MBC / freenas

[grizlyadams 19]

Hi,

 

I'm a supporter of both MB2 and MB3. I installed MB on a freenas box and MBC on my WMC PC. I've spent hours and hours trying to get MB3/MBC/WMC to work as well as my MB2/WMC config did  - I'm on the verge of dumping MB3. It just seems so overly complicated to get playback to work  like it did in WMC/MB2   The learning curve is steep and I'm losing the will to continue.Last resort is to ask here.

 

I've set up samba shares tothe media locations and I've configured the MB libraries to local mounts in freenas (I'm assuming that's how it should be done?) - I also assume that the samba shares have nothing to do with MB3, but I need access to the freenas to put the media files in there from another windows pc

 

from the WMC pc I can open files in the samba shares and play them in WMC perfectly (have shar007 installed - may go back to just lav if MB3 will play to my xbox360)
 

I have 4 media libraries set up (2 movie libs and 2 TV libs) - 2 of them (1 movie lib and one tv lib) play ok in MBC on the WMC pc and the other 2 do not (it looks like they're going to play, but then I just get a blank screen. on the ones that do play I can skip forward on some but can't on others (I can skip forward in all of them if I play them from the samba share in WMC)

video quality - seems poor - are all videos streamed and not played direct?

 

I just want to store my files on a nas and play them in my WMC. it seems a simple thing, but its proving far from simple for me.

 

help.

 

Edited November 29, 2014 by grizlyadams

[grizlyadams 19]

Ok - I've got the playback to work with what appears to be direct connection ie not streamed, by setting up path redirects. That has also solved the skip forward issue on mkv files.

 

seems to be working ok at the moment - family test will prove it in the next few days.

 

I liked MB2's multiple sources (some remote and some local to the WMC pc. I guess I could implement that by adding a library location that is on the WMC pc - but that seems a bit round robin and convoluted, so will move all the local stuff to the nas

 

Have other questions, but won't clutter this one any more.

[ebr 16172]

As you found out, your issue was the way you defined your library.  When you defined your library on the server using local drive letters/mounts, there was no way for the WMC machine to access those files - so it tried to stream them which will only work marginally in a player as old as WMC.

 

So, you need to ether define the paths initially as UNC or use the Path Substitution feature that was right there under where you defined them in the server.

[grizlyadams 19]

ebr, on 29 Nov 2014 - 5:05 PM, said:

As you found out, your issue was the way you defined your library.  When you defined your library on the server using local drive letters/mounts, there was no way for the WMC machine to access those files - so it tried to stream them which will only work marginally in a player as old as WMC.

 

So, you need to ether define the paths initially as UNC or use the Path Substitution feature that was right there under where you defined them in the server.

 

 

Hi,

 

thanks for the reply, but I couldn't set the library paths up as UNC paths (that's what I tried initially and seemed the most logical to me - it's why I set up the samba shares)  - I just get "the path does not exist" on every path I try (the samba shares on the freenas box, the shares on a windows server on the same network, shares on the WMC box)  using both hostnames and ip addresses - nothing is found.

 

I assumed that was by design and I was doing something wrong. The only way I could get to see the libraries on the freenas box was to mount them in the mediabrowser jail.I can see them from everything else on the network, but when defining media locations for a media folder in the MB admin interface, it finds nothing on the network by using UNC paths.

 

My 360 extender now doesn't work with this config, I get a "cannot find file" message.

 

cheers

 

Griz