looking for more information on media handling

Hello,

I have been looking for a good solution to my media needs and I have been falling short for a while now. I have a VMware ESXI solution which I can provision VMs on the fly running the latest version CentOS which is my platform of choice for stability reasons with underlying server software as I cannot find a more stable operating system than the Linux kernel. My main concern is that I have been using PMS for some time now and I have noticed that I have been running into issues with the some of the rendering engines where the picture would shudder even with a default deployment. I then found that I had to go "Under the hood" to mess with the buffer values of the server to get things to work correctly and I have been running into things where renderers are just not there like the iPhone or iPad along with some other devices. One other note is that I would run into issues with XBMC/PS3 as well where I would not be able to re-connect devices until I restarted the Java instance.

My main points which I am looking for are;
- Web Based Library for media management
- Ability to store hundreds of GB of MP3s and not crash due to library parsing or DB issues (Plex failed, XBMC failed)
- Easy to use interface
- Minimal Server Management or Admin interaction (Hence Linux based deployment).

I have had my fair share of Ups and Downs with UPNP/DLNA servers but the one thing that has been the biggest letdown is when I deployed plex as a server and XBMC as it seemed that both of these solutions crumbled under the weight of the amount of media I was throwing at it. Apparently 700GB was just too much to handle even with the MYSQL connector, which is a bit of an embarrassment as Winamp from the dark ages was able to load all of the music just fine (took a little bit thoe...).

So anyways, I was curious if this solution "Serviio" would crumble under the same weight of the 700GB worth of music or would it exhibit the same behavior of what PMS does and only grab what is needed hence no parsing wait time for library management or database management as this is what killed other solutions for me.

I have yet to try UMS(Universal Media Server) but I am torn between sticking with a PMS like UPNP/DLNA setup or by going with Serviio for my server solution but hosting vast amounts of media without causing the server to crash is the key selling point for me.

Any input is great at this point as I have yet to try Serviio but I can load a VM up and provision 2TB from my RAID5 for testing.

I have done some initial testing with the software running in Windows 7 and there were some thing which I did really like but there were some things which I felt did not work very well.

- The WebUI for the control interface is good and similar to PMS/UMS
- The Web Library is a unique standpoint for a back-end user available library
- The library updates seem smooth after the first rough build

Some things I have noticed in the windows build;
- The Web Based Java applet seems slow and clunky as when my full music library was loaded it felt very clunky
- The Web Based flash music player was nice but sometimes the slider would not work
- The Web Based movie player was a really cool feature but it seemed to move around the screen when re-sizing
- The auto tagging and IMDB lookup was hit or miss at best

Some things I think could help out;
- Instead of having a Java applet for the main page, load it as a HTML with CSS stylesheet. Granted, it might be a little bit of a pain to maintain but I did see where someone wrote a Linux script which would compile a site based on the movie names for looking up against IMDB which included the rating, starring actor and description. I think it was something like this if I remember right (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bashmcs/) but something like that could run during the reclamation or scanning of the media library to adjust the information on the site. Storing the information in a Java applet does make the content more dynamic but it seems that it is slowing things down. It might be possible to somehow compile the site out of the database using stored procedures which would be a little more dynamic but this would reduce load times with the site. Granted I am not sure if this would be possible even using MYSQL or Derby but I do know from working with Oracle Application Server (OAS) and Oracle 11g, the website build/load times from constructing the website using stored procedures made the sites fast I was working on even with their somewhat dynamic content.

- Use of an external database. After looking at the application and seeing that it uses Derby for the database. In turn, I was like umm... what the heck is Derby? Yet after some additional exploring it seems that this is a ok solution for the database but as some have said already, H2 could be faster and I would be really engaged if there was a external connector configuration for MYSQL, ORACLE or MSSQL ass these could provide a more scalable or faster option for the database (not sure thoe) as I use MYSQL a lot at work and it is open source making it easily available.

This was just my experiences from tinkering with the software on my Windows 7 Desktop. I have yet to install it on Linux thoe so the issues with speed or some of the other problems could be non-existent from the Linux build as I have seen things run a lot better on a true multitasking platform with little resources in use. I am not bashing the software by any means as I will say that it is right up there with PMS/UMS but there are some things that would make this software stand out over the others in my long search for a good UPNP/DLNA solution. I will have to give the Linux build a try and see what the new adventure brings.

[zip]

There is no Java applet. Are you talking about MediaBrowser?

[atc98092]

My main points which I am looking for are;
- Web Based Library for media management
- Ability to store hundreds of GB of MP3s and not crash due to library parsing or DB issues (Plex failed, XBMC failed)
- Easy to use interface
- Minimal Server Management or Admin interaction (Hence Linux based deployment).

