[Survey] Twonky media server: Where do you store your media?

[cpt_paranoia]

Like you I had massive problems trying to use the default “shared folders”.

It’s all right; coincidentally (or otherwise), ‘support’ emailed me today to say they couldn’t reproduce the problem*.  We’re obviously imagining things…  I’ve replied to them pointing them to my FAQ thread, and suggesting they go and speak to PacketVideo to find out how Twonky works, and to resolve the control conflict between Twonky UI and the Dashboard.

Anyway, I had a good read of the entire user manual again last night, to see what it has to say about where to put media.  And it’s adamant that the ‘Shared Media’ folders are where you’re meant to put it:

p21:

Getting to the Public Share
The WD My Cloud device’s Public share (folder) contains Shared Music, Shared Pictures, and Shared Videos subfolders

p22:

[qoute]

5. Double-click the Public folder to display the Shared Music, Shared Pictures, and Shared Videos subfolders. You can now drag and drop files into and from the shared media folders using Windows Explorer.

[/quote]

p63:

Note: WD Photos automatically creates a subfolder on the WD My Cloud device with the mobile device name in the Public/Shared Pictures directory for uploaded photos. Similarly, the app creates a subfolder with the mobile device name in the Public/Shared Videos directory for uploaded videos.

p101/102:

Media Storage
You can access and store media content on the WD My Cloud device by means of network shares. Shares, similar to folders or directories, are areas set up to organize media and access them from your network. Shares can be shared with everyone (public) or with selected users on your network (private).
The device comes pre-configured with the Public network share, which contains the following subfolders for media storage:
• Shared Music—Stores music files you want to share with other users
• Shared Pictures—Stores image files you want to share with other users
• Shared Videos—Stores video files you want to share with other users

These folders are for your convenience; you can put any supported media file in any share.

Note: You will notice that the Public share’s Shared Music and Shared Pictures shares contain mirrored and uploaded subfolders. These folders are needed by Twonky 7.2. You can now upload all media types to the uploaded subfolder from a DLNA client with “upload” capability.

Go to the Twonky configuration site (NAS_IP:9000) to aggregate content from all NAS devices with DLNA capability on your network to the mirrored folder. Uploading and mirroring are best left to expert users, as these features are not supported by WD customer support.

My italics.  I note that this advice about using the Twonky UI to make changes to the Twonky operation somewhat contradicts the statement here:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3299/~/how-to-access-the-twonky-media-server-on-a-wd-my-cloud,-ex2,-ex4,-my-book-live,

Important: The Twonky UI port 9000 provided by the WD device is to allow end users to verify if the Twonky service is active or not. Any modifications to the share settings using the Twonky service UI are not supported by WD. Please be aware that WD NAS UI settings takes precedence over the Twonky UI settings.

Whoa!  There’s a whole load of new stuff describing the Twonky settings that has recently been added to that page!  Maybe moaning does have some effect, after all…

I still don’t think it’s acceptable to provide an advertised feature of the product (the media server), and then not support it.

‘Last Updated 01/24/2015’

Of note:

By default the only location shared is /Public. This shares all of the content in the Public share on the drive. The user can change this to point to a different network share, or a sub-directory on the share. For example if the user created a share called NotPublic and a folder called My_Shared_Stuff they can add a location field with the value of /NotPublic/My_Shared_Stuff and the Twonky Media Server will stream the files in that location.

I note the use of underscores in the folder names; very sensible…

But if you stop and restart media streaming (or do a System Restore, or a firmware upgrade), all your changes will be lost, and it will drop back to the default /Public

Also of note:

Clicking on Advanced will allow the user to set a username and password to access the Twonky Server configuration page

cf this problem report:

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Adding-Admin-Password-to-Twonky-breaks-Content-Scan/m-p/848655

And some not so helpful advice:

Next, the user has the option of listing their Compilation Folders.This field will allow the user to input a list of folders that will be automatically handled as music compilations. If the user does not know what to enter here, leave this field at the default settings.

Why not explain to the user what to enter here?  Or do WD not know what to enter here?

Reading that page carefully, it becomes apparent that whoever wrote that ‘guide’ doesn’t really understand Twonky, or doesn’t understand how to write a user guide; they’ve just gone though the UI settings and listed them, or re-phrased the descriptions already provided on the Twonky UI.  For instance, it says I can clear Twonky’s cache.  Yes, I managed to read that control myself.  But why would I want to clear Twonky’s cache?  What is Twonky’s cache, and what effect will clearing it have?

* to be fair to them, they are at least trying to help.  But they want system log files, and I’m not prepared to release data from my system that I don’t understand; the system logs seem very large, and I don’t know what they contain.  Yes, I’m living up to my moniker…  It’s not just paranoia, though; the problem seems so simple and obvious, I really don’t think system logs are necessary, or will help.