Control4 media library scanning

[wappinghigh]

You know what. I'm a touch over this.

The "scanning" of media by HE software seems flawed to me

It's flakey

Lacks consistency

Double scan's leaving double up files with "dots" in front of them...

The EV appleTV mk1 scan setup is rubbish

The media scan leaves out the important .mkv

Has to be redone if you need to rebuild your project

Coverart and meta data search is very hit and miss

etc etc

Yeah sure I have pushed things a bit (I have multiple shares now: 2xDunes, 1x DDNas, and 1 xAppleTVMk1 with EV driver)

But this sucks, It really does.

Can Control4 please improve the media scanning properties of Composer.

I sure would love a suitable replacement.

Suggestions anyone?

[thecodeman]

Havent used media scanning at all since switching to MyMovies from ExtraVegetables. Its been my favorite thing personally in a long time. Now the only part about that still needing improvement is how Control4 manages tv show seasons.

[prabeau]

But what about the songs issue.

I am having the same difficulties (duplicate songs after a scan) of NAS.

Is there some other way to do this ?

Quite new at all this.

Thank you

[wappinghigh]

Havent used media scanning at all since switching to MyMovies from ExtraVegetables. Its been my favorite thing personally in a long time. Now the only part about that still needing improvement is how Control4 manages tv show seasons.

Yeh. I'd love that cody...I'll make the switch when itunes removes DRM. Alas until that day...

I simply can't wait for this golden dawn to arise.

I live in hope..

Until then I'll battle each day with the Control4 media library...

[wappinghigh]

But what about the songs issue.

I am having the same difficulties (duplicate songs after a scan) of NAS.

Is there some other way to do this ?

Quite new at all this.

Thank you

I wouldn't bother using the C4media library with songs. Switch to something way easier...

[diamonddesign]

Your personal fix is to use dd Smart Server Core (with MyMovies from EV) and use that coverart and store everything on ddNAS

[digitaltrader]

We all know that the C4 media management sucks. Its been stuck in 2008 era/way of doing things. Having said that the MyMovies driver from EV improves things on the back end alot. We just need better sorting categories (ie sort by last added, year etc) and it sorely needs an improved cover art presentation (end to end covers like KalaIdescape has been using for 5 years now).

[prabeau]

If I should use something else for my music, could someone suggest what works for them……a newbie at a loss for options.

Thank you

[dgbrown]

^ Sonos + the EV Sono Driver

Edited to add:

And if you;re interested in Movies: Popbox + EV PCH Driver

No more scanning of anything. And with SOnos you get the full boat of streaming services (Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, etc)

[wappinghigh]

Composer has lot of bugs.

No kidding.

So why doesn't Control4 fix them?

BTW Nice to see you back

[wappinghigh]

^

Given we have been told time and again, nobody at Control4 ever reads these threads, so this sort of end user experience will never get back to Control4 programmers, I'd love to see some dealers come on here and give me their comments on this..

Looks like some of the best dealers out there have simply moved on from Composer media handling..

So what about you other guy's who still use it.?

Have you reported these bug's back to Control4?

[dogdvr]

Composer has lot of bugs.

No kidding.

So why doesn't Control4 fix them?

BTW Nice to see you back

I am sure that problem has been reported before. Why doesn't Control4 fix them? If your company's product has a bug' date=' then you want to fix that product. Consumers will move to another product with better service, than be frustrated. That is probably the reason that you see so many Control4 products on ebay.

[b']I have got Control4 amp to play at higher Khz, than Composer. Although, I am still working on getting to play in different zones with J River. I can control the volume and mute that zone, but I haven't be able to get it to move to another zone. It is the amp settings, and Control4 instructions is very poor. Although, I might end buying another multi-channel amp with more channels. When I talked to the Savant Systems installer, he was willing to make a driver for J River Media Center. J river media center 18 is planned for audio on Mac OSX by the end of the year.

.

My God,

Do you know what that line says about you?

You got the amp to play a higher Khz? really?

[wappinghigh]

^ This is a "call to help" to dogdvr (because from following your previous comments on other threads you seem to be in "the know")

All the other above comments aside, what is the best way to report this sort of software "situation" if a user like me has trouble with the practicalities of composer HE and media scanning?

How do we know, if in fact these issues are being attended to? How can an end user point out to the programmers these little problems? Where should one direct their "enquiries"?

[wappinghigh]

^ Guy's can we please stick to the topic of the thread.

It's about how to sort out the software problems of control4 media scanning.

Thanks

[wappinghigh]

Look, I know there are alternative media players and library solutions out there. We all know this.

The key issue here is how do we improve the Control4 media library solution and how do we make *this* an improved experience?

