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Author Topic: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message  (Read 13278 times)

masterjoe

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Just tried to load the library of a Plex Media Server running here in the LAN but it FAILS saying:

"There was a problem retrieving files from the selected DLNA server.
Please ensure that the server you are connecting to supports search, and that it is running properly.
Your library may be incomplete until you correct the problem and reload the library."

Well NOTHING is in the library... this is not even "incomplete"!!
How to fix that?
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masterjoe

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library FAILS
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2015, 02:46:03 pm »

So nobody tried this?
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Trumpetguy

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Re:
« Reply #2 on: April 14, 2015, 03:38:36 pm »

Is there any reason why it should be possible to import a plex database into Mc? Asking out of curiosity.

Or is your question solely related to plex, and should therefore been posted on their forum?
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csimon

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library FAILS
« Reply #3 on: April 14, 2015, 05:38:24 pm »

Plex has a DLNA server, I don't think he's trying to import it it, just load it as a library which MC should be able to do. Who knows whether it's a MC problem or a Plex problem.
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muzicman0

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library FAILS
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2015, 09:07:43 pm »

I have a plex server,  and will try to remember to try it tonight.
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masterjoe

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library FAILS
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2015, 02:03:18 am »

Well it doesn't work with Seriio's DLNA library either. Both are very well known DLNA servers and both are quite mature! So I don't think it has to do with these 3rd party servers. MC could "normally" browse these libraries to load all the files in there. But it obviously doesn't do it that way.

MC's function to load a DLNA server's library is broken. There is no doubt. I am not trying somthing exotic but rather someting very basic. And it does not work.

I could additionally ask another question: Which DLNA server's library CAN be loaded??
If it is only possible to use MC DLNA libraries then why are other DLNA servers' libraries listed for loading?
And why does MC not simply BROWSE these libraries to load them??


Side note:
MC20 has many very basic problems which still hold be back from buying it (trial here). Sure it is feature rich and has some options others don't have. But it has plenty of bugs, limitations and misbehaviors which are quite unacceptable and make it currently unusable for me.
Trying to load a Plex library is some sort of working around the "Can't change video position when video is transcoded" problem for which I also posted a topic and still have no solution. Plex' library would solve that problem by offering itself a seekable transcoded video stream! But it seems to be impossible to load Plex' library. So I am coming from one problem to the next and so on. Not very cool regarding MC is already version 20!
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Arindelle

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library FAILS
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2015, 04:32:58 am »

MC's function to load a DLNA server's library is broken. There is no doubt. I am not trying somthing exotic but rather someting very basic. And it does not work.

Honestly I didn't know it could load another server library. Sorry;  :) Someone more knowledgeable could chime in maybe?

Out of curiosity why do you want to do this? Professional application?

Quote
I could additionally ask another question: Which DLNA server's library CAN be loaded??
If it is only possible to use MC DLNA libraries then why are other DLNA servers' libraries listed for loading?
And why does MC not simply BROWSE these libraries to load them??
As I said didn't know it could, although this is interesting. What it is loading is not DLNA library servers in my understanding, it is loading possible DLNA renderers and JRIver clients. Could be wrong though as I said above

Quote
Side note
MC20 has many very basic problems which still hold be back from buying it (trial here). Sure it is feature rich and has some options others don't have. But it has plenty of bugs, limitations and misbehaviors which are quite unacceptable and make it currently unusable for me.
Trying to load a Plex library is some sort of working around the "Can't change video position when video is transcoded" problem for which I also posted a topic and still have no solution. Plex' library would solve that problem by offering itself a seekable transcoded video stream! But it seems to be impossible to load Plex' library. So I am coming from one problem to the next and so on. Not very cool regarding MC is already version 20!
Not sure what you mean by changing the video position -- are you talking about on screen displays ?? Saying there are plenty of bugs that are un acceptable ... is euh a bit much when you don't elaborate. Most of the time, people just don't know how to set it up right or are not aware of the plethora of options. It's not what I'd call plug and play
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muzicman0

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2015, 09:25:20 am »

Just tried, and I am also unable to load the plex library.  the MC20 software, and the Plex software are on the same PC.
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2015, 12:22:32 pm »

The error message given by MC explains exactly what is the problem "please ensure that your server supports Search".

