'[FAQ] Twonky DLNA Media Server Setup & Use

cpt_paranoia wrote:

DLNA is a protocol for distributing media within a local network. So unless you have a local copy of the photos, then, no, Twonky cannot find or serve them.

So, does this mean a remote user cannot access nor even see what’s stored, locally? And, do local users see everything & everyone’s streamable content? Please elaborate.

So, does this mean a remote user cannot access nor even see what’s stored, locally?

In the context of this thread (DLNA media server):

A remote DLNA client cannot access the DLNA media server (since, as far as I am aware, DLNA does not support the concept of a remote client).

There are applications that create proxy servers for particular media players. For instance, BubbleUPnP has a BubbleUPnP Server which acts as a local DLNA client, but also acts as a server for a remote BubbleUPnP client, and allows remote media streaming from the DLNA media server.

Nazar78 has very kindly built BubbleUPnP Server than can be installed on the MyCloud:

In the wider context, you can use the WD apps to gain access remotely. These don’t use DLNA, though.

And, do local users see everything & everyone’s streamable content?

DLNA does not respect access controls (that’s a DLNA specification issue, not a Twonky or WD issue), so, yes, if you enable media serving on a share, any local DLNA client will be able to access it.

Thanks CPT for a great thread. One problem I run into is the playback order of songs. They’re presented in alphabetical order rather than track order on the CD. I know I can rip all the music, appending the track number to the front of the song title. Is there anyway to fix this without having to do that?

I have Media Monkey on my PC and songs play in the proper order with MM

Well, you have three choices:

i) muck about with the ‘views’ Twonky provides (see the fourth post in this thread)
ii) re-rip, forcing a track number
iii) get MediaMonkey to rename the files.

I’d take the last option; MediaMonkey has a very useful ‘Auto-Organise’ function, that will move files using the metadata. Provided your metadata is correct, you can get it to re-organise your music into sensible folder structure, and prefix each track with a track number. I’d recommend you to prefix tracks with a leading-zero track number; you can always remove this from the track name metadata (again, using the powerful input filename parsing of MediaMonkey).

You give the auto-organise tool a string to define the structure you want, and it will go off an process all the tracks you have selected, e.g.

[Drive:\Path\]<Album Artist>&lt;Album>&lt;Track#:2> <Title>

will add a leading-zero, two-digit track number prefix to all filenames, and will create appropriate folders if necessary.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html?changingfilenames.htm
http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html?configuringdirectoryandfileformats.htm
http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/frame/index.html?auto_tagfromfilename.htm

Hi Orcrone

the track number shall be present in the metadata. Having the track number in the file name may not solve this. I am using the free software mp3tag if the ripper itself is not doing this. You can also add CD number if there are more than one CDs in the album.

Twonky provides a number of different views, based on different metadata tags, and the physical filenames (‘By Folder’). Different DLNA clients present the data provided by these views in different ways.

My experience of a number of different media players over the years is that, provided you have a filename that can be sorted correctly alphanumerically, most media players can be made to present tracks by filename in the correct track order.

In order for the alphanumeric sort to work correctly for track numbers higher than 9, you need to force leading zeroes (most alphanumeric sorts will give an order 1, 10, 11 … 19, 2, 20, 21, etc). My initial reaction on having to a) prefix a track number to the filename and b) prefix with a leading zero track number was negative; I’m mildly obsessive about these things, and didn’t want to ‘corrupt’ my carefully entered filenames (I even got upset when MM modified the file dates when changing metadata tags, because some media players sort by file date; I now realise that was silly…). But, having realised that media tools such as MediaMonkey allow you to parse filenames to split them into different metadata fields (track #, artist, track title, etc), I realised that it was the most effective way of ensuring cross-platform track ordering. Now all my 62k+ track filenames are post-processed or newly ripped to prefix filename with leading-zero track number, and the metadata is cleaned to remove track number from track title, and remove the leading zeroes as presented in the metadata. So the obsessive need is met, but in a different way…

I am using the free software mp3tag if the ripper itself is not doing this.

Orcrone is already using MediaMonkey, which provides similar metadata manipulation tools to those of mp3tag.

