Starting the Media Server and Setting up a Media Library
Q. What is a Media Server?
A: A Media Server is a piece of software that looks for media files on a disk, or network, and creates a catalogue, or database, of the files it finds. The server uses the file type and metadata embedded in the file to create the database. Client applications can then interrogate this database, and request the server to send the file to them, or to a media renderer for playback. This combination of file store, database and server is often called a media library.
The Media Server on the MyCloud is called Twonky, and uses the DLNA and UPnP protocols to talk to client applications and renderers.
Q. How do I start the Twonky Media Server?
A: You need to set two controls in the Dashboard:
- Use the
Shares|Public|Share Profile|Media Servingcontrol in the Dashboard to enable media serving on thePublicshare (or whichever share(s) you have stored your media on). - Use the
Settings|Media|DLNA Media Server|Media Streamingcontrol in the Dashboard to turn on the Twonky Media Server.
The Twonky server will now start scanning for media, and build its database.
Two other settings are recommended, since they will reduce the number of times the MyCloud will break Twonky operation:
- Fix the IP address of the MyCloud so that it won’t change. This can be done by using your router’s control page to set the IP address it has allocated to the MyCloud to either infinite lease DHCP or Static, or by using the
Settings|Network|Network Servicescontrol in the Dashboard to set a Static IP address for the MyCloud. - Disable automatic firmware upgrades, and use a regular manual check for upgrades; use the
Settings|Firmware|Auto Updatecontrol in the Dashboard. The Twonky settings will still be overwritten when you do a manual firmware upgrade, but at least you will know that will happen, and you can save settings before you do the upgrade, and restore them afterwards.
Q. How do I control the Twonky server properly?
A: Like the MyCloud, Twonky uses a browser-based control interface. It can be found on port 9000 of your MyCloud’s IP address. You can find the IP address on the Settings|Network page of the Dashboard.
Enter the address and port in your browser’s address field, with a : between them, for example:
192.168.1.32:9000
You can also use your MyCloud’s name, e.g. WDMyCloud:9000
This will bring up Twonky’s UI page. We’ll talk about some of the controls in later questions.
Note that, when you make changes, you must hit the ‘Save Changes’ button to make them take effect.
Q. Where should I put my media so Twonky finds it?
A: By default, when MyCloud starts Twonky (when you turn on Media Streaming), it tells it to look for all types of media (music, photos & videos) in all folders in the Public share. If you use the Twonky UI, and go to the Sharing page, you will see just one line:
/Public All Content Types
You can change the folders and media types to suit your requirements, by using the Browse button to select the folder, and the drop-down menu to select file types. For instance, I use the following settings to serve media from my private Media share:
/Media/Music Music
/Media/Pictures Photos
/Media/Videos Videos
When you’re happy with the changes, hit the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Now go to the Advanced control page, scroll to the bottom, and hit ‘Rescan Content Folders’.
If you want allow people to see your media library within your local network, but not allow them to modify it, you can also create a private share, and put your media in it. Enable media serving on the private share, using Shares|<sharename>|Share Profile|Media Serving
Twonky will serve media from the private share without clients needing to have any file server access to the share. You’ll have to add this share to the list of folders and media types in Twonky’s Sharing list, e.g.
/Private/Media All Content Types
Note that Twonky creates the following folders:
/Public/Shared Music
/Public/Shared Pictures
/Public/Shared Videos
[These folders are for Twonky’s use only. Don’t put any of your media in them. I know the MyCloud User Manual says that’s where you should put your media, but if I do that, things go very wrong. By much trial and error, I found that not using these folders made all the problems disappear. MyCloud is a Unix system. Unix doesn’t like spaces in path or filenames…]
We’ll see later how to tidy these folders up…
These settings will stay in place provided MyCloud does not restart Twonky; this will happen if you turn Media Streaming off and back on in the Dashboard, or if the firmware is upgraded, [or if you do a System Only Restore].
n.b. These settings will be destroyed if you use the Dashboard to change any of the Media Serving controls on any of the Shares.
You can reduce the rate at which MyCloud damages these settings; see the later question ‘How do I stop MyCloud breaking the Twonky Server?’
Q. Why doesn’t Twonky find my media?
A: That’s a good question, [and there are probably many reasons]…
If Twonky fails to find some of your media, it may be because it doesn’t understand the file type, and doesn’t recognise it as a media file it understands.
Another common reason seems to be that, following a MyCloud restart or firmware upgrade, it comes back with the Shares|Public|Media Serving turned off. This seems to manifest itself as Twonky scanning the directories, and finding lots of media (viewed using the Settings|Status page of the Twonky UI), but, when it finishes the scan, it seems to suddenly realise that Media Serving is turned off, and goes and deletes all the entries from its database, and the media counts fall back to zero, [or near zero]. The default state of the MyCloud is confused; Media Serving defaults to OFF:
but Media Streaming defaults to ON:
In order to get the media server to work, both of these settings have to be ON, so these default settings are inconsistent and cause confusing behaviour.
Q. Can I stop Twonky searching in certain folders in my media storage folders?
A: Yes, you can do this by adding the name of the folder to the list of ignored directions, using the Settings|Advanced|Ignore Directories control in the Twonky UI. The list is simply a set of comma-separated strings.
[Note that this list will do a substring match on folder names (i.e. it will exclude any directory that includes one of the exclude strings), so you can exclude folders by mistake, if they include one of the exclude strings.]
I use this list to stop Twonky looking at .m3u files that are produced during the ripping process; I like to keep them as a log of the rip, but I don’t want them in the library, so I put all rip logfiles for an album in a sub-folder called Riplog in the album folder, and add Riplog to the list of ignored directories. I also have other files stored in Media, that I don’t want scanned (e.g. library processing scripts), so I add these folders to the exclude list.
Q. What are the ‘Shared Media’ folders for?
A: Twonky has the ability to find other music libraries on the network, and to ‘aggregate’ these libraries into its library, thus presenting one composite library to the user. There are three options for this, selected by the Settings|Aggregation|Aggregation Mode control in the Twonky UI. The three modes are:
Ignore - don’t aggregate
Aggregate - include logical links to the other libraries
AutoCopy - take a copy of the media in the other libraries
[If you select the AutoCopy mode, Twonky will copy the media, and place it into the Shared Media folders.]
If, like me, having these folders offends your sense of tidyness, then you can control where Twonky creates these storage areas. See “Q: How can I change the location of the ‘Shared Media’ folders?”
Q. Why can people using DLNA clients see media in my private share?
A: If you have enabled media serving on that share, Twonky will serve it, regardless of the access controls you have applied. This is a feature of the way DLNA works; it doesn’t respect access controls.
This feature can work in our favour: see ‘Q. Where should I put my media so Twonky finds it?’
Q. How do I control when Twonky rescans the media store?
A: Some users find that their MyCloud never sleeps. [This seems to be associated with Twonky scanning for new media]. The rescan behaviour can be controlled using the Settings|Advanced|Rescan Interval control in the Twonky UI. The default value is -1, which should make it ‘talk to’ the file system, so that changes to the file system cause a re-scan. [However, I’m not sure that this works properly]. Setting the control to a positive value will set a rescan interval in minutes. I use 1440 to give a rescan once per day.
If you add new files to your file store, and want them to be seen in the library immediately, you can force a rescan; initiate a library rescan, using either:
Settings|Media|DLNA Database|Rescan in the Dashboard, or
Settings|Advanced|Server Maintenance|Rescan Content Folders in the Twonky UI.