UPNP servers (ContentDirectory) can be accessed by two methods - namely Browse and Search. The Browse method is used by simple control points like renderers to - well - browse up and down a tree structured content directory. The Search method is used by more sophisticated control points to download the whole content directory and apply their own local organizing tree structure and views on the library.

Evidently your Plex server does not support Search. So it won't work with sophisticated control points like MC.

You should take that issue up with Plex, not try to blame it on JRiver..

Or alternatively change to a ContentDirectory server that does support Search (like for example MC).
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masterjoe

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2015, 07:36:32 pm »

Thanks for your relpies folks. But still the case is unsolved.

First of all this "side note" reflects my experience of some hours testing with the DLNA functionality of MC. I posted serveral problem topics where currently none of them has a suggested available solution.
I mainly require DLNA functionality and this includes: transcoding of videos, seeking / playback position changing in (transcoded) video files, library management etc.
MC offers extended DLNA features e.g. DSP over DLNA and multiple DLNA servers at the same time. However for what I require (and this is nothing special but rather something usual) it has not brought me to where I wanted to come. Here Serviio and Plex offer a rock solid DLNA implementation where MC still feels sort of beta. And DSP over DLNA is still not fully working as it should for what it shall do. See my other topics and posts. My personal feeling about this is (being a SW developer myself) that too many new features are implemented while bugs are not removed at the pace they should be. I prefer stability over functions in any case.
I have been testing MC20 mainly for its extended features - because they sound good on paper. But in reality the *basic* DLNA functions are still not as mature as they should be. This is why I am somewhat disappointed.

@Arindelle:
- MC at least gives the impression that it is possible to load anothers DLNA server's library while it actually seems to be not the case. This is misleading. Most (popular) DLNA servers are no "ContentDirectory servers" as AndrewFG suggests as alternative!
- Changing the PLAYBACK position of the currently played video that is. Simply the time where one is in the current video. For transcoded videos this does not work. The video restarts instead of jumping to the desired position.

@AndrewFG
- Most DLNA servers do not offer a "ContentDirectory server". With most I mean at least 90%. Wouldn't it make sense to support 90% instead of 10% even if MC can do it? "ContentDirectory server" is not even a valid / known term in the world of media servers.
- MC gives the impression that one CAN load Plex' or any other DLNA server's library. It should not even make one think this is possible when the feature is intended for something else really.
- MC could in fact just BROWSE instead of SEARCH (which is slow anyway) the libraries of other DLNA servers in order to load (find media files) them. True, maybe not all attributes MC supports are there but they offer MANY attributes, flags, tags and properties that can be used. Such a feature would make much more sense then to just load anothers MC server's library which is managed by another running MC instance somewhere in the LAN anyway.
- Instead of suggesting that the Plex team shall implement something that most of the market's DLNA servers don't support MC should instead implement a mechanism where most of the users would benefit from! Just my humble opinion.
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glynor

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2015, 08:23:22 pm »

- Most DLNA servers do not offer a "ContentDirectory server".

This is not correct.  All UPnP/DLNA servers are ContentDirectory servers (CDS is one of the three services needed in a DLNA playback system). Those are synonyms. AndrewFG has tested and worked with an ton of DLNA devices. I'd be careful about guessing percentages with him.  ;)

For the record, MC can read the DLNA server from my Yamaha receiver (if I wanted to use it, which I don't) without issue.
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glynor

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #11 on: April 15, 2015, 10:09:07 pm »

However, I'll add... I think if adding it isn't a massive PITA, it would be a good idea for JRiver to try to get MC to work with Plex's DLNA service. It is popular enough that people considering MC might have a server, and I can see it helping to convince users to migrate in the end.

