DLNA/C4/Synology - having issues - need a new plan?

[eggzlot]

I have an HC800 and trying to share a fairly large music collection.  I have the DLNA driver and I set it up on Sunday but things just do not seem to be there 100%.

In the Synology I added two folders to their "music" folder which is where their DLNA driver reads from to share content.  I have two folders in that "music" folder - one is a folder full of live concert recordings in FLAC format - about 700 GB.  then I have my iTunes folder - my iTunes on my personal Mac is not sitting on my mac but it sits on my NAS.  so when I launch iTunes on my desktop it is actually pulling from this exact folder.  that folder is 70 GB though I am sure its not 70GB of music as there are some videos, etc.

Anyways the issue - I can very easily see some albums that are in my iTunes folder that are not available in C4.  Not sure how much is missing because its a big collection but I can go look at some artists and they are either 100% missing or at least 1-2 albums from iTunes may be missing.  And I only have 2 playlists in iTunes but neither is populating, instead I have 3 random playlists that have to do with my live concert collection and its random and makes no sense.  I have not looked at my live music folder to make sure each and every concert moved again - again its 700 GB so its a lot.

So I am almost there but not 100% of the way there.

Is it best to host my iTunes via the c4 iTunes driver and only deal with my live stuff via the DLNA driver?  On top of this I want to move my wife's iTunes collection over too, and she is bigger with playlists, and she likes to shuffle/random those lists, etc.

Hardware wise I am running the HC800 as mentioned, the synology is the RS818+ and does not seem to work with Twonky - at least based on the list Twonky provides for supported Synology hardware.

I do not want to buy another NAS but I am open to a streaming box in the middle if needed or other ideas/options.

[eggzlot]

shameless bump - anyone have ideas or suggestions?

[tdougray]

53 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

shameless bump - anyone have ideas or suggestions?

Please post if you get a solution as I'd be interested how you sort out the I tunes side. I currently have a laptop in a always on state using the itunes driver. I would love to get away from this and store on a Nas but to my understanding because a Nas doesn't have an operating system as such you can't store the whole I tunes application only the music library.

[eggzlot]

22 minutes ago, tdougray said:

Please post if you get a solution as I'd be interested how you sort out the I tunes side. I currently have a laptop in a always on state using the itunes driver. I would love to get away from this and store on a Nas but to my understanding because a Nas doesn't have an operating system as such you can't store the whole I tunes application only the music library.

will do.  I am even open to buying an Apple TV or something if that helps with better iTunes integration and then using the DLNA driver just for my concert FLAC collection.

[Pounce]

Did you try re-indexing?

[eggzlot]

7 minutes ago, Pounce said:

Did you try re-indexing?

didnt see that specifically as an option.  in the DNLA driver you hit discovery to find DNLA compatible drives and just pick the one you want.  Doing that again considered re-indexing?

[Pounce]

When you set up the DLNA on the Synology did you configure the indexed folder?

 

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/application_mediaindexservice_general

 

 

[eggzlot]

2 minutes ago, Pounce said:

When you set up the DLNA on the Synology did you configure the indexed folder?

 

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/application_mediaindexservice_general

 

 

I didnt do that but from the article:

Note:

• Default shared folders (e.g. music) created for Synology's multimedia applications are automatically indexed, while other folders can only be manually indexed.

And I am using their default "music" folder....

But I guess I can follow instructions on how to re-index which are listed below

Thanks

[eggzlot]

46 minutes ago, Pounce said:

When you set up the DLNA on the Synology did you configure the indexed folder?

 

https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/application_mediaindexservice_general

 

 

re-index completed in synology.  no difference in C4.  

[Pounce]

I wish I could tell you the right answer, but I'm only trying to think of the things that might cause the issue.

Do you have the ability to install Twonky?

 

http://download.twonky.com/8.5.1/

[eggzlot]

3 minutes ago, Pounce said:

I wish I could tell you the right answer, but I'm only trying to think of the things that might cause the issue.

Do you have the ability to install Twonky?

 

http://download.twonky.com/8.5.1/

id have to go to a synology forum - my model is not listed on the twonky site:

• Synology DS-101
• Synology DS-101g+
• Synology DS-101j
• Synology DS-106
• Synology DS-106e
• Synology DS-106j
• Synology DS-107e
• Synology DS-107+
• Synology DS-207
• Synology CS-406
• Synology CS-406e
• Synology CS-407
• Synology CS-407e

Wonder if its based more on the DM OS vs the actual hardware....a Synology forum would know, but figured I'd start on the C4 end of things first.

I have an RS818+ model.

[eggzlot]

and to be clear to people who may respond, I am ok with having to click on one program to launch my live music collection and another for my itunes collection and a 3rd for my wife's itunes, or all of our itunes in 1 collection and my live music on its own.  I do not have to have the ability to click "Allman Brothers Band" and get the live and studio stuff in 1 folder.

[Pounce]

You can add the driver more than once and point it to different endpoints. That would give you a location for your wife's music vs your own or live music etc.

I'm curious as to why things aren't showing up though.

