External Devices Multiple DMS playing movies via network question

[tcsnguy]

I have recently purchased a 2nd DMS for another TV in my house. I have an 8TB hard drive in the original DMS and nothing in the 2nd one. I want to be able to stream the movies and content from the DMS with the hard drive to the one that doesn't have one. I can add the location of the content of the 1st one to the library on the 2nd smb://Device Name/share/sata/sata2 and it shows all of the movies and TV shows. However when I go to play anything, it times out and gives me a playback error. Both DMS devices are on. Is this a known issue with 2.0.2.0 or if there another setting I'm missing? I figured if the 2nd DMS can find and add the movies to the library then it should be able to play them. I know it's not the network because I had both devices next to my router and next to each other for testing and nothing worked. Thanks

[jimczyz]

I can play from my first to my second one using search network. On the second one it shows me everything on the first and it plays it. My second one is running v2020.

[tcsnguy]

Thanks for the quick response jimczyz. I will try it out. Do you have the library on the 2nd one pointing to the first one? Or are you just searching network? Thanks

[tcsnguy]

Jimczyz, I appreciate your quick response but your solution did not work for me. I tried the Search Network feature under the videos section and found the 1st DMS with the movies on it listed. At the bottom of the screen when it is highlighted it shows SMB://ANDROID_NAME. When I select that it just opens a blank page with the folder and two dots at the top to go back and at the bottom it now says SMB:// with nothing after it. I connected both DMSs via Ethernet just to rule out any network issue and I still can't play anything on my 2nd DMS. I also stopped and started Samba on each DMS to see if that would work and still nothing. I just find it weird that I can find the movies and tv shows and add them to my library in the library section, but I can't play anything. If I take the hard drive out and put it in the 2nd one it will work fine, but I'm trying to avoid having to pull the hard drive out and move it every time I want to watch a movie. Any other suggestions? Thanks

[jimczyz]

I'm sorry that didn't work for you. Maybe it's because I have server number 1 still running v1010.

[tcsnguy]

Yeah both of my servers are running 2.0.2.0. Has anyone else come across this problem or have a possible solution? Thanks

[tcsnguy]

I have a feedback ID # that was created when I tried to watch a movie and it told me a playback error. FEEDBACK # 177589. I also noticed that when adding the 1st DMS path to my library it showed smb:// as all lower case. I am able to navigate to the folder and add it to my library, however I can't play it from my 2nd DMS. When I go to VIDEOS and SEARCH NETWORK on my 2nd DMS as jimczyz suggested above it shows as uppercase SMB:// and it won't show any folders on my 1st DMS. Not sure if case matters but I know on some applications upper and lower case letters are considered different characters since they are different byte sizes and ASCII characters. If anyone has any suggestions or the same problem please reply here. I can create a log file if needed. Thanks

[tcsnguy]

A few updates on this issue. I am still not able to play anything off of the 1st server via network onto my 2nd server. I totally reset the 2nd server and tried to add an individual movie from the 1st server's hard drive to the 2nd server's library, (a regular DVD). The 2nd server found the movie and added to the library, however when trying to play the movie it came back with another playback error. I have included a log for this error. Log1 is regarding this issue. I then took the hard drive out of the 1st server and put it in the 2nd server and it detected all of the movies and added them to the library. I was then able to play the movies on my 2nd server off the hard drive. I have included a log of this as well. It is labeled log2. I am still at a loss as to why I can't play any movies from 1st server to my 2nd via network. I can add movies to my library but they wont play. I am going to try playing movies from my 2nd server onto my 1st server via network to see what server is at fault. If anyone has any suggestions or has the same issue, please reply here. Thanks

[tcsnguy]

I put my hard drive into my 2nd server and on my 1st server was able to add the movies to the library via the network. I created a feedback id of 155892 regarding this playback error. I have also another log file from the 1st server after this error happened, however it is too big to attach here (4MB), so I can send this logfile via email if it is needed. So this seems to possibly be an error with 2.0.2.0. itself as I cannot stream from either device. Thanks.

[TRJ]

Although I have no experience with the concern (i.e. I don't have a second one), I thought the server required a hard drive, even if your not using the drive. I noted your original post suggested there was no drive in the second one. Have you tried adding a drive just in case?

[tcsnguy]

No I have not. I am going to try a hard drive in the 2nd one tomorrow to see if it makes a difference. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll let you know. I'm also going to try streaming a movie from my computer to the 2nd and 1st servers to see if that works. If that works then I know is a server to server issue.

[TRJ]

As an FYI....I've put all mine on a network drive and really haven't used the internal drive. My collection would never fit on the maximum allowed size without compression or limitations that I didn't want. Works well so far, but my suggestion if you do use NAS is to ensure you have Gbps speeds across your network and not just 100 Mbps. Note that your network will tend to be limited by the slowest connection, so if you have any 100 Mbps devices connected, this could limit your throughput.

