Serviio

Forgive me if this is a stupid question...
Would it be possible to have an additional option/mode in Serviio to access it without having to use the library?

My thinking is that if it could be done, the only option presented would be "Folders" (as there's no library to reference).
When each folder is selected, the sub-folders and files are read on-the-fly.
That way, it would be possible to access all files without needing to build/update/refresh the library.

Is that at all possible?

nope the library is required part of how DLNA works

This is the PS3 Media Server strategy...slower and CPU load.

it would be possible but we'd have to interrogate each file as you browse the folders (to find out what kind of file it is etc), which would make it very slow and unusable. Definitely will not be doing this.

Thanks for the quick answers.
And thanks for such a nice DLNA server.
Keep up the good work.

Does anyone know how Twonky add files to the library?

They do a setting where you enter "-1" rather than how many minutes Twonky checks any file updates, but it checks it realtime somehow

Is this a feature Serviio can do?

not before Java 7

This is exactly the feature I've been looking for. I have my media library meticulously organized, and I was previously using simple shared folders to serve up my files, but for a variety of reasons, this is no longer feasible. All I need is a DLNA server to enumerate files in folders under the designated roots and serve them up with no metadata whatsoever (except file name). Everything under a given root would be the same media type.

I'm also a software developer myself, so if Serviio has any kind of plug-in capability, I'd be interested in attempting to write something to accomplish this.

Thanks,
Steve.

You can do this by:
- disabling Descriptive metadata (Metadata tab)
- browsing for your content via the Folders category
- you can also disable most of the other Categories on the Presentation tab, if you don't use metadata - they will be mostly empty

Cool. This is damn close to my ideal solution. If I could get rid of the database and have files listed live, that's the last mile. No point in keeping a database if there is no metadata, right?

Thanks for responding so fast.

My other thought was to write a small RSS/ATOM feed app that listed the contents of each folder (Can you link to another feed from a feed?). Then if I could turn the feed expiry interval down to 0, it could simulate actually browsing the folders.

You need the DB to have any sort of performance to browse your files. There might not be descriptive metadata, but you still need to know about the file's technical metadata (codecs, resulution, bitrate) and to extract this on-the-fly for each file in your folder would become pretty horendeous.

It's still a nightmare for huge libraries.

With all mentioned above done (metadata disabled etc), it took almost 28 hours for Serviio to add 2TB folder with mixed content (video, mp3, jpg's) to the library on not very weak computer (i7,32GB, SSD512GB, HDD2x4TB). One can argue that that's one time only job, and I can almost agree with that, but after library is finally build, when I copy just one new file to same 2TB shared folder and force library update, Serviio took 27 minutes (!!!) to publish the file to the client TV's. For me personaly, when I add a new file to the shared folder and press Force Update, I almost certainly wish to watch the file immediately, not half hour later.

On the other hand, "oShare", simple free DLNA sever takes only 23 seconds to scan same 2TB folder and publish its content, while newly added files are visible effectively immediately.

See my point?

I understand how metadata and various sorting/display/navigation/etc options can be important for some or many people, but there are also people like me who dont need all of that and just want to access their media content as soon and easy as possible.

In my opinion too Serviio shall have an option to switch to some kind of fast On-The-Fly folder/file access mode based on media filename extension only (mkv,mp4,avi,mpg,mp3,jpg...), without any prior transcoding, metadata gathering, content analyzing etc etc etc.

Regarding content analyzing (codecs, resolution, bitrate etc) - let the client devices take care of that. If the file is invalid or unplayable by device, device will report an error or...freeze. If it do so from time to time, no biggy - we'll restart the device, knowing that something's wrong with particular file.

It should not take anywhere close to 27 minutes to add a file. Do you have automatic updates off? (ie why are you doing the force refresh).

With automatic updates, the OS should notify Serviio and the operation would be immediate. Fort forced updates it checks the DB against existing files. So I'm not sure if the hdd access where your media is is limited or slow?

True, automatic updates were off, because I wasn't sure if automatic updates will trigger searching for metadata updates for existing library content (which I would like to avoid very much).

Hdd access is ok (as I say, oShare took only 23 seconds to scan and publish the entire 2TB content trough DLNA).

Unfortunately, after those 27 minutes to add one file, I uninstall the Serviio.

I will try to install it again and try adding a new file to huge library with Automatic updates on, with hope that building the 2TB library from 2TB content (more than 20,000 files) would not take more than a day this time (for that I'm not so sure). Any hints how to speed up adding the large folders/drives to library? Have no interest for any kind of metadata whatsoever, just need folders and filenames to be displayed on my TVs, so I can play them.

I would like the ability to optionally display the filename rather than what the metadata thinks the title should be. I have had too many TV episode titles replaced with porn titles for whatever reason. It thinks Big Bang Theory is a porn *series*. Being able to search via metadata and have categories is great, but not at that expense And oh my god those thumbnails

Tried again with small 25GB folder, adding new file works instantly with automatic updates on.
Expecting the same with the big one.
Thnx. Sorry for the noise.

if you don't need metadata, deselect the relevant checkboxes on the Matadata tab. and also uncheck Retrieve descriptive metadata for your shared folders.