Any tagging tool that uses metadata databases is reliant on the accuracy of the metadata databases. And I find that quality varies widely… But then, as stated, I’m mildly obsessive, and insist on my own track naming format, developed over the last twenty years…

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thanks for posting this. I bookmarked it

The following may help some…

Issue: MP4 files incorrectly categorized and wrong year/date value displayed when viewed in DLNA client (in my case Windows Media Player and Roku Media Player). Year/date value for media file showing as xx-xx-2036 or xx-xx-1902.

Reason: Twonky appears to pull the year/date used to categorize and display on screen (via DLNA client) from the “encoding date” or “tagging date” (per MediaInfo). Mediainfo (http://mediaarea.net/nn/MediaInfo/Download) shows encoding/tagging date of the affected files as 2036-xx-xx.

Suspected Cause: It appears the wrong date was either introduced by Handbrake under certain instances or was carried over from source file (possibly FLV) used when converting with Handbrake to MP4. This wrong encoding/tagging year/date only occurred with a few files, most files converted with Handbrake converted correctly.

Solution: The solution is to use FFMPEG (https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html) to copy the video file and inject a new media creation date/time. Note this copy will strip out some of the extended metadata including album artwork. That metadata and artwork will have to be re-added after file is copied and new creation date/time is injected. The steps below will allow one to change multiple file to the same encoding date/time, or one at time by editing the file after each conversion. One simply drags the video file onto the “.bat” file to begin the copying process.

Caution: These are general directions, use them at your own risk!!! It is recommended to make backups of the files just in case.

Steps:
1) Copy affected video files to local computer.
2) Create a “.bat” file (on Windows, use Notepad). Type or copy the following code adjusting the FFMPEG file location as needed:

[full file path to FFMPEG executable]\ffmpeg" -i %1 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -metadata creation_time="2015-11-17 12:00:00" "%~n1.remux.mp4

3) Save file to the same directory as the video files on local computer. Make sure to set the file extension to “.bat”.

Single file:
4A) To change a single video file’s encoding date/time, edit the “.bat” file creation_time text between the quotes to the desired date and time, save the “.bat” file. Then select the file and drag it over the top of the “.bat” file and release. A command window should appear detailing the copying process and will disappear when copy process has completed.

5A) If copy was successful a new file appended with “remux” that is similar in size to the source file should have been created.

Multiple files:
4B) To change multiple video files so they all contain the same encoding date/time, edit the “.bat” file creation_time text between the quotes to the desired date and time, save the “.bat” file. Then select each individual video file and drag them, one at a time, over the top of the “.bat” file and release. A command window should appear detailing the copying process and will disappear when copy process has completed.

5B) If copy was successful new files appended with “remux” that is similar in size to the source file should have been created.

6) The file(s) can now be renamed to remove the appended “remux” text. Note: May have to rename or remove source file prior to renaming new copied file. Note: See Metadata below to add or edit metadata prior to next step.

7) Copy the video files back to the My Cloud and check with DLNA client if video files have been corrected and are playable. In certain cases one may have to access the My Cloud Dashboard, navigate to Settings > Media > DLNA Media Server then select Rebuild. Twonky will rebuild the media database. Database rebuild may take some time if there are a large number of media files. In certain instances one may have to reboot the WD My Cloud before the DLNA client will reflect the updated Twonky database.

Metadata: The copy process may strip out certain metadata from source file. If this is the case use a free metadata tagger like MP3Tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html) or MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/) to add, fix, change, correct the file’s metadata. This includes adding or removing “album artwork” that will be displayed as the video file icon or image. MediaMonkey has the option to pull tagging data from online sources.

Note if using MediaMonkey: In certain instances MediaMonkey incorrectly tags the Title tag for MP4 media files resulting in the DLNA client to display “[data]” as the title for the MP4 video file. And in certain instances MediaMonkey will incorrectly tag the “content” field as “podcastdesc”. In both cases use MP3Tag to fix these error. Simply resaving the MP4 video file with MP3Tag will fix the title “[data]” error. In MP3Tag, right clicking on the MP4 video file and selecting “Extended Tag”, then editing the “podcastdesc” entry and changing it from “podcastdesc” to “comment” and then save the changes.

