Popcorn Hour (NMT100): MP3 works, Flac fails - why?

[dvdr]

Hi

trying to get a problem sorted out with the above mentioned client:
it connects perfectly to Twonky, shows the genres, composers etc., but the moment I browse into the album folders, it says: no files found. Almost all of my music is stored as FLAC, with a few exceptions in mp3. Only mp3-files are displayed and played back.
I had set Twonky to "Syabas software based". Once I set it to "Generic Media Player" (automatic recognition), it also showed the flac-files inside the folders, but was unable to play them.
The strange thing is: Popcorn Hour does support Flac and plays them fine - once they are stored on its internal harddrive. So the issue to me seems not to be based on missing flac-support, but some kind of "interaction" between the client and Twonky. I am no programmer, so I cannot give any assumption, what the problem might be and am counting on your help. Thanks!
(BTW: Twonky is configured properly imho, since it works flawlessly with Linn's streaming clients such as Klimax/Akurate/Sneaky DS)

[pangloss]

I have exactly the same problem with a Syabas player (Helios X5000), and in mine the files also show but cannot be played. FLAC files played from other sources work fine, so it must be Twonky (I also tested with the MediaMonkey FLAC plugin, an files did not play either).

A support request from early May did not give me any answer. Anybody has any ideas?

Pangloss

[Kanabeanz]

Hi

trying to get a problem sorted out with the above mentioned client:
it connects perfectly to Twonky, shows the genres, composers etc., but the moment I browse into the album folders, it says: no files found. Almost all of my music is stored as FLAC, with a few exceptions in mp3. Only mp3-files are displayed and played back.
I had set Twonky to "Syabas software based". Once I set it to "Generic Media Player" (automatic recognition), it also showed the flac-files inside the folders, but was unable to play them.
The strange thing is: Popcorn Hour does support Flac and plays them fine - once they are stored on its internal harddrive. So the issue to me seems not to be based on missing flac-support, but some kind of "interaction" between the client and Twonky. I am no programmer, so I cannot give any assumption, what the problem might be and am counting on your help. Thanks!
(BTW: Twonky is configured properly imho, since it works flawlessly with Linn's streaming clients such as Klimax/Akurate/Sneaky DS)

I am having the similar problems on my Linn Klimax with both the Composer field & the Album Artist fields on the Linn GUI. Both show lists as "unknown". All files are in FLAC and both mp3Tag & MonkeyMedia show that these fields are on the metadata. Is it anything to do with the tag format not complying with flac (i.e. using ID3v or something)? It is very frustrating as I would like to search for my classical music by composer. Also have many albums by "various artists" i.e. compilations - it is very difficult to call these up. With over 7000 tracks the search by artist also gets frustrating as each one is listed. On it web site Twonky makes the following claim:

"Twonkymedia handles compilations separately, so that it does not create separate artist entries for each song of a compilation"

This is not true for me! Any suggestions?

[dvdr]

Hi
Twonky does not - as of now, version 4.4.5 - support the tags composer, album artist, orginal artist, lyricist etc. with the flac format. With flac, only the basic tags like album, year, artist, title are supported. With mp3 for example, also composer and album artist tags are supported already. These tags for flac should be supported in the upcoming version 5 (from beta2-version on, which is not out, yet). But: this is not set into stone yet, maybe, they decide differently or won't support all additional tags, which especially for lovers of classical music would be a big downside.

As to your question about various artists, do the following:

wherever you store your files, create a folder named compilations. Go into the configuration of Twonky (you should have a link on your desktop or start-menue). There, browse to "compilation directories" - it is located under "advanced setup // miscellaneous".
Change the line there: delete everything that is written in the little box, enter compilations, save the changes and restart the server.
Move all your folders, that contain compilation albums inside that directory. That should do the job.
Later on, when Twonky supports additional tags, you should be able to distinguish between the different aspects of a compilation album even better (album artist, track artist....). If your computer would refrain from moving the files ("write protected") you have to stop Twonky Server in "Windows Services" and restart it once you're done.
One big caveat: do NOT name the compilation folder with an abbreviation or two words like various artists - Twonky will file everthing as a compilation, that contains these letters. For example, if you name the compilations-folder VA for Various artists, then ANY folder like f.e. "Christian Kjellvander" will be treated like a compilation. Even naming it various artists failed with me sometimes, since an album named "an artist's view on the music of Chopin" was filed as a compilation.
So, with naming it compilation, you should be off fine.
Hope that helps...