OTOH, if you have a NAS, I don't understand why you wouldn't just import the media directly, and would want to route it through the Rube Goldberg contraption that is DLNA. You're not going to be able to use MC to tag the files via DLNA, which seems like a pretty big loss, for... What gain exactly?  Troublesome reliability and format incompatibilities?

So...  :-\
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #12 on: April 15, 2015, 11:50:56 pm »

- Most DLNA servers do not offer a "ContentDirectory server". With most I mean at least 90%. Wouldn't it make sense to support 90% instead of 10% even if MC can do it? "ContentDirectory server" is not even a valid / known term in the world of media servers.

Sorry masterjoe, but you have just proven that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Please do your homework before making stupid claims like this.
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #13 on: April 16, 2015, 12:08:02 am »

However, I'll add... I think if adding it isn't a massive PITA, JRiver should try to get MC to support Plex's DLNA service would be a good idea. It is popular enough that people considering MC might have a server, and I can see it helping to convince users to migrate in the end.

One possibility would be to do what Windows Media Player does. It first starts with a CDS:Search procedure, and then if that fails it falls back to using a chain of CDS:Browse requests down the library tree. The CDS:Browse process has to parse down all views/perspectives of the library tree (e.g. Albums, Artists, Genres, Tracks, etc.) so it ends up downloading the same meta data for each track multiple times. Therefore it takes 2..3 times longer than CDS:Search. And also it has to remove all those duplicates. I don't know if that would be a PITA of not...
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glynor

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #14 on: April 16, 2015, 01:08:07 am »

The CDS:Browse process has to parse down all views/perspectives of the library tree (e.g. Albums, Artists, Genres, Tracks, etc.) so it ends up downloading the same meta data for each track multiple times. Therefore it takes 2..3 times longer than CDS:Search. And also it has to remove all those duplicates.

I suspected it might have to just crawl the library tree, and figured you'd be along with an answer.  That would be slow.  It would basically make MC perform like crap, if you tried to use the data live (which is how most DLNA devices perform, so that's not surprising).

You couldn't use the data live.  But, I bet they could walk the tree and load it all in one go, and then once loaded, just cache it in a MC-native Library structure on disk (with a periodic refresh set to a long, 24-hour-or-so period).

It would take a while to parse the tree, for sure, but then removing the dups and stuff from the "MC-native" Library should be as quick as it would be for MC itself to do the same kinds of tasks (pretty fast), and then performance would "feel" native.  You wouldn't get quick updates, of course, and you'd have to sit through a potentially-very-long "loading" progress bar, but you could probably pull it off.

Sure sounds like something of a PITA, but I don't know if it is a massive PITA. It would make it compatible with Plex, and probably some other stuff out there, and that would be a good thing overall.
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masterjoe

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #15 on: April 16, 2015, 05:17:55 am »

Hey guys - nothing I said was meant as offense! I'm really sorry if you thought it was!

What I want - and always hope for any issue - is to begin the brainstorming instead of putting it aside. And you just have started thinking about how it COULD be done. That's great  :)

And maybe I have not made my homework properly - yes. I made a quick google search for your term and found nothing useful in a minute. Speaking of DLNA I only have the user's perspective with no deep insight or knowledge of its full terminology as it seems. I admit that. However being a user makes me somebody who judges the tool regarding usability and usefulness. And here something has to be done to improve the current behavior instead of just displaying an error message which is really not helpful for the avarage user.

Okay having said that it sounds good to have a fallback solution. First try to SEARCH then try to BROWSE. I agree that duplicates might occur. For this reason I would suggest that when MC finds out that SEARCH does not work it should ASK the user for a location within the DLNA library structure that shall be loaded as library. This ensures that it's in the hand of the user how simple an quick the retrieval of the library is and how many duplicates might occur.

