My feedback from my initial movie server usage

[ruddygore]

First let me say I 've been a DVDFab customer for a long time. I was (am) very excited to learn about the movie server and pre-ordered one. I appreciate how DVDFab has been making updates and addressing issues as they are identified.

My post is intended to provide feedback and hopefully get some changes made in upcoming releases.

My usage:
- I am looking to replace 5 old streaming boxes I have with new DVDFab movie servers. I have my first movie server and have been working with it to get working.

My setup:
- I have my movie library on a NAS box. I have 700+ movie and videos already in my library. I want to use the Movie server to access this library and stream the videos. I do not plan to store any of my library on the internal HDD.

My library includes:
- DVD & Blu-ray commercial disks copied/ripped with DVDFab
- TV Series created with DVD Fab
- Videos – made from DVDs that are not movies (i.e. like exercise videos)
- Cartoons – have a large collection of cartoons.

As I have started using the movie server I have encountered some challenges issues – summarized below:

NAS support related:

1. Movie server appears to create a “new mount” for NAS each time the movie server gets updated of the NAS reboots.
2. The movie server frequently “loses” the movie information and starts to rescan the library. At 600+ titles this takes a long time. This rescan appears to happen each time the movie server updates or does a power shutdown, the NAS device power cycles.

UI Related:

1. When you select “Movies” off the main screen – it only shows the movies on the internal HDD. It does not show any of the movies connected via network.
2. The UI should provide an option to have a “single view” of your library across all connected sources (internal HDD, USB connected devices, network connected devices). The user (i.e. my kids) should not have to be experts on where movies are physically stored in order to find and watch them.
3. Local Videos – You have to create a unique shortcut on this screen for each NAS connection point you have. For example – I have my movies, TV series, cartoons, etc in separate directory trees on my NAS. I have to create a unique connection for each on this screen.
4. When sorting/ordering movies – please provide the option to ignore “A”, “The” at the start of a movie title when alphabetizing.
5. Local Videos – I haven’t been able to find a way to edit the icons on this screen. For example – I would like to change the icon, the name, the sort order etc. I would also like to be able to ‘grid’ the icons so that they are all visible without so much horizontal scrolling.

Metadata related

1. Where is the metadata stored? (movie info, posters, backgrounds, etc) It appears the movie server is attempting to download this metadata frequently from the internet. Movie server needs to be able to operate in the absence of a live internet connection. We frequently lose internet connectivity. Also – many people have metered internet connections. No reason to continually pull the metadata information.
2. Need a way to manually edit or even create/add metadata for movies from a PC. There are serveral movies/videos that are not directly represented on TheMovieDB.org. This includes special editions of movies (i.e. like 25^th Anniversary editions, Director’s Cut’s, etc), non-feature film videos (i.e. like exercise videos, documentaries, etc, cartoons).

Recommendation: Store the Metadata on the device, in the folder where the movie/video/disc file is stored. Makes it easy to find/edit – makes it easy for the movie server to find/display.


Thanks for the ongoing work and support. Really excited about the movie server.


Bruce

[signals]

Thanks for the solid feedback Bruce. Some of the issues you raised are known and hopefully can be addressed soon, the staff works daily on new features and improvements, as reflected in all the updates so far. I am really enjoying mine.

To answer a few of your points, the metadata comes along with the output from DVDFab for new content, I am not sure how it is handled for existing material such as you have other than by download. You can edit the metadata for each title using the controls in the MS app (see this post ) and you can change/edit all the metadata for a particular title if you click on this icon

instead of the "..." (but only if it is already on the poster wall).

[ruddygore]

Thanks for the quick reply.

On the meta-data editing - thanks for the pointer on the Edit icon. I had read the post and had fixed several items using the "...".

Would really appreciate more information on the metadata storage, retreival, etc for existing libraries. I have literally several hundred hours of work into ripping my Blu-ray and DVD collection. Would like to understand how to get the metadata correct without having to re-rip all the files using dvdfab10.

Thanks again.