Dennis,
I hope you and Programming Sunrise team are enjoying life, because it seems like you are buried in building KooRaRoo Media. In a very short time, you have built awesome software. I wish I had buckets of cache I could send your way.
My Situation/Story:
I have an HP MediaSmart Server EX495, which have been discontinued. At the time and to a degree, even now, these are awesome little media servers (NAS with a common operating system). It came with TwonkyMedia which some HP tweaks, but the interaction between the HP software and Twonky broken with the version came with the EX495. I tried updating Twonky, but as time when on I had more issues and they discontinued their media server product. I tried several others and did not like any of them. I basically had to revert to accessing my media via network browsing protocols, like SMB, which is not a huge deal for me, but there are two issues. 1) There are few devices, other then computers, designed to connect to a TV that support protocols like SMB and most of them are junk. The WDTV is the only reasonably priced unit that I have found that works well. DLNA is supported more universally. 2) DLNA/UPNP, organizes the media is a manner that is easier to find. I have media in several places, e.g. media I want to keep on redundant storage and other media on unprotected storage. This is OK for me as I organize everything, but my family has issues finding things, so DLNA is better for them and I like it too.
Therefore, I decided to go on the hunt for a better DLNA server. I came across your posts at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-upnpd...crossplatform/. You pretty much replied to posts about other products with, if you like X software, you should try KooRaRoo Media, it's better and does more. I found a couple of other KooRaRoo Media mentions and decided to take a look and give it a try. I have to say is WOW, Awesome, Amazing, where have you been all my digital life?
It very quickly scanned through all my files, in an hour or so and then performed the metadata and other operations. This took a while, but much less time than any other and with better results. Transcoding is awesome, fast and runs on this server very well. The interface is beautiful, clean and easy to use.
BTW, if you know of a good DYI Home Server chassis that is like the EX495, let me know. I am looking for a 5 or more hot swap mini chassis that I can put in a better board wth more CPU and RAM. I am thinking a Core iX based CPU or one of the new ITX Xeon boards.
I have some issues, questions and suggestions related to KooRaRoo.
1) I have two Samsung devices, a BDP-E6500 Bluray player and a UN55ES7100 TV. I have some issues with both.
Neither show a folders option so I have to use the All Videos option and I have 6,701 videos, so it takes a while to load and it's almost impossible to find a video. I want to have "Folders" show up as one of the options/folders. I have tried different profiles including "Default Device", "Samsung TV C/D/E-Series" and "Samsung BDP/HTS/C/D/E-Series". If I select the "Disable manufacturer-specific extensions" option then then the device will not connect. The Samsung device sees the KooRaRoo media server, but generates an error while trying to connect, it's not a specific error, just there was an error while connecting or the server disconnected. I really do not want to move my video library to the KooRaRoo videos directory and I do not have enough space on that volume anyway.
I do not believe the fact that the "Folders" option/folder is missing is only due to the Samsung devices, but I think there is an issue with KooRaRoo that at least contributes to this issue. I believe this because my server has a built-in DLNA server (Windows Home Server) and when I connect either Samsung device to that UPNP server, I get a "Folders" option. Also, I have another device running minidlna and its also has the "Folders" option on these devices. I do not have this issue on my WDTV Live or Sony Bluray player as I have the "Folders" option when accessing KooRaRoo.
Finally, I thought I would use the "Play To" feature, but when I do I always get an unsupported content error. I have verified that this happens with media that does not require transcoding and media that does.
I turned on logging and I can send you logs, but I have not spent enough time with them to determine if these issues are being logged and if so how they are logged.
I have a reasonably large library, 6071 videos, 4996 photos, 949 music files, 1003 folders and 1,973.70GB, so I may be able to help find issues specific to large libraries.
2) One option that KooRaRoo is missing compared to other DLNA servers I have used is to combine like items. e.g. In Twonky, Windows Home Server DLNA server and others, if I added multiple directories and listed them as use for videos, when I browsed from a device like a WDTV and selected the folders option, I would not see each individual root directory, but a single video directory that combined the contents of all of those root directories. I am not stating that there is no use for the current option, I would like to see options to work the current way the way I described and an option to provide both. To provide both, the videos directory would show each root directory and a combined video directory in which would contain all of those directories contents, I have no creative thought what to name this virtual directory yet. If two or more to all of the root directories had a directory named videos, then the contents of all the videos directories would show up in the single video virtual directory. If two or more of all of the videos directories had a directory named NCIS, then the contents of all the NCIS directories would show up in the single NCIS virtual directory. If two or more of all of the NCIS directories had a directory named Season 2, the all of the Season 2 directories would show up in the single Season 2 virtual directory. Let me know if my description is not clear.
3) When items are in the transcoding area of the status pane and are marked paused or queued, I cannot find a way to force them to resume, but I would like to be able to force them to run. If there is a reason they are not running, it would be nice to know why.
4) I would like to have more information in the status pane, see below.
4a) I would like to be able to right click on a item in the streaming or transcoding sections, get the items properties and go to the file in the KooRaRoo library. The ability to open the file location would be nice as well from streaming or transcoding sections as well as right clicking on an item in the KooRaRoo library.
4b) In the Streaming section, I would like an option to show the codec being used, if it is using a transcoded file, the codec of the source file and if the transcode is in process. Perhaps the transcode section could number the transcode jobs and this number could show up in the streaming status entry.
4c) In the transcoding section I would like it to show the from and to codecs.
4d) An option to show the duration and size for each category, videos, photos and music and a total of all files in the status pane.
5) I would like the transcoding entries in the transcoding tab a file properties dialog to show the size of the file and perhaps it's location.
6) When I look at the folder properties, nothing is set in the update section. Is there a default update setting or is nothing set to auto update by default?
6a) If I set a folder to auto update, does it update all sub-folders as well? Please don't tell me I have to set every folder manually.
6b) If I set a folder to auto update and set one of its sub-directories with different settings compared to one of its parents, will this cause problems?
7) I have had a some issues with the KooRaRoo apps lack of multitasking when performing certain operations like Rebuilding the Database & Moving transcoded files.
7a) When the Rebuild Database option runs the app is locked, but so bar for me it was very quick.
7b) I ended up running out of space on my boot volume due to transcoded files. I changed the folder, but the app locks and fails if files are in use, etc. If there are open files, it should disable transcoding for new files, stop playback of files already being transcoded, stop transcoding the in progress files and then move the existing transcoding files and it should have a progress showing the status of this process and preferably still allow access to the interface for other operations.
8) I do not understand the subtitles burn-in feature as described in the 1.4.0 release notes and your comments in the following post and the FAQ about this does not really answer my questions. The release notes indicates that the issue is if the subtitles are not imbedded in the video file, while the post below indicates the issue is with the file type and if subtitles can be embedded in a stream with the video. Can you explain this more. Also, this option is a selection for each device. If selected, does it burn in the subtitles for every video or just for the videos that need it?
http://forum.kooraroo.com/showthread...472&viewfull=1
9) In the thread below, you mention a web interface. I have been looking for a good web interface for this type of product for a long time. I have some suggestions for this feature.
http://forum.kooraroo.com/showthread...-Web-interface
9a) Make it fully compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE on all compatible platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux.
9b) Weather it has a web based player or not allow easy integration with VLC as it plays almost everything.
10) I am having a few issues with some files, but these are odd files. I will gather info and create a new post.
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