Newbie - Network shares am I missing something?

OOOOPPPS Sorry wrong section please ignore am re posting - Please delete from here!!!

Hi all,

Just got a WDTV Live box and generally please with the ease of use, interface etc. 

My setup is with a Synology NAS box on a LAN, the WDTV boxed is wired into a switch along with the wireless router / modem and a few PC’s and other devices (the usual suspects, iPhones, iPad etc). All working fine.

The WDTV is on the net fine however I just a a few questions regarding the best method of setting up the sharing for my three categories of media, Photo, Music and Video (may want to segregate Movies and TV).

I have three shares on the NAS BOX;

/photos

/music

/video

under /video I have there’s a structure, the following will give you an idea;

/video/movies/

/video/TV/

/video/music video

/video/new

This drills down into, for instance;

/video/movies/action/kill bill vol1.mp4

video/tv/comedy usa/big bang theory/season1/big bang theory s01e01.avi

This structure works well for me in terms of managing stuff and when running XBMC on other PC’s in the house.

Ok so I initially setup under Video on the WDTV box a new data source as a Media Server (the Media server is running on the Synology box). It all connects fine however I see the three shared folders;

Photos

Music

Video

I’ve setup again as a Network Share (I’ve setup the WDTV as a user on the Sinology) and it signs in and I see the same structure (obviously) however, and here are my questions;

  1. What’s the best setup Media Server or Network Share, I’ve read in places here that the Media Server option has it’s limitations in terms of scanning media content, cover art and metadata???

  2. What’s the best way of making sure that on the WDTV box I only see the photo directory on my server in the photo section, music in music etc etc. I’d prefer not to mess around with the structure on my server. I may be missing something obvious here however I can see where I can add specific directories to the various media sections on the WDTV box. 

Apologies if it’s staring me in the face, I do have a tendency to miss the obvious DOH!!

Thanks for any or all help!!!

Jason

I acutally had llmost that same type folder structure and I just kind of scrapped it all and went with this it seems to work a ton better for my media content.

I’ll show you mine and describe the whys of it all and you can see why I think long term this will work the best for me and take away what you like for yours.

I had 3 shares like you did and I had issues with my Media Library content scanning. if you notice on your shares when you add it to media content you get the .wd_tv folder at the top of the share.

So here is what I did.I conslidated it to a single share and di something like this.

X:>dir  

Volume in drive X has no label.  

Volume Serial Number is 4E1B-0F9D

Directory of X:\

10/07/2012  06:16 PM              .

10/07/2012  06:16 PM              …

10/06/2012  06:25 PM            14,534 !Media.metathumb (this is the jpg renamed for my shares media folder it is \Server\Media)

10/08/2012  09:12 AM              .wd_tv (this is auto created by media library if you have problems with content you can just delete this and rescan)

10/08/2012  09:57 AM              My Movies (In each of these below movie and tv folders folders is a metathumb file as the jpg) 

03/18/2011  05:04 AM              My Music

10/05/2012  09:32 PM              Family Pictures

03/18/2011  05:15 AM              Holiday Music

10/06/2012  07:09 PM              Kid’s Movies

03/18/2011  05:21 AM              Kid’s Music

10/07/2012  01:01 PM              Wife’s Movies

01/21/2012  09:51 AM              Wife’s Music

03/18/2011  04:41 AM              Unsorted

10/07/2012  06:06 PM              TV Shows               

1 File(s)        

14,534 bytes              

13 Dir(s)  739,483,062,272 bytes free

By doing this way if you have problems with your content caching you only have to worry about a sngle scan point, When I was working with multiple scan points i noticed things were getting gunked up. Someone with more experience (I have only had this unit a goud couple of weeks now) might be able to tell you  differently but this is what works for me.

Now Family Pictures folder also has our home movies from our cameras and whatnot. Whats great is those go directly into the VIdeo section and not into the Photo section.

Also by putting the folder icon jpgs as metathumbs I notice they do not “flow” into the Photo section

At this point all of my Audio is just MP3s with no metadata at all so I am not sure how things like albumart may be able to be handled but I would think it should work along the lines of the jpg and metathumb?

Basically I am really liking the single share point for everything and letting the Device do what it does by putting filetypes of a specific type into the Audio, Photo, and Video sections.

Thanks for this, will setup a test directory and try it out. Was this as a Network Share or Media Server?? 

Thanks, J