My UPnP / DLNA Questions

[SneakyDave1]

OK, I've used Media Monkey for quite a while, and I love it, but I have a few questions about strange things going on with media sharing....

I have my MM media server running, and devices recognize it, and I can access music playlists for it, so the basic functionality works... Here are my questions and confusions.

1) I have an Android device. When I access my media server from my Android device via DLNA, It recognizes the media server, and the playlists, but when the playlists load, some playlists only show a few songs, or one song, not every song in the playlist. Other devices don't appears to have this problem.

2) Maybe I'm a newb, but I'm trying to understand how auto conversion works with media sharing. For instance. I have DirecTV clients that can recognize the MM media server. But the DirecTV client can't read 3gp video, the file names show up in the client, and there is an "X" next to them indicating that the format isn't supported by DirecTV.

Once I realized this, I thought I could set up auto conversion in the media server so that any incompatible video format is converted to WMV, which DirecTV supports. I then realized that that conversion rule is already established in MM. It says to convert any incompatible audio or video to WMV format, but yet, the DirectV device won't attempt to play the file, it still shows an X by the file name. I tried to create a specific conversion rule to convert any 3gp video to WMV, but that didn't work either.

I guess I'm curious when this auto-conversion is supposed to happen? Maybe I'm just confused about how it is supposed to work.

3) ok, this is the most confusing question to answer, in my opinion. Like I said, the DirecTV receivers I have recognize the MM media server and playlists, although I can't seem to convert the video files to something DirecTV can read. Anyway, there is an option when you play a playlist on DirecTV to also show images while the tracks are played, if you choose "yes" to show a slideshow of pictures, you can't really select pictures from the MM Media Server because it appears pictures aren't supported, or I just don't know how to create a MM "collection" of images. I've looked everywhere, but the only types of collections I can created are podcasts, music, and videos, no pictures. Is there something I missed here, or is there a workaround? It's just a small problem, but I thought one that should be addressed.

[SneakyDave]

FYI, just tagging this with my "real" account, didn't realize I wasn't signed in.

[Lowlander]

1) This may be due to the file format not being supported by the device (some devices will only show supported files).

2) This works with the supported formats setting. So if for example FLAC is listed as supported and OGG is not listed, it will convert any OGG files while not converting FLAC files. Thus make sure the supported formats list only includes formats supported by all devices (a per device list has been requested as feature). Do note that only WMV is supported by MediaMonkey as to convert to video format and that this doesn't work for PS3 owners despite the PS3 supporting WMV (so it may not work for DirecTV devices either). You may want to send a debug log (step 4b) capturing the failure to steam converted WMV videos to your device and send it to support: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69

3) Support for pictures has been requested especially for DLNA steaming and portable device syncing. So at the moment you'd need a separate DLNA server for pictures.

[SneakyDave]

1) I thought of that, but all my music is MP3 format, so I don't know what the dealio is.

2) Regarding WMV support on the DirecTV media share devices. Actually, I think it only supports MPEG-2 at the moment, not even WMV. I have some questions on that forum to determine what the real supported formats are. I'd hate to have to switch to some other media server provider.

3) I understand.

Thanks for the quick reply. Looks like I might have to use something else just for media sharing. Are people still using Tvserity, or is there something better for a Windows platform?

[Lowlander]

1) You can create a debug log for this too if you don't seen an issue with your settings/files.

2) 4.1 should see additional video convert to formats if I'm not mistaken. I've asked for MPEGII support, but this may not happen due to licensing costs of this format.

[SneakyDave]

I appears I'm going to have to use Tversity or something to view images, as well as try to to transcode to a format that DirecTV units can recognize, but that has it's own problems, as it doesn't appear I can use my MM playlists with it.

[Lowlander]

You may enjoy using: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ilit=child it can be set to export every x amount of time selected Playlists.