[Kanabeanz]

Thank you for that suggestion. I have done just that with my Various Artists folder. I guess my new problem is where I now find these albums. I moved 5 albums across to a new folder called "Compilation", set Twonky Media as suggested, restarted the server and now I cannot find the album titles on the Linn GUI.

I have looked for Compilations in all my various Music Tree combinations on the GUI and cannot see these 5 albums. I also set up Folder as one of my music tree options and I can all the other folders at the same level apart from the one named Compilations when viewing via the LinnGUI and the Nokia N800 MediaServer. The artist do not appear under "Various Artist" nor "Compilations!

What simple thing am I missing

[dvdr]

First of all, try to rescan your library - there's a button under "sharing" to do that - just to make sure, Twonky indexed your new structure (since you shut the server off (and scanning most probably was set to -1) it could not notice, that you moved files around).
Then, you should find your compilations always under the term "Various".

If you have a music tree like genre/artist/album: browse genre, and you will see all your artists, and one of these artists will be called "Various". There you should find your compilations matching the chosen genre with the album titles listed.
If you have a music tree like artist/album: browse artists and look for the entry "Various". There you'll find your compilations. So Twonky does not count in the differents artists, that you set for each title of your compilations individually, but just files them under "Various". Otherwise (if these albums were NOT inside the "Compilations" folder) you would never find the whole album, but you would get each track filed under another artist - the artist's name in the "artist" tag.

As long, as Twonky does not support the tags "Album Artist" and "Original Artist" and "composer" with flac-files, there's no way to distinguish any further. But later on - IF Twonky SHOULD support these additional tags in future versions - you might be able to do the following (example):
You have a compilation with songs, that originally were sung by Abba, but now were re-arranged by let's say by Phil Collins and sung by different singers/artists.
The tagging would be the following, then:
- Artist: the artist/singer of each indivdual track
- Album Artist: Phil Collins
- Original Artist: Abba
(- Composer: Abba )
Or with a classical album, containing Piano Concerto 1 by Liszt, Piano Concerto 2 by Chopin, played by Marta Argerich, Liszt being conducted by Maazel and played by the San Francisco Sinfonie, Chopin being conducted by Abbado with the Berlin Sinfonie
- Artist: chose the orchestra for each track individually or set it to Marta Argerich
- Album Artist: Marta Argerich
- Composer: chose the composer for each track individually
- Conductor: chose the conductor for each track indivudually
- Album: chose the title of the whole album

Then, you could build a music-tree in Twonky, that could reflect a different search for that kind of albums/music, for example:
Genre/Composer/Album Artist/Album
or
Genre/Album Artist/Composer/Album
or
Genre/Album Artist/Artist/Album/

I hope, that helped and that you will be able to find "Various" entries....

[Kanabeanz]

Thank you once again. I did set off a Rescan Content after making the changes you suggested and waited around 5 mins before looking yesterday. However on switching on today the albums and the Compilations folders were all there! The rescan with over 7,500 tracks must have taken much longer than the time I waited. I have always had my rescan set to 60 (i.e. every 60 mins), but thank you for pointing out the possible shortfall of using -1 (i.e. rescan when a new track is added) as it is likely to miss a refiling of existing files & folders.

Thank you too for the other suggestions on the music tree structure - I will continue to experiment and await the arrival of Composer & Album Artist, particularly for my classical collection. If you have not already tried the Linn Studio master tracks I would suggest trying them in your Linn set up - the quality is quite breathtaking.