The web component (part of the Pro version) of Serviio is for media viewing only. No media management is possible. There are web interfaces to take the place of the Java panel, but there is no functionality beyond what the Java panel offers (unless there's something available I don't know about). With the type of Derby in use, there is no way to build any sort of add-in or 3rd party product. This type of Derby only allows a single connection, and the server locks out any other access.

I have almost 5 TB (1650 files) of video material. The only issue I have with performance is refreshing the database. I think you might have an idea about using MySQL. I use it for a number of programs I wrote at work, and even with the DB on the east coast and users on the west performance is fine. I will say that I also have Plex running on the same machine (to feed the Roku for now) and it handles the same amount of files fine. Not sure what they use for a DB.

For not having a file management function, the Serviio user interface is very easy to use. I do wish it had a file management system though. It would help with the (rare) file that doesn't retrieve the correct metadata from the Internet.

I hardly ever touch the Serviio user interface once set up. It just works. Since it runs as a service, it always self starts and requires no user interaction.

The major attraction of the Pro version is the web based MediaBrowser. If you are away from home and want to view something from your server, it's a simple web site away. This requires customizing your home firewall/router, but Serviio itself can handle that for some hardware. It doesn't seem to work on my DSL router, but I have enough tech background that I can handle the port forwarding myself.

I experimented with a number of different DLNA media server products. In my humble opinion, no one of then can touch Serviio for ease of use and it just working. If I could wish for one thing, it would be some sort of DB management, but I can live without it. It just works so well in every other way.

"There is no Java applet. Are you talking about MediaBrowser?"

Hello Zip and thanks for the response, sorry as I forgot that there are actually 2 components to the system. The UPNP/DLNA configuration seems to be working just fine along with the server configuration interface. The issue I am having is specifically with the media browser.

"The web component (part of the Pro version) of Serviio is for media viewing only. No media management is possible. There are web interfaces to take the place of the Java panel, but there is no functionality beyond what the Java panel offers (unless there's something available I don't know about). With the type of Derby in use, there is no way to build any sort of add-in or 3rd party product. This type of Derby only allows a single connection, and the server locks out any other access."

Hello atc98092, thanks for your responses, I guess I use the term "Media Management" a little too loosely. You are correct that the issue I am running into is with the media browser. I should ave stated something like "library interface" instead. Additionally, like I stated before, I have yet to try this configuration from a Linux deployment so it could behave better or worse depending on the resources in use/network configuration. Additionally, only having the ability to connect to one database or have one connection open at any given time also does not shock me as issues could be incurred with having multiple systems connecting into the same database and using the same tables. I have ran into issues before in Oracle database systems where locked objects can occur in the instance that something was fetching the same object at the same time as another system which resulted in a locked object. This would then incur the possibility for a larger domino effect where more and more of the records would get locked out and the only way to resolve this issue was to kill the process touching the initial record which then resulted in a cascading effect of records being released until the database was back to normal. In turn, I would not expect anything to maintain two connections but it would be cool to have the option to port the database connection over to an external database by either shutting down the connection to derby or stopping the writing of records to the internal database and then have the system send the data over to an external database using the JDBC connector. I am not sure if this is possible in the latest version or not as it would be very nice to have the ability to use the external database with enterprise tools like better index maintenance, re-sizing and backups. I am not complaining thoe as the internal database may function better on the Linux build.

"I have almost 5 TB (1650 files) of video material. The only issue I have with performance is refreshing the database. I think you might have an idea about using MySQL. I use it for a number of programs I wrote at work, and even with the DB on the east coast and users on the west performance is fine. I will say that I also have Plex running on the same machine (to feed the Roku for now) and it handles the same amount of files fine. Not sure what they use for a DB."

I can agree, I have worked on Oracle, MYSQL and MSSQL. At this point, I would have to say that MYSQL is one of the best in my opinion as there are many good factors about it including enterprise tools and faster data search times. The only things I am not to sure about are the limitations of the MYISAM storage engine which only has the ability to store up to 1.5TB of data where the InnoDB storage engine is more salable up to 64TB. However, I do not see anyone having a database that large as index maintenance and pulling data would be like ripping out hair until one is bald. Additionally, ORACLE=PIG OF RESOURCES and Microsoft SQL = Well it is Microsoft and I like open source. Anyways, I would love to have an external port option but I am not sure if it would even be feasible. Besides, it does also create another bottleneck or source of failure for if the database is not accessible or if the database is slow over the JDBC connection. Lawls, I have even seen where users will overload their database server and then complain about the product which is external to the database having slow run-times for select statements in reporting. Granted, the maintenance of the database should fall back onto the person who installs or manages that system but having seen it enough times, it is hard to push back and define the line of where he responsibility falls. This stated, for someone who knows what they are doing this would be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but to the average user, it could be a nightmare. Furthermore, I am roughly at about 700GB of Music and 2TB of video content in which the music is mostly MP3 but with some wav, flac, ogg and other things mixed in where my video files are mostly MP4. This then enables me to support most idevices and also smart phones or UPNP devices as it seems that this is the same format that YouTube likes to use as well. However, it seems that the media browser get very slow or gets very clunky when throwing a vast amount of files as it for both audio and video. I am sorry if my initial conception that this was running in applet form was inaccurate but it seemed that it was contained inside some sort of browser based application. I guess, I should have looked at the page source before coming to that conclusion.