In the case of loading the Plex library I would then suggest the following procedure:

- MC tries SEARCH and fails
- MC displays a dialog which asks for a specific part of the library to be loaded (in order to reduce duplicates and / or focus just on one area);
  another solution would be to display an expandable tree below the DLNA librarys tree node- that would allow to load any substructure
- The user selects "Plex/Video/Movies/By Folder" e.g.
- MC begins to enumerate everything it finds below "Plex/Video/Movies/By Folder" - it MIGHT remove duplicates but that could be optional

The path "Plex/Video/Movies/By Folder" is representing the original directory structure on the storage which was used to find any media for the Plex media server. There would be no duplicates other than the user has put there himself.

Would that be a solution in order to allow importing other (non searchable) DLNA libraries?

Thanks.

---

Why do I want to import the Plex library instead of directly importing the relevant media files into MC?

The reason is: On my LG Smart TV not all videos play because of non supported media formats. So transcoding needs to be enabled. However when doing so MC is not able to support a useful seek (i.e. changing the time position within the video) and always restarts a video when trying to skip forward. Therefore again I thought about using another DLNA server which CAN seek correctly in its transcoded video stream - that's Plex. And MC seems to offer a functionality to load its library. Then I would have setup the videos to be play "originally" so that only Plex does the transcoding and MC simply delivers everything unchanged. And then I would have been able to seek my videos as expected.

It would be a zillion times easier to just have a solution to seek within a transcoded video stream supported - directly supported by MC. I have posted another topic regarding this issue.
However regardless of the reason why I want to import another DLNA library it's also very attractive to have a working solution for a BROWSE-only library!

Note that sometimes media files are located on a different machine (unreachable by others) and really cannot be imported directly into MC but are instead served by another DLNA server. In this case it is also very handy to load this other library to have MC's extra features available.
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csimon

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2015, 05:36:02 am »

An observation - other media players, e.g. WDTV Live and other similar small media streamer boxes, TVs, Bluray players etc etc do not seem to have a problem with the compatibility of DLNA servers they are connecting to (the biggest compatibility problem is with renderers...) nor do they have trouble with speed when interrogating the DLNA server. I don't know if generally they pre-load the server's library or whether they interrogate the server as and when required with a client/server request/response dialog.  I don't understand why a live request/response dialog should be so slow?  These are not huge amounts of data that are being transferred and really low-powered devices as mentioned above with relatively slow network interfaces have absolutely no problem.
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Hendrik

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #17 on: April 16, 2015, 05:44:22 am »

The way MCs architecture works requires to have the entire library loaded, which is not something any "simple" DLNA browser will usually do. The simple ones like in your TV will just load the folder you currently view, and nothing else.
MC needs the entire library, so that it can build a view tree and the entire structure that you know from MCs library.

Loading the entire library through Browse commands is going to be slow, and will have quite a bunch of problems with duplicates and whatnot.
Ultimately, I'm not sure this giant headache is something we want to deal with. Bob can probably comment more, as most of the DLNA stuff is his expertise.

It would probably be much easier to just ask the Plex people to support Search, instead of doing a hack-job at Browse support in MC, which will never work better than "meh" anyway.
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #18 on: April 16, 2015, 03:55:48 pm »

Control points like MC must always download the full library before they can use it.

The last time that I did measurements, which was several years ago, it took WMP about 3 minutes per thousand tracks to load a library from Whitebear using CDS:Search, and about 6..8 minutes per thousand tracks using CDS:Browse. It would probably be faster on newer machines running Gigabit Etherrnet.
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glynor

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #19 on: April 16, 2015, 11:21:48 pm »

An observation - other media players, e.g. WDTV Live and other similar small media streamer boxes, TVs, Bluray players etc etc do not seem to have a problem with the compatibility of DLNA servers they are connecting to (the biggest compatibility problem is with renderers...) nor do they have trouble with speed when interrogating the DLNA server.

Yeah. I think there might be some fundamental misunderstanding here about the two "types" of DLNA servers we're discussing. First of all, as Andrew explained:

Control points like MC must always download the full library before they can use it.

This is just fundamental to the way MC works. It does not use the Tree structure provided by the DLNA server, but builds its own on the fly.  That's how you can browse the files by their metadata, not just the fixed structure exposed by the server (like MC works with its own Library). To do this, it must have access to a full database of all files on the server all at once.

