Author Topic: New Media Navigation Facility  (Read 15060 times)

erasmix

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New Media Navigation Facility
« on: April 24, 2008, 08:02:09 pm »
Hello,

I have all my media files organized on a directory tree stored on a separate box. I have ~1200 video files, not to mention my MP3s  (+10,000), nor my pictures. I use a MacMini with FrontRow to  watch those files on one TV, and Linux MCE on my other TV. The only think I like about the Mac (and the reason I spent $500 on it) is the FrontRow application which offers an incredibly simple and smooth way to navigate thru my media files.

On the other hand LinuxMCE has EVERYTHING else that the mac is missing, including stability (the mac often crashes playing DivX videos probably because I installed an unsuported codec). The only thing is missing is a navigation facility as good as Apple's FrontRow. Currently I use the search facility, which works OK, but it takes me a while to locate the video I'm looking for.

I think a Media Navigator capable of browsing thru a directory tree would be a fantastic improvement for LinuxMCE. Is this planned?

golgoj4

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2008, 08:30:44 pm »
i use browse by file to locate my media all the time. maybe im missing something in your post. can you be more specific?

Which UI are you using?

under UI-1, on the right hand side (when looking at the video files or audio listing) there is an 'options' button. The option to change the sort is on the screen that comes up when you tap 'options'.

under ui-2 its on of the options in the lower left corner. you can sort by file, performer, genre, etc.

hth

-golgo
Linuxmce - Where everyone is never wrong, but we are always behind xbmc in the media / ui department.

erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2008, 10:50:02 pm »
I think I use the UI-2 (is that the nice one with blended buttons on top?), because I have the Sort button on the left hand lower corner. When I select sort by Filename, I only see:

tv_shows_0
tv_shows_1

Only when I sort by Title, I see all my files, but its quite unmanageable. So I use the "Search" option under "More", but as I said in the original thread its kinda tedious.

Is it possible that sorting by Filename doesn't work for me, because the devices (they're SAMBA shares) are READONLY? 

Let me know your thoughts.

Gracias,

Erasmo

royw

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2008, 12:55:29 am »
What version of LMCE are you using? Are you using CIFS, SAMBA, or NFS to access the remote drive? 

BTW, I've noticed on 0710 beta 4 that not all automount drives are showing up under the filename browse.  For example, it seems to only find one of my NFS shares.

HTH,
Roy

colinjones

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2008, 02:42:18 am »
I think I use the UI-2 (is that the nice one with blended buttons on top?), because I have the Sort button on the left hand lower corner. When I select sort by Filename, I only see:

tv_shows_0
tv_shows_1

Only when I sort by Title, I see all my files, but its quite unmanageable. So I use the "Search" option under "More", but as I said in the original thread its kinda tedious.

Is it possible that sorting by Filename doesn't work for me, because the devices (they're SAMBA shares) are READONLY? 

Let me know your thoughts.

Gracias,

Erasmo

then you definitely have not got your media shares working yet. In Filename sort mode, you can navigate through your file/folder structure as you would in a file server. If they were not showing up on any sort I would say you have a protocol/online/offline detection issue, but you say you see them in the Title view, so they are definitely online.

Most likely suggestions:

1 - you screwed the system up when you tinkered with the DHCP, need to be very au fait with LMCE to get back from this point - easiest to reinstall, or

2 - when it auto detected the shares (and as I think you may have added them manually, this could be the issue) it asks if you want to use the LMCE folder structure, you need to have answered yes to this....

If the latter, did you add the shares manually? If so, look in the web admin - I think there is a property there for the share device that says to use LMCE structure - I have NO idea whether you can just change that and expect it to fix it up, or whether that was something that had to be done when the share gets auto detected.

The test - look in the root of your share, if they don't exist already it will create a "public", "user_1" & "user_2" folder and a "data" folder under each of these, then video/audio/etc folders under those. If so, you are in business - move all your media to the appropriate folder, and LMCE will work properly from then ... don't worry about it too much, the inconvenience is extremely minor and transient (your Mac will be able to handle it!) but the pay off is huge, don't agonise over it, just do it!

NB: with this, as your media DB has already been populated, it will likely end up with lots of duplicates - probably best to delete everything and rescan

If not, you are going to need to delete your shares, clean up the database, re-enable DHCP and allow it to autodiscover them - and say "yes" when it asks you to use LMCE folder structure, done...


erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2008, 05:06:03 am »
Fair enough. I should have known better  :) I will reinstall everything again this weekend. If I don't post on this thread again, it means you were right and everything worked fine after the reinstall.

Thanks again,

Erasmo.

royw

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2008, 06:58:11 am »
If the latter, did you add the shares manually? If so, look in the web admin - I think there is a property there for the share device that says to use LMCE structure - I have NO idea whether you can just change that and expect it to fix it up, or whether that was something that had to be done when the share gets auto detected.

It's the PK_Users item that let's you choose between "Public", "Pluto's structure", and any user names you have.  Not the most obvious as the default is "Public".

