[halfmoon61]

I had WHS 2011 prior and it worked fine for awhile, started getting connection problems and being it was just a desktop I converted to a file/ media server I bought a dedicated NAS. A Synology DS412+, my home network connects fine for files and all computers are running Win 7 64 Home Premium. One desktop running Win 7 Professional will be added, it was the old server and I intend to make it into a game machine. The computer connected to my TV is an Acer AspireRevo AR3700-U3002 dedicated as an HTPC, hard wired to the LAN.
My problems are no music plays. Album art scraped but I can't get sound no matter what setting I set in the audio. Playlist naturally won't work either. My files are WMA, do I need to change this? If so what file will XBMC read?
I can play a movie, but no metadata downloads, I used Media Companion to do the scraping and it did. I can't get it into XBMC, I read something about editing an XML file, but I'm no programer.
I followed the Frodo guide from Henry Ford, when I add a source and hit OK I don't get the next screen to set content. Not on movies, photos or music. The odd thing is on photo or music if I press C at the root I get a dialog to change media, On the movie tab it doesn't exist.
Appreciate any help, I've been fighting this for weeks and searching here and the Wiki hasn't given me the answers I seek. I'm using the latest release on the home page for Windows, Frodo 12.2.
TIA,Perry

[PatK]

Henry Ford's guide is how we get rolling, but sometimes the order of things is not followed or misinterpreted, you have touched on so many issues I wouldn't have a clue to help out the clueless. You didn't mention O/S the hardware, Debug Log etc..It's clear you are running XBMC so I'll make the presumption it runs well if you set it up well. So one step at a time... don't get frustrated, don't move ahead beyond what you know. The first thing would be to see if a local (not on the NAS) video plays with sound on your HTPC then hook it up to a TV and see if it all works properly there... then you can start attaching audio amps, and nas devices. Stop using 3rd party add-ons and scrapers.... XBMC does all this just fine with the latest stable builds, otherwise address your scraping issues to the 3rd party author.

Read through these alternative information links, the error of your ways will be revealed.

http://lifehacker.com/5536963/the-ultima...dia-center
http://lifehacker.com/5900626/create-a-k...lete-guide

The come back to this forum and browse through our online wiki, for that final polish.

[halfmoon61]

Thanks for the links, I'll read up some more. As for the OS & hardware XBMC is on a Acer AspireRevo AR3700 with Win 7 Home Premium hooked directly to my TV. Video plays fine, just no metadata for the movie, all I see is the title and a box where the front of a DVD should be. Music doesn't play at all. I couldn't make any sense out of the debug log and didn't know if I should post that here. I've even uninstalled/ reinstalled several times and same problems persist. Thanks again for the links.

[PatK]

As mentioned one step at a time... so we have some limited success with the initial install when hooked directly to a TV (my presumption is that audio also works fine?) just no meta data.... which looks like you have not allowed or done a scrap for the meta data yet... and do not have a library of either music or movies...

Next step is to click on the movies button from the home page.... do all your movies show up or no?

No means that your movies haven't yet been scraped and no library exists... refer to the above links to establish a library or go to the wiki (link at the top of the page.... http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=First_time_user ) and go over the Adding music to the library and Adding videos to the library, let's see if we can get meta data into your folders.

You need to specify a source, choose your scraper (universal is the way to go here) and set some parmeters, allow the scan time to scrap out the data from the web..... Note: most first time users have wild names for their files e.g. Jame Bond last of Ian flemmings good ones in hD1080p DVD disk etc... which the scraper will barf on.... it should be named close to what is in the meta-database with date. Use theRenamer to clean up any naming issues prior to the scrape. Leave methe results here for the next step.

[halfmoon61]

Well, I ripped my music library again in Flac to get away from the wma files. They must have been corrupted because they were the same size as the Flac files I have now. Weird since wma is lossy.
Photo slide shows play fine. Movies play fine with audio, watching a test now. Music is now playing, was jamming to some test files while I ripped the rest of my library. Even the playlist work, except a regular one but I haven't read up on them yet so I think it's me. The smart playlist work fine.
Still no meta data, I picked the universal scraper but didn't see where I could set parameters. I'll look into that tomorrow.
Starting to like this program more, looks like I just need some tweaking.
My file names should be right, \movie (date)\ filename.mkv I also have fanart and poster jpg with an nfo file and a folder with the actor jpg so I'm not sure why I don't see the metadata since those files are what I need, I think anyway.
I'll look into the renamer also just to make sure the file names are correct.
Thanks

[halfmoon61]

Okay, used the rename tool and it deleted the jpg and nfo files stored with the movies. The movie file name was left alone so I had that right. I changed to the Aeon skin and had my movies in videos. I noticed a movies tab so I moved my movies to that tab, updated the library and now I have meta data. At least the front poster so that's a step in the right direction. I would like the whole cover, probably a setting I'm missing. Not sure where those files are, the only thing in the movie folder is the mkv container, so I don't know where the meta data files are kept. Not sure what the video folder is for, maybe home movies? Aeon seems a bit easier to navigate than the default skin, haven't tried any of the others yet.

[PatK]

The meta-data is stored within XBMC internally, you can see this data if you export your library as separate files (this data is not used, unless you re-fresh the srape and choose the local data [this is how 3rd party scrapers like MC get their meta-data into XBMC]). I'm sure you'll catch on as your get more familiar with the program and various skins. Key here is to have fun...