Control4 + Synology DS412+ + Dune, Which way to index movies?

[Earnest]

I am new on the forum, and to be honest quite new to the whole Control4 world, so please bear with me.

This summer we redid part of my parents house, and decided to build a home theater set up, controlled by Control4.

It was installed by a dealer, and he set everything up by the book.

I have a Synology DS412+ with about 5 TB worth of movies and series (all mkv, mostly 1080p). This is wired to the home network.

At the TV end I have an hc-800, a Dune Smart D1, (and an Apple TV if ever.) iPad to control it all.

So the dealer set it up so it uses the Control4 integrated media scanner, but I think only for the movies. It also only scans once in the middle of the night, and rarely classifies a movie correctly. This is annoying because I have set the synology set up to rename the movies when they are found, and have always been running Plex for my iDevices myself, so used to that level of automagicness

So here is what I would like:

-I would like for the movies to be selected from the iPad, for the sake of having only one menu for the end user (my somewhat less technical parents).

-Constant rescan for new movies (2 minutes delay max)

-90% accuracy on the media scanner.

-As much Metadata as possible

-Series kept in their Season/episode structure

TL;DR:

So far I think my sole candidate for this is MyMovies? If I decide to go with MyMovies, where does the scanner run? Is that on the Dune, on the hc-800 or on a seperate computer? If it is the computer, can that be the Synology, or a Mac?

Thanks for your replies!

[sevendustweb]

My Movies is definitely the way to go. The movie files stay on your NAS. My movies runs on a personal computer. A driver is loaded onto your Control4 controller and points the controller to the computer where it indexing at least once an hour. Do you need your computer running 24/7 to make this happen? I have no idea, but I typically do, even if it is only in sleep mode.

My Movies will make your Control4 setup run like never before.

[thecodeman]

Mymovies is what you're looking for. I've only used MM this way with windows-based PCs - they do have a collection management version for Mac, though AnyDVD doesn't run on Mac. So the MM application and movie database reside on the pc and that's where the ripping takes place. Control4's driver connects to the database every 30 seconds to look for changes, and pulls those changes from MM database to the Control4 database, formatted with the information that Control4 needs. That PC will need a static IP or DHCP reservation so that control can connect to it consistently.

This however does not resolve the issue Control4 has with managing TV series/seasons, as each disc in that set gets its own "movie" folder - you cant tree down from say, Smallville - season 1 - episode 1, it's just Smallville Season 1 Disc 1, Smallville season 1 disc 2, etc. until Control4 revamps their interface. This is not a limitation of MM or the MM driver, and I suspect that when Control4 updates their interface the MM driver will push that to the correct places into C4 for the season/episode structure.

Hope that helps. It's pretty cool and I've been using it at my house for some time.

[Earnest]

Thanks for the quick replies, hope I can get control4 to connect to collection management on a Mac (with a fixed IP ofcourse). Otherwise I'll stick a little windows box somewhere in a cupboard, for this sole purpose, meh.

So if I understand what you are saying, thecodeman, Control4 can view each of my seasons as a 'disc'? I presume even if a whole season would have never fit on a conventional optical disc, Control4 won't have problems?

Also I am trying to get a little public opinion on whether to put movies in folders or not. I prefer one movie per folder, but don't know what the community thinks...

[urbanmark]

Earnest - have you checked out the new DSM 4.2 beta for your Synology? It now supports Airplay (with video). You can use the new Synology DS Video app on your iOS device to navigate your video collection and stream it via Airplay to the AppleTV. (Then you could just leave the Synology to index the media library).

I've been trying it out for a couple of days and it's pretty slick.

More info here: http://www.synology.com/dsm/dsm4.2_beta.php?lang=us

[Earnest]

Urbanmark: Thanks for that, I did indeed look at that option. I have tried the almost same route using Plex media server running on the Synology, and then use an iOS device to connect to that, and AirPlay to the Apple TV. 2 problems with that: draws a lot of power on the iOS device, meaning it will probably need to be on a charger during the film, and second: Wouldn't the fact that it is going Synology - iOS device - Apple TV make it actually go over the wireless? To be able to keep things stable I'd like to stay wired.

Note: Also the smaller issue of introducing a second menu/interface for picking the movie, rather then straight from MyHome.

[thecodeman]

Thanks for the quick replies, hope I can get control4 to connect to collection management on a Mac (with a fixed IP ofcourse). Otherwise I'll stick a little windows box somewhere in a cupboard, for this sole purpose, meh.

So if I understand what you are saying, thecodeman, Control4 can view each of my seasons as a 'disc'? I presume even if a whole season would have never fit on a conventional optical disc, Control4 won't have problems?

Also I am trying to get a little public opinion on whether to put movies in folders or not. I prefer one movie per folder, but don't know what the community thinks...

Mymovies requires each disc in its own folder, just so you know.

[sevendustweb]

You should always place each movie in its own folder. If the movies has sequels, then each sequen should be placed under the main folder (I.e. RAMBO --> RAMBO 1, RAMBO, 2, etc)

[SMHarman]

I am new on the forum, and to be honest quite new to the whole Control4 world, so please bear with me.

This summer we redid part of my parents house, and decided to build a home theater set up, controlled by Control4.

It was installed by a dealer, and he set everything up by the book.

I have a Synology DS412+ with about 5 TB worth of movies and series (all mkv, mostly 1080p). This is wired to the home network.

At the TV end I have an hc-800, a Dune Smart D1, (and an Apple TV if ever.) iPad to control it all.

So the dealer set it up so it uses the Control4 integrated media scanner, but I think only for the movies. It also only scans once in the middle of the night, and rarely classifies a movie correctly. This is annoying because I have set the synology set up to rename the movies when they are found, and have always been running Plex for my iDevices myself, so used to that level of automagicness

So here is what I would like:

-I would like for the movies to be selected from the iPad, for the sake of having only one menu for the end user (my somewhat less technical parents).

-Constant rescan for new movies (2 minutes delay max)

-90% accuracy on the media scanner.

-As much Metadata as possible

-Series kept in their Season/episode structure

TL;DR:

So far I think my sole candidate for this is MyMovies? If I decide to go with MyMovies, where does the scanner run? Is that on the Dune, on the hc-800 or on a seperate computer? If it is the computer, can that be the Synology, or a Mac?

Thanks for your replies!

I think I am asking a similar question so will just hijack this thread.

I want to do the same but was considering the popbox as the decoding engine. HC 250 and Synology NAS.

What else do I need to buy here?

MyMovies

EV driver for th Popbox

Can the server / scanning / MyMovies be offloaded elsewhere like to the NAS? Or is it just that if the PC is switched off then any new movies would not refresh until it is swiched back on again (i.e the HC250 has a copy of the database it needs to work, it is just a little out of date)?

Thanks,

Been lurking a while and finally got a UID and PW.