So, to get all of the files, from servers that support CDS:Search, you just query the entire database as your very first search when you connect to the remote server.  This responds with all of the files the server knows about, and you load it into a native Library, and then the user can go.

Servers that don't support searching, and only support CDS:Browse can't give you a full file listing.  They only give you their own fixed "category tree".  When you first connect, you don't see a list of files, it'll only tell you about the "top level" categories.  It works essentially like an FTP Server (or one that doesn't support search, anyway).  The server can't tell you, and your client doesn't know about yet, anything "underneath" this top level structure.  You basically get a list of "folders".  It isn't until you open one of these folders, that you get the next "tier" in the tree (the next subfolder down), and so on and so forth.  To see the files, you have to open the tree of folders until you get a set of files.

If the device receiving this cannot create its own metadata structures for display (like MC can with its Views), then this is fine. It makes it "feel" faster with a dumb, underpowered server, because it doesn't have to spit out very much data at any one time, and the recipient can have very little RAM (it only has to be able to display the contents of the current "folder", and doesn't have to care about anything else it ever saw before).  But there's no state either, so going "back up" a tier still requires another client-server-response round-trip.  Your client only ever gets information on, and the server only ever has to keep in memory, the contents of one "folder" at a time.

Browsing into each new nested category is slow (dramatically slow compared to browsing around categories in MC), since, like opening a folder on a FTP server, it has to ask the server for the new folder, and then wait for the server to respond with the new contents listing.  But, it never has to give you much at any one time, so the actual data size of the transfers are much smaller than a full file set.

The only way to work around these kinds of "dumb" servers for a client like MC that needs to get the full file listing, is the basically "brute force" it.  When the server responds to you with a list of categories, you have to start at the top and then, open each one, one-by-one, wait for the responses, then drill down to the next level, and the next, and the next until you get to the files themselves.  Then add the URIs for those files to your "cache list", go back up one node in the tree, and follow the next possible folder.  And so on and so forth until you've checked every possible folder exposed by the server.  This is made more difficult and slow (moreso than building a caching FTP client) because the server isn't showing you folders on disk, where each file is only in one place, but might be showing you the equivalent of different Views in MC, all containing the same files, with different sortings or sets of categories or whatnot.  So, you waste a bunch of time getting files you already got, but you can't know that until you open each item in the tree one at a time and wait for the server to spit out its list.

There's no nice way to say it.  That's clunky.  Still, though WMP does it (of course, they have a huge team of engineers and literally billions of dollars)... But, walking tree nodes like this is a well-understood computer science problem.  Writing the tree-walking algorithm probably isn't too bad, but it might be very hard to do well, and that's a lot of work to support some dumb servers.  I don't really know how popular they are out there in the real world.  It is disappointing that Plex only supports CDS:Browse, but they're probably only targeting "dumb" endpoints.

Still, though, if they actually do have a decent database underneath there architecturally, it would be a heck of a lot easier (and way less clunky) for them to just expose the searchable database. Plex almost certainly does have a database underneath (I'd guess, knowing nothing about their architecture, mysql or some variant), so they might be able to do it if users ask for it.  They might not care about supporting those requests, though (or might think it enables competition, and they don't want to do it on purpose).

The last time that I did measurements, which was several years ago, it took WMP about 3 minutes per thousand tracks to load a library from Whitebear using CDS:Search, and about 6..8 minutes per thousand tracks using CDS:Browse. It would probably be faster on newer machines running Gigabit Etherrnet.

Hrmmm...  :-\

That's way worse than I'd hoped. And I imagine you did... well, a fairly good job with Whitebear in the optimization department.  I imagine other CDS:Browse services (especially running on underpowered hardware devices like consumer NAS appliances and whatnot) are probably worse, perhaps by an order of magnitude.  Some of them probably even crash or are rate limited when you try to walk the tree. Even if they aren't intentionally request-speed gated, with the cruddy CPUs in them, they're probably more limited by their CPUs than by 100Mbps network.  I wonder how substantial improvements would be from even Gigabit or faster?

