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[kls]

Hi folks.

I'd need some advise on the DLNA setup.

My current file selection setup I find a bit complicated. I'm currently use the folder view option.  The actual files reside on the 5th folder level.

I'd really like to improve that.

The structure on my Sony looks like e.g.:

MC DLNA server name/Video/folder/Avatar/BDMV/00001.m2ts

Once I click myself through all these levels I'll see the "0001.m2ts" listed as "Avatar" + thumbnail . That one I can finally select.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to get all data-files shown on level 3 or maybe even 2 already without changing anything on the disc that it looks like e.g.:

MC DLNA Server name/Video/video.m2ts   (I'd like to see and would like to select at this level the Thumbnail and the video folder called "Avatar" what I usually see at level 5)



Are you still  with me?

Cheers

[perpetual98]

I just got my WDTV hooked up to a TV recently and played around with DLNA a bit and came away disappointed, but not necessarily with JRiver at all, but more likely my lack of understanding DLNA.  I haven't dug into it yet to see if it's even possible to fix, but I was disappointed with how cluttered it was.  I figured there was some backend work that I needed to do to get stuff organized and I haven't had time to play with it yet.

[soundcheck]

With a little reconfiguration, by removing all the default groups (Video/Audio/Foto) and adding a folder view instead, I got rid of the layer 2 "Video" now. Looks a little better.

For now this seems to be the limit to me.


What I also find kind of strange, is that the "Video" folder structure as supplied by MC DLNA also shows up under "Music" and "Foto" on my Sony?!?!?


I'm obviously at a very low stage of the learning curve.

[bob]

What I also find kind of strange, is that the "Video" folder structure as supplied by MC DLNA also shows up under "Music" and "Foto" on my Sony?!?!?

I'm obviously at a very low stage of the learning curve.

This is a side effect of the way DLNA is implemented on most renderers/players.
For example, the Sony crossbar basically moves the second level up to the first level then it's select server.
DLNA was meant to be accessed by server, then category not category, then server.
The top level containers are fixed id's and there is no standard way to pass this information to the server from the renderer (like, I'm in video already so don't show me the other containers).   
At least one Samsung BD player uses it's own proprietary way of handling this and we do support that.

[csimon]

I'm wondering if it would be possible to get all data-files shown on level 3 or maybe even 2 already without changing anything on the disc

If you use a Folder view in your DLNA settings then your browsing structure on a DLNA device will be exactly the same as your file structure on disk. To get a different structure, you will have to stop using a folder view and start using metadata (tags).

In your media library you can click on any of your videos and see what items of metadata are available.  Then, fill in the tags as necessary for each item.  Then set up a custom DNA view scheme that use those tags.

If you really want a flat structure, i.e. a folder called Video and then a flat list of all your videos, not categorised in any other way, then you probably already have the tag available - it's the Name tag which should already be populated.  So all you need to do is customise your view scheme so that Name is the only item in it.  Remove the Folder view from the view scheme.

[csimon]

I just got my WDTV hooked up to a TV recently and played around with DLNA a bit and came away disappointed, but not necessarily with JRiver at all, but more likely my lack of understanding DLNA.  I haven't dug into it yet to see if it's even possible to fix, but I was disappointed with how cluttered it was.  I figured there was some backend work that I needed to do to get stuff organized and I haven't had time to play with it yet.

I also have a WDTV Live but I'm not particularly fond of using a remote control to scroll through pages and pages of items, is this what you mean by "cluttered"? I use Plugplayer (a DLNA control point) on an iPad which is much more convenient. But if you are still going to use a remote control interface then you should try to see how you can customise your DLNA view scheme in JRiver to make browsing easier, e.g. by grouping artists by a letter index (A-Z) instead of an initial long list of artists, so that you can drill-down selectively. You may even find two levels of grouping may be more convenient, such as A-E, F-J, K-O etc.  They key to all this is tagging and metadata and then telling JRiver how to use that metadata to present the menu structure to a DLNA client.  Yes, it does require "backend work" - have a look through the J River Wiki first for documentation on taggin and setting up view schemes, also the DLNA and media network stuff. Hoever, a lot of the Wiki is very out of date by now and may not correspond exactly to the software as it stands today, but the principles still apply.

As described in other posts above, the WDTV does also suffer from the problem of Category then Server, rather than Server then Category.  So drilling down into a DLNA Server presents you with one extra menu level that is completely superfluous and annoying.

[perpetual98]

Oh I'm fine with doing backend work initially.  I don't expect to use the WDTV much actually, we just had it laying around so I put it in the master bedroom and I wanted to play around with.

What I'm really curious about is the new XBOX update that added the Metro interface and voice control over Kinect.  Watching the videos for it you'd say something like "Xbox.  Movies" and it would pull up your movies, but I assume that it only pulls up movies that are local on your Xbox or available via streaming.  I will probably dive into it a bit in the near future.  If I could get my networked video available via the new Xbox dashboard with covers and whatnot, it will make other devices look silly.  I'm expecting it won't work out that easy though.