Problems on scanning Media Directories

[klaetsch]

OK. where do i start? There are sooo many bugs in that piece of software, I can't believe I really paid for it.

Maybe I first start with my configuration:

TwonkyMedia version: Server 5.1.2
Server hardware: Lifebook S7020 with 2 GB RAM, 160 GB Harddisk (logged in as administrator)
Operating System: Windows 7, 32 bit, Premium Home
If you are running as a system service (Windows only): Don't know. Just followed standard installation
Client(s) and their software version: PS3, Firefox 3.5
Type(s) of media you are having problems with: all
How many files you have in your database: Music: around 38000 titles; Movies: around 600; Pictures: around 45000
Network type (Wired/Wireless): Wired

So, maybe first I'll start with a success story. After installation of TMS my Pictures and Movie folder were scanned correctly, but the Music was ignored by TMS. I have a folder structure where I have my albums in Music-> A -> |all interprets starting with A| -> albums. This for all digits and characters. As said, Music was totally ignored by TMS when using only the root folder "Music". I then made the effort and added each digit and character folder to TMS as a single folder. At least the folders were now scanned.

BUT -

now my Pictures and Videos disappeared. Only from time to time (of course not reproducable) the folders are scanned. Great stuff Twonky! And it got even worse. TMS is now constantly scanning the folders (OK, I set the rescan to -1 so it should do that, but should it always delete all entries beforehand?!). Once it shows some numbers of files in the config page it then resets everything to 0 so no files are in the database anymore. It then starts all over again. Of course CPU usage then is all the time on 100%. This is a never ending story, making TMS UNUSABLE! And yes - I DID a database rebuild, but it did not help.

Maybe I should mention that my TMS installation still shows "Trial version", EVEN THOUGH I bought this version with good money AND provided the CORRECT key in the config. Of course it keeps saying "invalid license key". I wrote already to the support team, but why should they answer?! It's just a customer and we already have his money.

FYI: Some months ago I had TMS 4.x installed on Win XP with the same amount of files and it worked flawlessly.

[D034599]

Hi there,
I just see that you have also some issues settting up Twonky.
I posted some seconds after you did

I had the same behaviour of constant scanning of media files. In my case, it was just music. After almost stopping to use Twonky I decided to let the log-file running. There it was telling me when the server restarted again with scanning. In my case it was in a certain music directory. this directory caused twonky to crash (there was even an eventlog entry for that). After removing the directory from the shared folder, it was working perfectly.
I am stuck now on another issue, but at least the full media scan works.

In my case the temp_playlist files are taking a massive amount of time after the initial scan...

I hope that helps a bit!

Cheers and a good start into 2010,
Dennis

[klaetsch]

Hey Dennis,

thanks 4 your reply! At least I now know I am not alone here.

Would you know how that entry was named which reported you there was an error? The log file is so huge (around 80.000 files are included) that it is hard for me to identify a possibly erroneous one. Using the search function when looking through the file could help me.

But do you know if it is really intended that during a rescan all entries which have been correctly added are deleted? I find that quite strange.

Thanks in advance and have great 2010!
Marcel

[jimmynew]

I can not get the scan to pick up any music in any of the directories I am pointing to. I have tried to re-scan several times but nothing is showing up. I am working with version 5.1.2 on a Mac G5. Anyone have any thoughts?


Thanks

[radler64]

Folks,

I am brand new at TwonkyMediaServer but regarding your problems, I found out:
- Start the web interface, goto "Media Browser" and see what Twonky has found.
In my situation there are all files in it.
- If it does not show the files on the screen on your device, it is a problem of your device.
In my situation, with a Samsung TV as client, I have to go back to the very first main menu of the TV to switch from showing videos to music (for instance).
(Step 1) So my main meny shows Movie, Photo, Music --> I press Movie
(Step 2) Than I see Video, Photo, Music again --> I choose Video --> than I can see all my movies.
If I want to change from Video to Music, I have to go back to Step 1 -- Just doing it on Step 2 does NOT help.
Using this approach, took away all problems which I have had and which where more or less all yours.
Regards
Dieter

[klaetsch]

Hi,

I am one step further. Dennis hint was a great help. As I wrote my files are in afolder structure where interpretes starting with a certain character have there own folder. So 26 folder + 10 for the digits. I first deactivated all folders and added each one one by one to the library to see if it is picked up correctly without any rescan. This way I found out that only one folder seems to be erroneous. Luckily it was one folder containing not too much music. So out of the 36 folders 35 are now in the library. Not too bad.

But of course this is not the end. Just to name SOME of the remaining problems:

1: My PS3 shows Twonly as server but says that there are no files for Videos and Pictures (even though I can see and display them via another PC)
2: My PS3 say for Music: "Incompatible data" (how can that be with MP3?)
3: My license key is still nt considered as valid.
4: Transcoding of Videos and MP3 is currently "grayed out". Will try to install ffmpeg and LAME encoder to see if that helps.