Also - as I was setting my system up, I originally used USB drives instead. These also work well, but have some different issues such as reconnecting at power up, etc. that I noticed. I also had an issue with using multiple USB drives and a USB hub - where depending which drive started up first, could potentially duplicate your collection.

Both worked fairly well but so far I'm happy with the NAS route. Also note that when I moved from the USB drives to NAS, the media server had to rebuild the collection (so any changes you made may have been lost) and manually delete the old entries. This is fine for a few movies, but at several hundred or potentially much more can be a real pain.

Hope that adding the drive magically resolves your issues!!

TRJ

[tcsnguy]

I was thinking of adding an NAS at some point. It would make it easier for all of my devices to pull from one NAS. I have an update on this issue. I did not put a HD into my 2nd server because I wanted to try something regarding the SMB streaming side first. I am trying to eliminate all possibilities. I think it has come down to a DMS to DMS issue (pending the blank hard drive on the 2nd one, however I don't think that is the issue now). I was able to direct both of my DMS to a shared folder on my PC containing a DVD Video. Both of the Media Servers were able to play the movie via the network (one is wired and one is wireless), both played no problem. I was able to add the movie to my library on both servers. One server has a hard drive and one doesn't. I went through the same process of adding the movie to my library by adding a path and directing the library to the folder. No problems with lag or buffering. I am going to use the built in HiSilicon Troubleshooting player under System Maintenance to see if it will play that way. But most likely looking like a DMS to DMS issue. It seems like whatever server I am trying to play remotely from cant' find the movie on the whatever one has the drive in it,even though I can add them to my library. I created a log for the successful play over network from PC to server, but it is over 2MB so I can't attach here. If anyone wants to help find a difference in a successful and non-successful playback by comparing logs. Thanks everyone for your continued suggestions.

[tcsnguy]

Another update on this issue. I inserted a 1TB empty formatted HD into the 2nd server. No issues with that. However, it is still not playing anything server to server. I went into the HiSilicon Player to see if that would do anything and interestingly when I do a LAN -> All Network search it gives me a blank folder when I try to pull the directory from the 1st server, which is what it was doing under Network Search function so this seems consistent. When I try to pull up a folder list for the 2nd server it says that it can't access the folder. So definitely seems to be something wrong with the 2nd server in regards to network connectivity. I have a feedback ID again for the files playback with an empty hard drive. It is: 115272. Thanks again for everyone's help and any further insight anyone can provide.

[tcsnguy]

I have gone through the process of analyzing both the logs for the unsuccessful movie stream (DVDFab Server to DVDFab Server), and the successful movie stream (PC to DVDFab Server). I am attaching a zip folder with two txt documents in it. One is for the unsuccessful try and one is for the successful try. They have been consolidated and notated for each inconsistency. If anyone else that likes to look at code and analyze errors and/or bugs would like to take a stab and see if they notice any thing like a setting that can be changed on the server to make this work, or any other insight, your suggestion is welcome.

A few notes for these logs that should be noted: Both tests were done over hard wired ethernet connection via an ASUS RT-AC86U Router. As noted above the successful test was done by placing a folder containing Terminator (1984) (VIDEO_TS Folder) into a shared folder on my PC and streamed to the DVDFab server. The unsuccessful test was done by trying to play the movie Zodiac (VIDEO_TS Folder) located on one of the servers in the share/sata/sata2 folder via my home network to my 2nd DVDFab server. This movie has been detected and successfully added to my library on the 2nd server not containing the movie folder by adding a library path pointing to the server that has the movie folders (share/sata/sata2). I have tried several different movies and none of them play in this method although they are all detected and added to library (at current I have 327 movies and 7 tv shows in my library but none play via the network).

The folder structure on the server containing the movies and tv shows inside the sata2 folder looks as follows:
folder name : movies- contains all of the non blu ray movies (DVD)
bluray- contains all of the Blu-ray/hi-def movies
tv- contains all of the tv series

So each above looks like share/sata/sata2/movies/Movie_name or bluray/Blu-ray Movie or tv/tv series.

All movies when you select to play them across the network, server to server, show the correct file location across the bottom of the page. However, when you click play it just tries to load for about 1-2 minutes and then returns a playback error and feedback submission option.

According to what I was looking at on the unsuccessful log, it seems that when trying to play the movie from server to server it fails almost right away because it can't find the meta data of the movie from the other server. So it tries a few times and then times out because no playback data is sent back or found.

I also have attached the full log in a previous reply for the unsuccessful play and I have a full log file for the successful play if anyone wants to the full one. It is just too big to attach here. I think this may be a help for the developers as well if an error or bug is found that they can update in the future. Thanks again everyone for your help with this issue and I welcome any suggestions or tips you may have.

Thanks