Some networked media locations display as empty when they are not (1 Viewer)

[Okno]

The more important of the three posts I have made in the past few minutes!

In Settings I have defined three media sources:

\\192.168.1.100\My-Movies
\\192.168.1.100\My-Pictures
\\192.168.1.101\My-Music

You will see that I keep my media on two phyiscally separate NAS boxes.
Everything works perfectly apart from one oddity.

My-Movies and My-Music work perfectly.

If I open My-Pictures I correctly see two folders:

Family
Other

These are the actual folder names.

If I wander off down the family folder (which contains many nested folders with a logical-to-a-human naming structure) I always find what I want. If I navigate within the Other folder I find all the expected sub-folders in the correct tree - but all of them are empty ("No media found"). Navigating the same folders via Windows Explorer or using the Boxee Box media streamer connected to the telly confirms that they are anything but empty; they contain in excess of 25,000 .jpg files.

What is likely the cause please and how can I fix it?

Many thanks.

 

[Lehmden]

Hi.
Before the Items appear in MP2 they first have to be imported into the MediaLibrary. This may take a while, especially on network shares..MP2 tries to generate a thumbnail for every video or image. If you have 25.000 images this may last a couple of hours. But this only has to be done one time, so in daily use this is no issue.

how can I fix it?

Be patient or get yourself a faster PC.

 

[Okno]

Thanks, Lehmden. I did wonder if it was doing some work. As for the PC it is a quad core device running at 4.4Ghz with a gigabit Ethernet LAN serving up a sustained 60MB/s read and write with the NAS concerned - so I don't think performance is an issue.

I also observe though that the PC is near idle and it has been some days since I defined the configuration described - so actually MP2 is probably doing nothing.

Question: If MP2 is interrupted, will it resume building the catalogue automatically later on? I ask because of two things:

1. The PC goes to sleep after 30 minutes if not being used
2. Because I am a MP2 Newbie and was busy fiddling and learning the client (I have no idea about the server) has been up and down like a whore's drawers over the past few days (never up for more than an hour at a time)

Thanks!

 

[Lehmden]

Hi

never up for more than an hour at a time

This may be the cause. Normally MP2 Server is doing a refresh of the media shares once a day at 2:00 at night (user configurable)... But if the Server didn't get time enough to reach the end of the media share it never will show up the last media items at all. To prevent this, you always can do a manual refresh every time you like. See Settings - Media Sources - Sources Overview (or similar, I'm using German GUI so I don't know the exact English terms)... And there is displayed if an import actually is running so you can look and wait until the import is finished.

You probably should leave the standby handling to the MP2 server (it's a TV Server plugin called "Power Scheduler") as this also wakes the Server for scheduled recordings and for regular EPG grabbing...

I have no idea about the server

The Server is the core part of an MP2 environment, the heart and the brain (not to mention the soul ) . So you probably should try to learn something about the server first...

 

[Okno]

Thank you, Lehmden. Very helpful information.

I have deleted and recreated the media source configuration in question so will see what now happens.
The PC is temporarily set to stay awake for the next 48 hours.

Regarding the server; because I am only interested in using Browse (not the Audio, Video and Movie features on the Home screen) I wrongly assumed that the server was irrelevant to me; the server in my eyes was my NAS. MP2 was merely a client. Now that I know MP2 is indexing and building thumbnails (even though I don't need it to do either of these things*) I understand why it has its own server (brain).

*All I actually need is "Windows Explorer for TV Remote Control Handset". i.e. a dumb navigator that has the advantage that it is always up to date.