mapped to network addresses (\\server\music\xtc.... etc.) on both the client and the server. So in the library, they are never referred to by their physical drive letter. This got round having to keep the drive letters aligned as the library grew and more and larger drives were added. I'm guess I've had it this way since maybe MC17, and it has worked perfectly, up until the point when I upgraded from MC20 to MC21 a few weeks back. 

The ISO files are treated no differently from other video files, and are on the same drives, within the same logical structure as other video formats. So the library will be pointing to \\server\movies 1\c\casablanca and the folder may comtain an avi, mkv, Video_ts folder, etc or an iso. MC21 is behaving perfectly normally for all file types on a drive EXCEPT ISO. If will happily load and play movies, music stuff etc etc, in any other format, but, when asked to play an iso, on the same network drive, addressed in exactly the same way, it starts to misbehave as described below.

Bearing in mind that I'm primarily a theatre view user, and only use normal view for maintenance, my first view of the problem was in theatre view, and when asked to play a title in the library that happened to be an ISO, the following occurs; after pressing "watch", rotating MC cursor icon appears, happily circling. after a few seconds, windows task bar appears. Cursor continues to circle. I've never left it to see if it completes, but after a few minutes any attempt to stop, go back or do anything causes the standard "media center has stopped" popup to appear.

Looking at the same scenario from normal view, when you select an ISO file to play, an MC progress window appears, saying 'Downloading "internet resource"'. This is showing download progress, and the size of the download matches the size of the ISO. I've never left it to complete, as this would be a very long time. If I press "cancel" on the progress window, there is a pause, followed by an AnyDVD pop-up saying the disk is being analyzed and will be available shortly. This disappears and I get an MC pop-up saying the optical disk is being analyzed. This closes, and the ISO begins to play.

So, can I play the ISO? Yes, if I'm prepared to work in normal view, and then override a download. But I watch stuff though theatre view, and the  other users in the house don't even know that normal view exists. But more importantly, this was all working perfectly in MC20, and I suspect several versions before that.

I havn't moved the files, I havnt changed the network (it's wired, gigabit). I just did a bog standard MC20/MC21 update. I've backed up the library and reloaded it, I've reinstalled both MC and underlying components like VCD. I've even restored an old image of one of the clients and re-installed.

Bearing in mind that I spent my entire working life in IT, the first 10 years of it as a programmer, I'm used to trying to debug stuff. Going back to earlier suggestions, it looks like something to do with the "play local version of files" parameter on the client. But I've checked that parameter, over and over again, and the system behaves in exactly the same way whichever way that parameter is set on the client.

I've been re-running the scenarios in the background while typing this, just in case I've missed something stupid, but it's still behaving consistently in the same way. The only thing I can think of to try is to re-image the server and rebuild the library, but it's a BIG library, and I've got custom fields with data I don't want to lose. I've re-installed MC and restored the library already. I've built a new test library. All have the same problem.

Don't get me wrong here, I love the product, and I have enormous respect for the skills of the development team, and the experience of the user base. I try not to post stuff on interact until I've exhausted my own (considerably smaller) knowledge and trawled for solutions in the wiki and interact. I'm sorry if I've come across as pushy or irritated, I'm just trying to get my system back up and running.

Thanks for the help so far.     

 

[Hendrik]

Ok, so the drives are mapped to network addresses (\\server\music\xtc.... etc.) on both the client and the server. So in the library, they are never referred to by their physical drive letter. This got round having to keep the drive letters aligned as the library grew and more and larger drives were added. I'm guess I've had it this way since maybe MC17, and it has worked perfectly, up until the point when I upgraded from MC20 to MC21 a few weeks back

The important point here is that they need to available under the same exact path on both the client and the server.
Playing normal videos wouldn't be affected if that wasn't the case, since those are just streamed on the fly, but ISOs don't work that way (and are generally an unfortunate way to store movies)

I'll try to test if it still works for me with properly mapped paths in the morning, but I don't see when it should have broken.

[mwillems]

The important point here is that they need to available under the same exact path on both the client and the server.
Playing normal videos wouldn't be affected if that wasn't the case, since those are just streamed on the fly, but ISOs don't work that way (and are generally an unfortunate way to store movies)

I'll try to test if it still works for me with properly mapped paths in the morning, but I don't see when it should have broken.

Hendrik; the download dialog he's seeing is the new download dialog to improve data file support on clients.  It should only engage if the client doesn't have "local" file access (at least that's the only time it engages for me).  My money's that his library paths are not identical for those files, but it's possible that the new data file downloader might be too aggressive?

Stricko, are these iso's tagged with media type video or media type data?  If they're tagged data, what happens if you switch them to video?

[stricko]

Media type video, sub type movie or music

[stricko]

I've attached some images from the client and server sides which shows the mapping. Let me know if there is anything else I can provide

[Hendrik]

I'm not sure when this changed, but I just fixed it so that locally available files will once again be played directly without a download.
This should be in a future build.

Note that this behavior only applies to "Data" type files. I'm actually not sure what happens if you have a ISO of type Video.  Guess I'll go test.
Turns out this works for ISOs at all times since they are internally always handled as Data files, no matter the Media Type.

[Hilton]

I was getting this problem recently too with files trying to download instead of playing. I've since just pointed my client directly at the files using it's own library and no issue. So its a server/client issue. (my paths are drive mount point and are exactly the same and no other changes other than updated versions of MC)

[stricko]

Thanks guys. Is there a release I can regress to or will the fix be available sooner rather than later?

[stricko]

hi all. back from holiday. just installed mc22 (v15) for first time, and problem resolved. many thanks