My reason's for this are two fold

1/ By using the Control4 media library, one can continue to use different players and get *them* to stream the files... all co-ordinated from the one (Control4) library... You get to use the non proprietry player to handle the file format, and hirez/ better hifi componentry/ better movie format.... what ever... yet all the file tags and direction is controlled by Control4. That's the beauty about still using the Control4 media library.

and

2/ It's a Control4 forum

I want to try and help improve the product and assist the company

[wappinghigh]

^ BTW I agree to some extent Nitro with your comments concerning music files... Forget about using Control4 to handle music media...

There are lots of alternative solutions for that. And in any case the navigator GUI screen splits music and movies up, by making users select "Watch" or "Listen".

So music and movies don't have to be together in the one library..

I'm talking solely about movies.

[pstuart]

Actually i abandoned Jriver cause it kept crashing on multiple computers.

Since then, no more blue screens and random crashes.

Also tried the new jriver 18 beta, still has same issues.

Ultimately, back on topic, I've tried to recreate the "bug" that Nitro mentions, I set up a folder with mp3s, mp4s, wavs, and aac and composer / server scanned them all, no problem, so I can't reproduce it.

[wappinghigh]

^ Nitro... Well I will also give up on the Control4 media library too if Autonomic Controls new AV media player handles mkv, iso's and DVD "file" formats..

So the money side for me is not as important as getting an "all files are handled" solution that darn well works...

But that Autonomic Controls player is a topic for another one of my threads :lol:

[wappinghigh]

^ PST.. Can you suggest what is the cause of my little "." double up file problem when scanning movies files only?...

Thanks

[pstuart]

^ PST.. Can you suggest what is the cause of my little "." double up file problem when scanning movies files only?...

Thanks

Wap, I am not sure what you mean...

Do you mean you are getting dups of every movie because the windows share you are scanning has a ".filename" duplicate (not really a dup, because of the "." at the beginning?

If so, this is not a composer issue, its a mac OS issue when it indexes SMB shares.

Set them up to be hidden and composer shouldn't see them.

You can also tune the SMB side of OSX to not create them.

But it is a Mac OSX issue on volumes also mounted via SMB.

I believe these are the instructions on how to stop OSX from creating these dot files:

1. Open Terminal.

2. Execute this command:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

3. Either restart the computer or log out and back in to the user account.

But ultimately, I use MyMovies and am very happy with it. EV's integration is pretty good as well. Whatever you have in MyMovies shows up in Control4 Media Library.

Insert a player capable, Dune, Popcorn Hour, etc. and all is good.

Remove the PC / Mac as the main player and use embedded players and things move much smoother. Too many issues with trying to use an HTPC as a mutli format player.

As it goes, there just isn't a player out there that can play all formats. Better to have solid endpoint players that can play what you have. Worst case, convert it to what you need.

[wappinghigh]

^ PST.. Can you suggest what is the cause of my little "." double up file problem when scanning movies files only?...

Thanks

Wap' date=' I am not sure what you mean...

Do you mean you are getting dups of every movie because the windows share you are scanning has a ".filename" duplicate (not really a dup, because of the "." at the beginning?

If so, this is not a composer issue, its a mac OS issue when it indexes SMB shares.

Set them up to be hidden and composer shouldn't see them.

You can also tune the SMB side of OSX to not create them.

But it is a Mac OSX issue on volumes also mounted via SMB.

I believe these are the instructions on how to stop OSX from creating these dot files:

1. Open Terminal.

2. Execute this command:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

3. Either restart the computer or log out and back in to the user account.

But ultimately, I use MyMovies and am very happy with it. EV's integration is pretty good as well. Whatever you have in MyMovies shows up in Control4 Media Library.

Insert a player capable, Dune, Popcorn Hour, etc. and all is good.

Remove the PC / Mac as the main player and use embedded players and things move much smoother. Too many issues with trying to use an HTPC as a mutli format player.

As it goes, there just isn't a player out there that can play all formats. Better to have solid endpoint players that can play what you have. Worst case, convert it to what you need.[/quote']

Thanks for this insight. Yeh it's kinda what I mean..

I'll give you and example:

When I do a composer media scan, I get "doubled up" movies..

I have copies of each of them as .Appledouble/backdupmovie.mkv

like there is the proper file AnotherEarth.mkv and a copy .Appledouble/AnotherEarth.mkv

The proper one streams fine, the other, the Dune doesn't recognise

Note there is a fullstop ie (.) in front of each of the double paths…

This happens to me with other share scans as well, like those where the file is on a DDNAS…

Now I think your reply is on the right track because the files are moved via an smb share from a mac to say the Dune..

