DLNA not serving up correctly

Squire_Dude · June 16, 2015, 9:19am

I have just started to test the My Cloud for real functionality both locally on my WiFi network as a DLNA Server for my home TV’s. Then as a real Cloud service on my TV’s and laptop access in my RV.

First the Local DLNA Server:

I have copied a bunch of music to the Shared Music, and photos to Shared Pictures. They both seem to work after a fashion, allbeit very screwy! I have to select Music to get to Shared Music to get to the Music search/sort features.

As for Shared Vidoes the DLNA server is totally out of alignment… On my LG TV I select the My Cloud source object, I then see the three Public Shares, Music, Photos, Video. When I select Video I see the following search items…

Album, All Videos, By Date, By Folder, Playlists, Title… if Shared Videos is empty the actual default search has internallised to Shared Pictures and shows me any videos that may be stored in the Shared Photos structure.

I then added 4 video movies and a Windows Link to the Movies drive & folder (Interstella, Black Sea, Blackhat, & One Night with Rod Stewart). - The Rod Stewart video does NOT show up in the list on the TV neither does the Movies link (it did show up and work yesterday).

I have tried to Rescan and Rebuild the database - no change

I am very disapointed in the DLNA Server search and sort service functionality.

As a comparison I have a local WiFi server running Windows 7 and Windows Media Player and it’s DLNA server is much more accurate and faster. It also has a built in server search by Genre which reads the meta data in each video file, which My Cloud does not have/do.

FYI - I have a total of over 3TB of video movies so can not fit them onto the My Cloud drive along with my music and pictures.

With Media Player I can store ALL my video movies in one big folder and Media Player sorts them for me using the included Meta Data. While with My Cloud I have to create a folder for each Genre and save each video movie to the appropriate folder - very time consuming and unnecessary in my mind. Genre is in the Music share so why not here? Same basic code.

I am running out of ideas on how to make the My Cloud function reasonably.

Anyone else got any ideas that do not require messing with the Twonka code?

Can anyone give me a bullit list of how to make this thing work:?

Or so I pack it up and return it to get my money back?

Phill

cpt_paranoia · June 16, 2015, 12:21pm

The different views available through Twonky aren’t exactly to my taste (for Music), as I prefer ‘Album Artist’ to ‘Artist’, and I don’t use genre for music.

But, googling ‘twonky video genre’, I see that it is probably possible to create your own view selection for all types of media. This document, for instance, looks promising:

www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/134243/TMS-5-1-View_Configuration.doc

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=twonky+video+genre

I think I need to have a play, to see if I can get some more sensible views…

if Shared Videos is empty the actual default search has internallised to Shared Pictures and shows me any videos that may be stored in the Shared Photos structure.

That’s probably because you haven’t changed the default media search criteria using the Twonky UI. So it will find all types of media in all Shared Media folders.

I then added 4 video movies and a Windows Link

I’m not sure if Windows links work on the NAS; never tried it.

cpt_paranoia · June 16, 2015, 12:33pm

Then as a real Cloud service on my TV’s and laptop access in my RV.

ps. I’m not sure of your plans for viewing movies in your RV. But, unless youy take your MyCloud with you, you won’t be able to get DLNA access; DLNA is a local network access protocol. there are, I think, ways of making your Cloud appear to be on a local network, but that requires cunning stuff with DNS that I’m not familiar with; others may be able to advise.

Remote access is usually done using the WD MyCloud apps. I don’t use these, but I’m not sure if they will offer you the versatility of sorting/searching that you seem to be looking for. So, even if you get the local DLNA server sorted out, you may still end up disappointed when using remote access…

There’s also the issue of upload rate from your cloud to the web, and from the web down to your RV; those will depend on your broadband and mobile data services.

Squire_Dude · June 16, 2015, 2:46pm

I agree that DLNA is a simple local WiFi protorol. I ahve no idea at this time what I will or how I will end up getting data once I am in the RV… I assume a local WiFi connections and then via the WD Cloud service.

Still a mystery to me too…

Anyone else got any suggestions on how i should start looking into that process?

Phill

cpt_paranoia · June 16, 2015, 4:43pm

Was the document describing how to configure Twonky to give the views you want any help?

As for access in your RV

I) what uplink rate can you get from your broadband connection? You will need a good (multimegabit) rate to support streaming video from home.

ii) what downlink rate can you get when in your RV, via what bearer? You’ll need the same rate as above.

iii) have you tried using remote access at all, using the WD Mobile app?

Bennor · June 16, 2015, 4:54pm

As explained in one or two of your other threads. If wanting to sort by genre or other methods one has to ensure their media content has metadata data input for each file otherwise Twonky cannot parse that data to send to the DLNA client (your LG TV or Windows Media Player) for the DLNA client to sort. In many cases the problems people blame on Twonky or their DLNA client are actually caused by lack of metadata for their media files or incorrectly entered metadata for those media files. Prime example. Every now and then media content I obtain from online will have its metadata incorrectly formatted and Twonky and my DLNA clients will sort and that file incorrectly. It usually happens to .mp4 video files that show up as audio/music files. Video files may not support sorting by Genre or may use a different metadata tag in order to sort by movie type.

cpt_paranoia · June 16, 2015, 7:53pm

Right, at home now, playing with the view controls in Twonky. And making some progress, I think…

The XML files containing the view controls are found in this directory, after logging in via SSH:

/usr/local/twonkymedia-7/resources/views

This contains a number of XML files that select a number of views (‘containers’) to be presented to the ‘Navigation Type’ in the Settings|Sharing|Media Receivers control page. These all call up views defined in a ‘master view definition’ file, view-definitions.xml

To adjust the views available to a ‘Navigation Type’, edit the associated XML file. e.g. to modify the ‘Advanced Media Navigation’, edit advanced.view.xml. I did this to move the order of views around a bit, and add a couple of new views I created.