"For not having a file management function, the Serviio user interface is very easy to use. I do wish it had a file management system though. It would help with the (rare) file that doesn't retrieve the correct metadata from the Internet.

I can agree with this as well, there were instances where IMDB results returned information which was not related to the correct title. It would be awesome if there was a way to edit or re-pull the information for the title in the instance that it is returning the incorrect results. In some instances, there could be many versions of the specific DVD which could cause a IMDB look-up to be inaccurate. I have even explored a script where I would scan a DVD barcode from the barcode database and then it would pull the name of the DVD from the Website. Then after getting the DVD name from the site, it would return the results through the Linux "sed" command to strip off the things like "Wide Screen" "Ultra Ed." and so on to where I was then about to pull the correct DVD title up from IMDB with almost 95% success rate. Granted, this took a lot of work to setup, but it seems to function correctly when I had it up and running. Yet to my dismay, there were already some applications like that out there which did this for me so I ended up scrapping the project. But it might be a neat idea to store the barcode information to see if it could be used in someway to pull the correct information from the physical DVD and then use this to grab the information from IMDB. It would take a lot of work to setup but man would it be awesome. Also, I did not really have the chance to modify the meta data to see if this resolved the issue when pulling from IMDB, I will have to explore this more later when I get a the Linux build up.

"I hardly ever touch the Serviio user interface once set up. It just works. Since it runs as a service, it always self starts and requires no user interaction."

I hear ya there and I agree with this as well. The server part seems rock solid, it is just the little odds and ends which I think I am running into issues with for the most part. But as a UPNP/DLNA system, it is very solid and I am impressed.

"The major attraction of the Pro version is the web based MediaBrowser. If you are away from home and want to view something from your server, it's a simple web site away. This requires customizing your home firewall/router, but Serviio itself can handle that for some hardware. It doesn't seem to work on my DSL router, but I have enough tech background that I can handle the port forwarding myself."

I have yet to setup the port forwarding in Cisco NAT on my 2851 enterprise router, but I will give it a try to see what it is like. I was really interested in this feature as I plan on getting a smart phone in the future and going through the 5$ bin at Walmart along with coming home and not having duplicates is becoming more troublesome as my collection grows.

"I experimented with a number of different DLNA media server products. In my humble opinion, no one of then can touch Serviio for ease of use and it just working. If I could wish for one thing, it would be some sort of DB management, but I can live without it. It just works so well in every other way."

I am the same way at this point, but there are some of the additional features that I would like to use as well but it seems that the media browser is still a little bit off with things in terms of seeking through a playing song, video window maintaining location in the browser and the speed of the media browser when pulling up the listings.

Anyways, thanks for the responses and I hope to get the Linux build up and running soon when I have a little more time. Also, has anyone ran into any issues with the Sony BD players over UPNP/DLNA with Serviio? I am just curious as I am planning on setting up a major network with Serviio being the primary UPNP device.

Thanks,

benand1985

Also, from a support standpoint and with what is offered, I think I am going to sick with Serviio. UMS/PMS has been causing issues with media problems over the UPNP/DLNA connection for fast forwarding in MP4. I do not know if I will run into the same issues here, but it seems that the support for Serviio is better than what I am seeing for UMS/PMS. Furthermore, my fingers hurt from writing this and sorry for the late response as I was on vacation in Canada....

[atc98092]

Anyways, thanks for the responses and I hope to get the Linux build up and running soon when I have a little more time. Also, has anyone ran into any issues with the Sony BD players over UPNP/DLNA with Serviio? I am just curious as I am planning on setting up a major network with Serviio being the primary UPNP device.

While I don't have a Sony BD player, I do have several Sony media players. They play everything perfectly for me, with the exception of a couple of extremely high bit rate BD rips. If my file has Dolby True HD audio, it passes it through to my receiver for decoding. They seem to do fine with bit rates up to 40-50Mbps.

I would assume (yeah, I know what that can get me...) that Sony BD players should work as well.