File created, modified, accessed date and time: If the media file’s created/modified/accessed date/time is not acceptable or if you want to change those values one can use a free program like file_date_touch.exe" (http://date.bghot.com/download.php) to modify the created/modified/accessed date and time of files. Note: There may be a bug with the “file_date_touch.exe” program where the hour is one hour advanced from the hour set with the program. If this is the case set the hour to one hour prior to hour desired.

Hi there, Thanks for all this info.

In my case, I need to stream de video files from the WD MyCloud NAS to my multimedia playerin the form of an Oppo BD103, including the subtitles. I have been told that if I run a SMb server in the WD, I can see the whole folder including the txt file too from the Oppo.

Have you tried running a SMB server in the MyCloud device? In the settings I can only see DLNA and iTunes server…

The MyCloud provides an SMB server as part of its basic NAS file server function. You shouldn’t need to configure it.

What you will have to do is connect your Oppo media player to the SMB server, rather than the Twonky DLNA server. I do this with Kodi for videos, but I don’t have an Oppo player, so I can’t suggest how you’d do it.

Thank you so much for this FAQ! I’m using this on my EX2 to stream to a Marantz 8005 via DLNA. I registered on this site just to say thank you!!!

@vort11 I can confirm that serving DSD to the 8005 works fine with the current firmware.

However, I have several metadata problems, most importantly that twonky ignores the “disc number” field entirely. So multi-cd collections, such as the LSO’s beethoven 1-9 SACDs, are all jumbled together with 9 track 1s, the 9 track 2’s, then 9 track 3’s, etc etc. What a mess!! Any solutions short of renaming all the discs to have different names (which destroys the whole purpose…)?

I’ve also been told that the twonky server is old and very out of date. I see version 8 available online but we only get version 7 on the EX2. What can we do about that?

-mike

Glad you found the FAQ useful.

Any solutions short of renaming all the discs to have different names

I confess that I ripped all my multiple albums into different folders, appended with ‘Disc n’. This was before I found the disc # metadata field.

You might try renaming files with a disc and track # prefix, e.g.

03-06 track title.flac

Disc 3 track 6

Not perfect, but it might be closer to what you want.

Hi All, I just upgraded to the EX2100 and have been trying to do what I did on my old 4tb mycloud which is to edit the xml file for panasonic tvs just to change the sort order (I posted a thread a few months ago explaining how I usually do this). However on the new EX2100 whenever I try to either edit or replace the xml file it says there is an error. I even tried installing cyberduck and I cannot seem to get it to work with that either. Is there less permissions with the new EX range or is there something else I need to do first?
Thanks in advance

Thanks for the detailed post. I am helping a friend set up a my cloud and doing this remotely so I don’t have access to test this. I used a Synology server and have all of the video files tagged properly (ie complete metadata) will twonky supply the proper metadata to the client they are using? I this case it will be a Roku 2, so that video can be searched by cover art?

As explained in the other thread, yes the Twonky Media Server within the My Cloud will parse some of the Metadata tags including the album art and sent that along to the DLNA client to display. And yes the Roku Media Player channel will display the Cover Art and some other metadata (the Comment tag and Title tag for example).

The following image is of a Roku 2XS using Roku Media Player that is displaying the contents of a folder located on the My Cloud containing MP4 video files which have album art and other metadata embedded into each individual file. As it indicates, the Roku Media Player displays; the album art, title, and comments metadata tags from the media file located on the My Cloud.

Perfect…thanks.

How can I use the Online Services? I tried to create a Twonky account but got an error

You may need to contact Twonky as it is their service (what ever it entails). I haven’t tried it although I did just try to register via the register button on the Twonky administration page and it generated an error.

support@twonky.com

well, I think if this feature is on WD mycloud it’s WD’s responsibilty that it works? And yes, I tried and it generated an error while referring to a 127.0.x.x. website

Welcome to the way things work with some WD products. :laughing:

It has been pretty common recently that when WD releases a new firmware version for the My Cloud that they break things with the old version or that certain elements of the new firmware doesn’t work properly (or at all). Kind of like how WD forgot to include a Shutdown option in the v2.x firmware even though its mentioned, twice, in the v2.x My Cloud User Manual. Or how the My Cloud OS duplicates the name of a USB hard drive in certain instances which breaks existing Safepoint backups on that USB hard drive.

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