To create new views, edit view-definitions.xml. I used a couple of obvious views (containers) as templates, and used the metadata tags listed in the .DOC file I linked earlier (section 1.1.7 Database Properties). I created a music view based on album artist (upnp:albumArtist), and a video genre (upnp:genre).

I backed up both files first, though…

Then I re-started Twonky, using the Twonky UI.

It’s still scanning, but I do have a view based on Album Artist now (it’s different to the view based on Artist). So it’s looking promising. Early days: I wanted to create an entirely new ‘Navigation Type’ of my own, but Twonky didn’t find it. And the new view name isn’t formatted as nicely as the existing ones, and I can’t see why; can’t find the ‘visible name’ anywhere in the view definition files.

Finished scanning: Video/Genre view is now available. Shame none of my videos have genre metadata tags…

So, pretty easy, even if you have only a passing familarity with XML: you don’t need to understand too deeply, just copy the nested text block defining a ‘container’, change the ‘name’ and ‘id’, and replace the ‘buildon’ property to the one you want to use.

For instance, here’s the artist album container I used as an template:

<container name='artistalbum' id='music/artistalbum' class='object.container.person.musicArtist' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack'>				
	<container buildon='upnp:artist' albumart='1' class='object.container.person.musicArtist' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack'>
		<container buildon='upnp:album' albumart='1' sortcriteria='+pv:numberOfThisDisc,+upnp:originalTrackNumber' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack' class='object.container.album.musicAlbum' />
	</container>
</container>

and the new albumartist container I created from it, with the changes in red:

<container name='albumartist' id='music/albumartist' class='object.container.person.musicArtist' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack'>				
	<container buildon='upnp:albumArtist' albumart='1' class='object.container.person.musicArtist' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack'>
		<container buildon='upnp:album' albumart='1' sortcriteria='+pv:numberOfThisDisc,+upnp:originalTrackNumber' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack' class='object.container.album.musicAlbum' />
	</container>
</container>

Squire_Dude · June 17, 2015, 2:49pm

Hi Bennor,

You make a very strong and I agree valid point that most music and video file do not have the appropriate meta data to provide Genre or any sort of functionality.

I make it a point with every new movie (mp4) and music (mp3) files that I manualy check and add any missing Properties (meta data) such as… Director, Writer, Contributing Cast, Rating (PG13, R, etc) Title, Comments (I add the synopsys here), all Video data as well as Audio data, Year, Genre, and personal rating. I do similar but not quite as detailed for my Music, but it does include Genre, Year, Artist, Contributing Artist, Title, Rating, and a few other items.

So I think I have the meta data isseu covered for DLNA. When I look at the feed on the TV from Windows Media Player I get everything sorted my Genre as one of the options. And it works very well. So I assume that being fed with the same source files it the My Could feed should have the same or similar functionality, as far as source data is concerned. Now if Twonky doesn’t include that functionality that is another story.

So far, I have not had any major issues with converting my DVD’s to mp4 format

Squire_Dude · June 17, 2015, 3:02pm

Hi cpt_,

I’ll get back to you on the Twonky documentation as I am still chewing through it.

As for the RV issues. Some very good questions that do need answering.

UL rate - 7Mb
DL - unknown - I am thinking I have 2 sources
(a) the RV Park ususally has a (slow) WiFi service
(b) iPad (Verizon)-(again unknown rate but we have watched TV and movies before - it just uses up data!)
Not yet - where do I find the WD Mobile App and what devices does it require?

Bennor · June 17, 2015, 3:18pm

Squire_Dude wrote:

Not yet - where do I find the WD Mobile App and what devices does it require?

The My Cloud Desktop apps for both PC and Mac can be found at this link:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=904&sid=209&lang=en

The My Cloud Android app an be found at this link:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wdc.wd2go&hl=en

The My Cloud iOS app can be found at this link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wd-my-cloud/id450655672?mt=8

If one has created a WD2GO account when setting up or configuring their WD My Cloud they can access their My Cloud via a web browser at this link:

https://www.wd2go.com/

WD Photos for Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wdphotos&hl=en

WD Photos for iOS:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wd-photos/id366905089?mt=8

As to the issue of remote access. One way to gain remote access is to use a cellular WiFi hotspot if the RV park or the location your parking your RV at doesn’t have WiFi. There are various ways to setup a cellular WiFi hotspot, from using one’s own smartphone with a hotspot app, to dedicated hotspot devices that one can pay for. Once set up any WiFi device can gain internet access through the hotspot device cellular data connection Of course the main problem is cellular signal reception then the speed of the data upload/download.

cpt_paranoia · June 17, 2015, 4:38pm

Now if Twonky doesn’t include that functionality that is another story.

Twonky does support that functionality. You just have to do a bit of fiddling with its setup…

See my fairly long post above, with embedded code examples.

I guess at some point, someone at PacketVideo (Twonky authors) decided what views people wanted for their media. It’s a shame their choices don’t coincide with ours, and that there isn’t an easier, GUI-based way of configuring the views.

[hmmm… thinks… it shouldn’t be that hard to automatically create XML files based on a GUI hierarchy of selected properties…]