It's a shame that oviously a running piece of software (had TMS 4.x working without any problems) was "further developed" in a way that it is hardly usuable any more. But I am sure Twonky will answer: "This ís not a bug, it's a feature."

[D034599]

Hi Marcel,

nice to hear that my hint was helping In my case, I was just trying to find out when the server crashed. I noticed that the rescan was happening somewhere every 2 hours. So I decided to check my eventlog and found a TwonkyServer.exe crash every 2 hours.
I just activated the logging and checked the last added file at the exact time when the crash in eventlog happened.
I took out this exact folder out of my music directory and voila: working perfectly.

Regarding your other issues there are some things popping into my mind (but those are of course just plain guesses)
The remaining license key issue could be something related to authorizations. Did you try to run Twonky in Admin mode? I know, sounds kind of basic, but sometimes it is the easiest things that help Can you see the license key in the ini file as well as on the http://serverip:9000 page? if it is indeed visible everywhere and is still telling you, that it is not valid, I would assume that there is somehow a disconnect between the application and the ini. Another thing could be, that there happened a plain mistake during the key generation... would not be the first time that it happened. If there is no reply at all from the twonky team regarding this, just drop me a PM and I will send you my license key so that you can try if it is key related or a bug

Regarding the PS3 I made the experience that there is no native UPNP in place. I played around a bit with firewalls and open ports and managed to get music working on the PS3. Pretty well indeed. I do not know exactly anymore which ports, but I would recommend to deactivate the firewall on you machine and check if it works then.
For video I had quite a lot of issues as well. First of all, transcoding only worked for me with the Visual C++ 2005 runtime installed on the server. Even this only worked after a complete de-install of the components (both, initial runtime plus SP1 runtime).
The problem seems to be, that there indeed is a bug in the product regarding transcoding. I managed to solve some error messages around it, but the key issue seems to be the following event logs (at least in my case):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ereignistyp: Fehler
Ereignisquelle: SideBySide
Ereigniskategorie: Keine
Ereigniskennung: 32
Beschreibung:
Abhängige Assemblierung "Microsoft.VC80.CRT" konnte nicht gefunden werden. "Last Error": Die referenzierte Assemblierung ist nicht auf dem Computer installiert.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ereignistyp: Fehler
Ereignisquelle: SideBySide
Ereigniskategorie: Keine
Ereigniskennung: 59
Computer: HOMEMEDIASERVER
Beschreibung:
Resolve Partial Assembly ist für Microsoft.VC80.CRT fehlgeschlagen. Referenzfehlermeldung: Die referenzierte Assemblierung ist nicht auf dem Computer installiert.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ereignistyp: Fehler
Ereignisquelle: SideBySide
Ereigniskategorie: Keine
Ereigniskennung: 59
Computer: HOMEMEDIASERVER
Beschreibung:
Generate Activation Context ist für C:\Programme\TwonkyMedia\wmdrmdll.dll fehlgeschlagen. Referenzfehlermeldung: Die referenzierte Assemblierung ist nicht auf dem Computer installiert.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those happen everytime I restart the server. I guess we have to play around a bit with the Visual C++ 2005 Runtime in your case as well for transcoding.
For video from my media server to the PS3 I decided to move away from Twonky to PS3 media server. There you have issues as well and a pretty complicated config, but it worked better in my environment. So I am using twonky for music and PS3MS for the video related part.

Maybe another idea to sort some issues out.
I used on older version of twonky before. I decided to deinstall it, and install the newest one. It seems that Twonky does not deinstall/delete the contents of the twonky server folder under /all users/application data/ during this process. When I recognized this, I decided to deinstall twonky again, renaming this folder and install it again.
I of course created a new folder with completely new ini and temp objects. This solved some issues for me.
In addition I think it is important that the DB file is located in the DB folder with in this structure. In my initial config, it somehow ended up directly in the TwonkyServer folder, which caused some issues.

Just my 2 cents, and again, plain guesses...
Sorry that I do not have more "definitive" answers...

Cheers,
Dennis

PS. my scan now finished after 44!!!!!!!!!!! hours of runtime, spending 42 hours of plain interpreting the temp_playlist files in the DB folder. If anybody has any idea about why this process takes that long... every help is very much appreciated

[nathan_h]

I can not get the scan to pick up any music in any of the directories I am pointing to. I have tried to re-scan several times but nothing is showing up. I am working with version 5.1.2 on a Mac G5. Anyone have any thoughts?


Thanks

Have you found a solution to this problem? I am having the same trouble with 5.1.2 on Windows 7 32 bit.