Twonky Forum

A bit of background. I got a TS-101 that had of course TwonkyMedia in it. I got some horrid piece of hardware from D-Link (DSM-320) that dared to call itself a media player which I had to actually give away because I felt bad about selling it to another poor soul. Then I got the Ziova CS505 which has it's share of issues but at least recognizes the TwonkyMedia (TM) server. Then there is the small but weird stuff I need help with:

• Not all files are ever picked up by the TM server. A rebuild or rescan may or may not pick them up or drop them.
• This is related to the first bullet. I copied my entire media collection (pictures, videos and music - 100+ GB worth) from my TS-101 to the TS-209 Pro but decided to leave both TM servers active. Both were seen by the CS505 but the files they displayed were very different. Some files three levels down are not picked up by the TS-209 Pro but are picked up by the TS-101. Most folders four levels down are not picked up by the TS-101 but are all picked up by the TS-109 Pro. Why the discrepancy? A 0.0.2 difference in TM firmware revision?
• Nowhere have I found mentioning a limit to folder levels with the TM server. Even a search of these forums only mentions others indicating levels, no limits. I see limits on nodes but not on folder levels. Why a limit? The CS505 hangs (fortunately not always a crash) on both TM servers when trying for more than four levels down. I know everything is cool to play there because the CS505 has SMB shares and when enabled can go deep and play anything (I see everything as well). Of course this is not what I want to use, I wish to use the TM server.
• None of the Internet radio works through the TM server. Fortunately the CS505 connects by it's own firmware to Shoutcast but I am curious why it doesn't work through the TM server. I admit, this could be the CS505's fault.
• (I will probably sound clueless but what the heck) There are types you can filter by for video such as Genre, Description, Keyword, Title, Album, etc. Some display the file name. Some like the Date, Month, Day works great. But some get no display except under "- ALL -". I understand many picture format's, like EXIF for JPEGs, and music formats, like ID3v1 and v2 in MP3s, have lots of information you can pick out for this filtering but where is this information in video formats?
• What is the difference between pre-configured navigation trees of small, advanced and customized? (I am not interested in anything to do with the iPod) The explanation only mentions when you should use them, not what they do. Do they allow more nodes?
• I entered 5 nodes for the video tree once as it mentions that's the limit but after saving a blank sixth line comes up. Does this mean it can do more nodes? Why display if it says five is the limit? Is there any limit on the levels within a node? I did 10 and it accepted the changes but I was just curious.
• Is there a user manual for describing where all the types (Genre, Album, etc.) come from? Date, Month, etc are obvious, they come from the file last modified date but not the others. There is little in the configuration screens and no other information downloads anywhere (only downloads on how to install TM server - which is already done of course).

My Ziova CS505 has quality and reliability issues but with frequent O-N/O-F-F treatment it will work for the most part. Rotated JPEGs was the hardest thing to display, they would lock up the CS505 but I eventually found a fix. Still have crashes though every 1 to 2 hours. Still I recognize everything about digital media playing and streaming is on the bleeding edge so some pain is to be borne.

My hardware list network connected through 100+ MB ethernet cable (wireless, yuck!):
Qnap TS-101 with TwonkyMedia 4.4.2
Qnap TS-109 Pro with TwonkyMedia 4.4.4
Ziova CS505 media player with firmware v2.0.1

Hello! 588 thread views but no response...

I now have a PCH A-110 which works MUCH better than the Ziova. It doesn't help that the company Ziova seems to have fallen off the face of the earth (their forum is read-only). Still I only use Samba to get media files because the TM server still difficult to understand and doesn't produce many of the things I mentioned in the prior post. There may have been some enlightening information since I posted over a year ago and I will search again for it but it's strange that I have had no responses here.

Haven't had any responses from Qnap on this so maybe here there is an answer. I can access the TM config screen easily enough through the NAS' IP address and port 9000. My question is how do I access the database content page? I've seen it a few times, it's like a file tree of all the media files under the categories set forth in the TM config. Of course I can gather the layout through the media player itself but that's cumbersome, it's upstairs and doesn't show the whole tree in an expandable format like I saw once before. I hope I've made myself clear enough...

Hi,
media browser of your twonky server can be accessed by using this link: http://your_ip:9000/webbrowse (your_ip is the ip address of your qnap nas).

It's a miracle! One eternal mystery solved! Thanks RG1!

Also it appears all my folder levels are now captured so some things are working out. I will continue to check out the rest.

how did you fix it?
I am having the same problem. Twonky server on my QNAP NAS is not recognizing any song on the music directory. When I go to server status on the Music tracks count it says zero!!! and I have about 20,000 songs.

how can I fix this, it is really annoying

Hello,

I have the same problem with my new QNAP TS439pro. I put all the music, pictures and video on the NAS but after setup of Twonky a rescan results in 144 files music, 1 directory in the music folder. There should be about 10000 songs, over 12000 pictures and some 500 videos.
On my previous NAS a Buffalo Terastation I did not encounter this problem with TMS. I used the same version 4.4.17.
Any help on this is much appreciated.

Bernard

Hi All,

My music, video and picters get scanned correctly now.
What I did to resolve was to move a directory TMS got stuck on to a location where it does not get scanned. In that directory it only scanned about 155 files. I need to find out on which file TMS 'hangs' and keeps on stating that rescan is in progress.

Luckely I did not need this directory as it only contained mp3 music in a lower bitrate for on the MP3 playes and Nintendo.

Bernard

All those bullets above relating to file access problems and how deep it went seemed to have "gone away" in subsequent Qnap firmware upgrades (which also have incremental TM upgrades as well). Now my media player (the trusty Popcorn Hour A-110) sees all files under the Qnap's TwonkyMedia DLNA server (I currently have only one enabled, in the TS-209 Pro). The other problems still exist but there appears to be no answers.

Since SMB works so well all I had to do is set up a decent folder setup for browsing to the media files I want. Still don't see how any other information by TM is used or extracted from the media files when the media player accesses the DLNA server but I don't miss what I have never seen so SMB works for us.

@Benneton
Maybe you had filters (like I do) that try to glean information from the files like artist, bitrate speed, etc. Mine seems to work now but since I never use it, I don't always check it out if it works with new media.

@ozamalloa
My problem seemed to go away after Qnap firmware upgrades. I only have a few hundred songs but I have about 100 GB in personal videos and pictures plus another 250 GB in music videos. As Benneton said it may be some bad music file but I could never be sure WHAT TM had in it's database. Hence when I was told how to view the database on the computer I could see exactly what has been recognized by TM instead of running upstairs and laboriously going through the media server with a remote. By the time I got this information all media files and directories were being recognized by TM.