But what has recently got me confused is yesterday I did an mkv on a WIN7 machine and moved that file onto a DDNAS and scanned the NAS and still got the .double file!!

I mean OSX was nowhere to be seen on that file or transfer...

Still what you have said has given me some clues, so give me a few days to follow your instructions here..

Thanks again (as always) for your fantastic help on these matters...

[wappinghigh]

^ BTW PST, I'm not using the mac (or even a Win7 PC) as "the player" of these files..

I am simply using them as the backup maker, then moving the backup via SMB onto a Dune HDD, or a DDNAS...

I am then scanning the Dunes HDD or the DDNAS via composer media scan and getting these double "." files..

I mean, should I do the scan after disconnecting all the smb shares?.. Might that solve the problem?...

[pstuart]

Right, the mac creates what's called a "Resource Fork" in these "dot" files where the info that the mac os needs to store info about the file. This goes way back to the OS 9 and older OS's where they would use an extra bit to store resource data like icons and such...

So when *ANY* file is created on a mac and accessed or copied to an SMB share (the mac could be used to serve SMB as well) those "dot" files are created.

Sometimes the easiest way is to have a script running on the NAS / storage location to delete the ".*.*" files regressively. But be careful, because it is perfectly legitimate to start a file name with a "."

So back to Nitro's comments on malware and Jriver. How does malware get on a PC that doesn't have an internet connection, a free load of the OS, and properly cooling? Also, since the problems can be recreated in VMware as well, in a completely sandboxed environment, hardware can be ruled out. Bottom line, J-river is not worth the headaches as a end point for video playing. Just not ready for prime time.

As for MyMovies, Nitro is misinformed as to the capabilities and usage of MyMovies...

MyMovies is a database engine for movie and tv show content. You can have it output file path data to a well known location and use external players like Dune and Popcorn hour to play the content.

With EV's integration of MyMovies and Control4 Media Library, the contents of MyMovies is moved into the Control4 space and when you select a movie, EV takes over and sends it specifically to a Dune or Popcorn box, using their driver(s).

This solves the media scanning issues in Control4 Media Library, as you just turn it off, and using MyMovies to index everything. I really think you need to take a look at it WAP, as it might solve a lot of your issues.

Lastly, as to Nito's comments about my recommendation of converting formats, I absolutely stand by this, as I NEVER said compress or lower quality... Plenty of solid ways to reformat / wrap original rip'd content without recompressing data and losing quality.

Wrapping a bluray stream in an MKV file and taking only what you need will save space and insure it will be playable on a Dune or Popcorn hour. Especially when a lot of these devices don't have full menu support.

[dogdvr]

I am sure that problem has been reported before. Why doesn't Control4 fix them? If your company's product has a bug' date=' then you want to fix that product. Consumers will move to another product with better service, than be frustrated. That is probably the reason that you see so many Control4 products on ebay.

[b']I have got Control4 amp to play at higher Khz, than Composer. Although, I am still working on getting to play in different zones with J River. I can control the volume and mute that zone, but I haven't be able to get it to move to another zone. It is the amp settings, and Control4 instructions is very poor. Although, I might end buying another multi-channel amp with more channels. When I talked to the Savant Systems installer, he was willing to make a driver for J River Media Center. J river media center 18 is planned for audio on Mac OSX by the end of the year.

.

My God,

Do you know what that line says about you?

You got the amp to play a higher Khz? really?

I own the amp, so I can do what I want with it. I should take all this Control4 items and put them in a crusher. 1,780 Control4 items on ebay. I wonder on how many people just throw it away? Composer locks the amp to 48Khz, but J River allows you to take it pass 48Khz. Depends on your DAC or sound card. Sound quality is much better with J River than from Composer.

Now, that I have a software that works. I plan to put more speakers in those other rooms.

Yes you own the amp and you can do what ever you want with it.

But the amp takes a ANALOG signal and amplifies it.

The amp does not care what Khz the file is in because IT CAN NOT DO ANYTHING WITH IT.

If you use a Jriver player to convert the file to ANALOG it will play it. NO matter what it was encoded at. The amp does not decode the signal it amplifies the Analog signal after it is decoded.

But you just keep telling the world that you found how to work around the amps limitation of 48Khz.

Brent

[pstuart]

You are right, software can't cause hardware to fail, just like digital signals are locked on analog devices...

I have been doing hardware and software troubleshooting for over 20 years. I know how to isolate problems and find the issue.

But Nitro, you keep believing you are the expert and trolling all along.

I'm done dealing with you, you can go play with your toys and making 96k out of analog amps and your lossless perfect Jriver solution.

Wish this forum had an ignore feature, guess I'll just write a little javascript to remove all Nitro's posts, that way I'll beat you to deleting your posts.