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+--- Thread: HOW-TO synchronize your XBMC Media Center between every room in the house: Lifehacker (/showthread.php?tid=80829)
- mrdally204 - 2011-06-29 12:10
The 2 machines were at one time independently updated and such, meaning they both had their own thumbs ect. All I did was shared the servers original thumbs folder. On the client machine, renamed its original thumbs (B) to something else, then symlinked to the servers shared. So when it came to testing, all I did was delete the symlink, and renamed (B) to its original folder, thus restoring local thumbs to the client machine. Bla!
I just ran it again with debugging on if anyone cares to look at it. I believe the DB query starts around 418.
Significant numbers I see are
Time for actual SQL query = 348
Time to retrieve movies from dataset = 5912
SMH
http://pastebin.com/PK68j5YK
- NorDemoniac - 2011-06-29 12:20
Please excuse me if this has been answered before;
I have set up a WHS 2011 server containing all the media + Ember & MIP as Media Managers. They do now have covers, fanart etc. for all my movies. I've also set up a MySQL database, which is working.
My problem;
- The first client is connected normally, adding sources etc, and it scrapes from the WHS 2011 server. Everything is there, everything is working (NICE :nod
- The second client is missing all the cover art + thumbnails. If I right click a movie, click information, then go back again the cover appears! The fanart is there, and also the description But I can't do this manually on all those movies on several clients - then the whole point is gone. All my TV-show banners were also gone, but they suddenly appeared after watching a couple of shows(
). The season covers are still gone - well, they got replaced by the banner somehow, which looks awful. All thumbnails missing (it has got a random image from the show...)My theory;
- XBMC still store thumbnails and covers locally. Even though Media Manager has got all the information stored on my servers drive (fanart etc), XBMC needs to download these from my server and put the information in the Thumbnails file in Userdata (except fanart). Meaning that the client doing the scraping will get the information in thumbnail, which again means that even though I use a media manager to store the data on the server, I will still need a thumbnail share with symbolic links to get the covers and thumbnails correctly on all clients.
This would mean scraping with one computer, move thumbnails over to a share on the server, then create a shortcut on all clients, even though I have Media Managers scraping for me...right?
Can someone please clear this up for me? Reading lifehackers guide made Media Managers seem like an alternative for the symbolic links.
- RockDawg - 2011-06-29 14:23
NorDemoniac Wrote:Can someone please clear this up for me? Reading lifehackers guide made Media Managers seem like an alternative for the symbolic links.
You must have symlinks or something equivalent for you artwork to work properly across multiple machines. Read my last post and it explains why. You must have the Thumbnail folder from all your XBMC's pointing to the same Thumbnail folder. Otherwise when you update the library, only the machine you performed the update on will show the artwork.
- NorDemoniac - 2011-06-29 14:35
Quote:The thumbnails directory is where XBMC looks for covers/thumbs for all the media it displays. When you scan content in to your library, XBMC either scrapes the artwork from the net or reads it from a file in your movie folder and then puts a copy in the thumbnails folder. From there on out it will retrieve the image from the thumbnails directory, not the file in your movie folder.
In other words, I'm right in my last post?
Even though media manager has downloaded all the information on my server, XBMC will ONLY get this information while doing the initial scraping, and store it locally, meaning the other clients which doesn't scrape (because it's already in the library) will not get their correct covers + thumbs.
So - Lifehacker is a bit wrong when they write their article like the Media Manager being an alternative to creating a share for Thumbnails?
So the only thing I now have to do, is to copy out the thumbnails from the "perfectly working" client to the server, and then setup a share + shortcuts, and everyone's happy?
- RockDawg - 2011-06-29 14:55
NorDemoniac Wrote:In other words, I'm right in my last post?
Even though media manager has downloaded all the information on my server, XBMC will ONLY get this information while doing the initial scraping,and store it locally, meaning the other clients which doesn't scrape (because it's already in the library) will not get their correct covers + thumbs.
Correct.
Quote:So - Lifehacker is a bit wrong when they write their article like the Media Manager being an alternative to creating a share for Thumbnails?
I don't know, I didn't read their article.
Quote:So the only thing I now have to do, is to copy out the thumbnails from the "perfectly working" client to the server, and then setup a share + shortcuts, and everyone's happy?
Yes, if by shortcuts you mean symlinks. If I remember correctly, you need to delete or rename the existing Thumbnail folder on each machine before creating the symilinks or they won't be created.
- NorDemoniac - 2011-06-29 15:18
Update - I read a bit about this now, and could see that symlinks and shortcuts are absolutely not the same. Symlinking is kinda like making a folder, which is acting like normal local folder, but in reality you're saving on another directory (including network) right?
Btw. this is from Lifehacker:
Quote:One current shortcoming with the database system—although rumored to be in the pipe for future releases—is that thumbnails and fanart are cached locally and not stored with the database. While creative users in the XBMC forums have come up with solutions to work around this like using symbolic links and moving your thumbnail cache, there is a much easier solution. We'd strongly recommend you go check out our guide to whipping your movie and TV show art into shape for XBMC.
Very confusing!
Anyways; I will create the symlinks, or shortcuts...or whatever, and see if that solves the problem.
Thank you for your help! This has cleared up a couple of things for me (and hopefully for others...)
- NorDemoniac - 2011-06-30 10:42
Moved the Thumbnails folder from the working client to a share on the server, then created a simple batch script that created a symlink + advancedsettings.XML. Ran the script on all clients, everything is now perfect!
- kiboy6 - 2011-07-05 10:30
Is there any reason not to just create a symbolic link to the main machine's Appdata folder for all machines on the network? (ie not bothering with MySQL at all)
This works just fine for me, albeit with a noticeable slow down. Would the slow down be avoided if I went down the MySQL route? Or is that inevitable if sharing a large database with 100s of images over the network?
- clambert - 2011-07-05 13:38
Oddly enough after sharing the Thumbnails on my WHS server, I have been having random issue where the show or movie just stops. Sometimes by itself but more often after I pause it or bring up the info during playback. I need to resume playback to continue where I left off.
Not sure why this would be affecting anything. It's happening on the two boxes I touched (Windows 7 & Ubuntu). Seems like a coincidence that it started happening after I made the change but it could be unrelated. I'm going to revert one of them back and see what happens.
Anyone else have this issue happen to them?
- Xenomes - 2011-07-06 16:14
@clambert
I have the issue to, but only at pause and only on my Linux system.