[eggzlot]

Just now, Pounce said:

You can add the driver more than once and point it to different endpoints. That would give you a location for your wife's music vs your own or live music etc.

I'm curious as to why things aren't showing up though.

ha me too

I guess I'll break it down and maybe only do my iTunes first and see if i can get that working.  then start to layer in other sources of music using a 2nd and 3rd version of the driver.

[Amr]

Let me explain my setup as I do have HC800 and Synology 415+:

• All my Music is located under music folder on Synology, many sub folders Jazz/Classics/etc.
• iTunes Server is running on Synology as well (its an app, so install it and configure it)
• I have an always-on PC that have the iTunes windows app read all music from Synology Server Indexed Library, so nothing is duplicated either on the server nor the NAS
• Now, DLNA Music on C4 is configured to read the Music folder on the 415+
• iTunes/Airplay Driver on C4 is configured to connect to Itunes app on the PC
• So I have both DLNA Music and iTunes in C4

Let me know is this makes sense to you?

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, Amr said:

Let me explain my setup as I do have HC800 and Synology 415+:

• All my Music is located under music folder on Synology, many sub folders Jazz/Classics/etc.
• iTunes Server is running on Synology as well (its an app, so install it and configure it)
• I have an always-on PC that have the iTunes windows app read all music from Synology Server Indexed Library, so nothing is duplicated either on the server nor the NAS
• Now, DLNA Music on C4 is configured to read the Music folder on the 415+
• iTunes/Airplay Driver on C4 is configured to connect to Itunes app on the PC
• So I have both DLNA Music and iTunes in C4

Let me know is this makes sense to you?

Interesting.  I could go that route.  I have a PC running for blue iris.  I’ll have to investigate further.  Most issues now are around my iTunes collection not the flac stuff

[Amr]

So, delete you iTunes Library, setup it up again and all you issues will gone.

Also delete the iTunes folder from music folder on synology, it’s just metadata that u don’t need anymore as u will have a new scan anyways, and let this new iTunes folder created on the BlueIris PC.

A much cleaner setup and hassle free as you don’t need to refresh iTunes Library, just reconnect to Synology iTunes Server and all new music will appear in seconds. One last thing, if you have a huge library it will take sometime and u might have the iTunes app hangs, just leave it and see next day if it finishes or u might need to kill it and reconnect again!

[eggzlot]

10 hours ago, Amr said:

So, delete you iTunes Library, setup it up again and all you issues will gone.

Also delete the iTunes folder from music folder on synology, it’s just metadata that u don’t need anymore as u will have a new scan anyways, and let this new iTunes folder created on the BlueIris PC.

A much cleaner setup and hassle free as you don’t need to refresh iTunes Library, just reconnect to Synology iTunes Server and all new music will appear in seconds. One last thing, if you have a huge library it will take sometime and u might have the iTunes app hangs, just leave it and see next day if it finishes or u might need to kill it and reconnect again!

ok ill try to tackle this over the weekend and report back - thanks!

[LollerAgent]

How did this end up for you?  I want to use the DLNA driver to access the DLNA server running on my NAS which contains large library of FLAC/MP3.  Couple questions for anyone who knows more than I do:

Is music served via DLNA available in the "My Music" interface?

Is it easy to program a keypad button to start playing music from DLNA in random order?  Is it simple to also have a button that skips songs?

Can you create custom playlists from music available via DLNA?

[eggzlot]

59 minutes ago, LollerAgent said:

How did this end up for you?  I want to use the DLNA driver to access the DLNA server running on my NAS which contains large library of FLAC/MP3.  Couple questions for anyone who knows more than I do:

Is music served via DLNA available in the "My Music" interface?

Is it easy to program a keypad button to start playing music from DLNA in random order?  Is it simple to also have a button that skips songs?

Can you create custom playlists from music available via DLNA?

My interest and efforts moved elsewhere though I need to revisit.  I have the iTunes driver and DLNA driver and they are identical so far for my needs.  But more important my playlists aren’t showing.  I migrated my library from Mac to the NAS.  My wife’s playlist are more crucial (I don’t use them but I was using my library first as a test but my wife always uses hers) so I need to find a solution from scratch to migrate her library and get her playlists with ability to shuffle them 

[MrCLV]

I am having the same issues less the iTunes part.Anyone figure this out yet?

[THE L1ZARD KING]

For what it’s worth the solution that worked best for me was to use Twonky on an always on Mac and point it against a folder containing my library and another for FLAC. I configure the Music app(formerly iTunes) to auto-download purchases so new music is available almost instantly regardless of the device it was purchased on. And Twonky aggregates the FLAC and Non-FLAC media so everything shows up under the same artist. I can then create playlists in the Music app and export them to a folder that Twonky is monitoring to have them in C4. The performance (specifically album art load times) and “search” capabilities of Twonky made it far superior to the DLNA servers I was able to run on my NAS directly. I also had a number of volume related issues with the iTunes driver, which led me down the DLNA path originally.

If you need your library on a NAS, you could just have a mounted drive on your PC/Mac to your NAS and just have Twonky point to that.