So, cruddy.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt on modern improvements and saying speeds have doubled your best case, and calling it 3 minutes per 1000, it would take around 7 hours to load my 142k file library that way.  That's obviously way out of the question.  :(
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #20 on: April 17, 2015, 12:39:10 am »

Quote
So, cruddy.  Giving them the benefit of the doubt on modern improvements and saying speeds have doubled your best case, and calling it 3 minutes per 1000, it would take around 7 hours to load my 142k file library that way.  That's obviously way out of the question.  :(

Glynor, if you are up for it, you could run a test how long it actually takes for WMP to load your 142k library from MC (it will be using CDS:Search to do that)...

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masterjoe

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #21 on: April 17, 2015, 04:23:14 pm »

I think a 142k library is not a common library size for loading a DLNA server's data ;)
I also think that even a CDS:Search is not really fast on weak machines for libraries of that size!

If CDS:Browse is only twice as slow than CDS:Search than it's still reasonable and worth a look.
Because otherwise NOTHING could be loaded from a CDS:Browse only server!

Also I suggested that one could reduce the CDS:Browse workload by letting the user load ANY subtree of the DLNA library instead of always loading the full structure.
So you could select the part of the library where the source folder structure is exposed. Most DLNA server have such a section! This would avoid duplicates.
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AndrewFG

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2015, 08:24:08 pm »

Just for info. MC does its library loading incrementally in the background, a) when the DMS library is first loaded, and b) whenever the DMS library has reported a state version change. In both cases, you can continue to use MC while all this is going on. You will just see that the number of items displayed in the library, and their contents, are dynamically updated as the load process proceeds. In case b) the background process is like a synch process as the old meta data for each existing track gets individually updated with a possibly newer version of the meta data for the same track; and the only substantial changes will be a few complete additions and deletions of a few tracks.
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Arindelle

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #23 on: April 18, 2015, 03:37:50 am »

I think a 142k library is not a common library size for loading a DLNA server's data ;)
I also think that even a CDS:Search is not really fast on weak machines for libraries of that size!

Well its bigger than my 105K library, but it is pretty common here; especially when you have users combining not only their audio and video files, but their image files.

I'd think 30K to 70K is very common among JRiver users .. there is a guy here that has 500K audio files; another with 16TB of video. As 4 tb hard drives are more or less of a norm now, libraries get big before you know it. Fast metadata handling and organization is was one of the principal reasons I and many others use JRiver. I couldn't find half of my music if I had to remember the name of the album. As for weak machines, people are running what you might consider large libraries here on Raspberry PIs.

Quote
If CDS:Browse is only twice as slow than CDS:Search than it's still reasonable and worth a look.
Because otherwise NOTHING could be loaded from a CDS:Browse only server!
why? and so what? I'm sorry, I really am not meaning to be antagonizing when I say that.

I still don't get why you would want to use another media server (unless you are trying to access other peoples servers, which would be sort of a legal grey area wouldn't it?) and I don't see why JRiver as a business would want to deploy resources for what seems to me an inferior method, which would only make Plex make more money ... sorry just don't get it. Also you have to pay monthly for Plex don't you? in 50 days of plex premium you have bought JRiver. Undoubtedly there must be other reasons, I'm a bit ignorant on the subject I admit.  :)
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glynor

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Re: Load Plex Media Server library (DLNA) FAILS with error message
« Reply #24 on: April 18, 2015, 11:13:04 am »

Well its bigger than my 105K library, but it is pretty common here; especially when you have users combining not only their audio and video files, but their image files.

I'd think 30K to 70K is very common among JRiver users .. there is a guy here that has 500K audio files; another with 16TB of video.

There was one dude here I remember who had almost a million assets in the Library.  Matt had to make some sort of fix for his extreme-sized Library.

MC handles big Libraries.  The assumption is that the sky is the limit.
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