HTH,
Roy

erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2008, 07:13:28 am »
Yes, I added it manually. There is a PK_USERS and it's set to public. Other values are my user name or "Pluto's Structure". If I change it to Pluto, will it alter the structure of share directory? The share is readonly.

royw

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2008, 09:38:53 am »
If PK_Users is set to "Public", then there should be a link to the share under /home/public/data/other.

If PK_Users is set to "Pluto's structure", then it expects the share to have the following structure:
Code: [Select]
public
public/data
public/data/audio
public/data/documents
public/data/pictures
public/data/videos
user_1
user_1/data
user_1/data/audio
user_1/data/documents
user_1/data/pictures
user_1/data/videos
If you have multiple users, then there should be a user_N directory for each user.

For NFS shares, LMCE expects ownership to be root:public (actually 0:1002).  I don't know ownership/permission requirements for samba shares as I don't use them.

If you create a writable share manually, then LMCE will create this structure on the next LMCE boot (at least I didn't find a way to trigger the creation from the web admin pages).

If your share is read only, then you should manually create the structure on your share.

HTH,
Roy

colinjones

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #9 on: April 25, 2008, 10:06:55 pm »
You will have alsorts of problems if you leave the share read-only.

As you have already guessed LMCE will not be able to create the folder structure for you (which is really the best way of proving that everything is working correctly), but in operation, UpdateMedia will not be able to write out the id3 embedded or file-based tags for all your media. These are pretty fundamental in maintaining consistency between the database and the media shares. Best not to second guess it - just make the share read/write...

erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2008, 12:35:49 am »
I mount my shares readonly because I don't want any extra data written to them, However if you're telling me that linuxmce will only write ID tags to those files, I'm OK with it. However I don't want additional files/directories created on the shares.

royw

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2008, 01:51:31 am »
Each video will get an extra MovieName.id3 file for the meta-data.

Each picture file (at least *.jpg) may get an .id3 and a .tnj (thumbnail)

I'll let someone else answer on audio files as I don't really use LMCE for audio files (I store the files on a NFS share under public/data/audio but then just download to ipod for listening).

Have fun,
Roy

erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2008, 09:47:01 am »
I created an NFS share. I made it writeable. I see its mounted (rw) by runing the linux command mount from a linuxmce terminal session. I see s bunch of:

Apr 26 00:32:00 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:690 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:05 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:841 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:11 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:992 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:17 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:730 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:23 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:845 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:29 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:961 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 00:32:35 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:657 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)


in the /var/log/messages file from the server. What is it doing? I hope is creating metadata files, however find /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents | grep -i id3 on the NFS server doesn't reveal anything. Furthermore, when I go on the web interface for the share, I see Readonly checked. I have created the share twice with the same result. I'm willing to let it finish, but I don't see it creating any metadata. Any ideas?
« Last Edit: April 26, 2008, 09:55:02 am by erasmix »

colinjones

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #13 on: April 26, 2008, 11:23:17 am »
If you told it to use the share automatically for storing things like recorded TV (when the share was auto detected) then it will also potentially use the share for that if you are recording TV. If not, then it doesn't matter - alternatively you can configure it not to use it for this purpose....

Audio files (eg mp3) will usually have an id3 tag embedded in the file itself, so you will not see the .id3 file for these. If there is already id3 tag meta-data in the audio files, then UpdateMedia will read this metadata in and write it to the database. If you add/change metadata in the database, UpdateMedia will sync this back to the id3 embedded tags in the audio files.

The most common video container formats don't support embedded metadata - there are ones that do, but because not all of them allow it, I assumed the devs thought it was better to be consistent and create a new file of the same name.id3 to hold the metadata. Same for pics, but there is also the .tnj file which holds the thumbnail for the GUI.

So for pics, it should always create the .tnj file. For pics and video, it should only create the .id3 file if there is some metadata to contain - which will either come from you entering it manually into the database through the web admin, or if it finds a match against something in Amazon for DVD rips.

So if you only have audio, very unusual DVD rips, or video files that you haven't manually created any metadata for, then it is entirely possible that you will not see any .id3 files. Try adding some attributes to a video file, and you will see one appear. Or look for .tnj if you have any pics....

erasmix

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Re: New Media Navigation Facility
« Reply #14 on: April 26, 2008, 05:56:32 pm »
Yes, I told it to use the NFS share automatically. I followed the instructions on this tutorial to create the share: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Howto:_Using_Network_Shares

I managed to make the share stay r/w permanently (linuxmce is no longer marking it readonly). I still see the same endless chain of messages in the /var/log/messages on the file server:

Apr 26 08:41:45 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:727 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:41:51 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:627 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:41:57 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:739 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:03 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:1002 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:06 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated unmount request from 192.168.1.2:654 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:09 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:732 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:15 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:883 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:21 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:998 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:26 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:695 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)
Apr 26 08:42:32 neo mountd[2453]: authenticated mount request from 192.168.1.2:811 for /usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents (/usr/fatboy/CleanTorrents)


And I still don't see any id3 tags. I still cant sort my media by other than "title". I only have videos on this share. All files and directories are writeable everybody.

I have reinstalled my server with 2 network cards, and I haven't messed with the DHCP settings. I get a dynamic IP address from the main server on my network (which I configured to be always the same), and pluto's dhcp runs on the second card (the installer did this automatically). Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong?