Twonky Server - how to organize videos?

iMADEtheBBC

Hi,
Having given up on Windows7 libraries to stream to my WDTV Live boxes I'm going to try Twonky Server. [libraries randomly disappear & become unaccessible to the WDTV Live especially after system updates]

Maybe I'm missing something really obvious but all of the videos appear in a flat folder structure when I view them both on MyTwonky webpage but also on the WDTV Live boxes.

I have my content organized by folder so this is really annoying.

Surely Twonky can allow me to create a more elegant folder structure ? Or do I have to run multiple instances of Twonky Server to achieve this?

Are there any alternatives to Twonky? I would like also to put all my 18 Rated movies into a single folder and password restrict access to that folder... but for now I'll settle on having multiple video "libraries" served up by a single instance of Twonky Server.

superleedsdub

Try PLEX media server.

You can download it for free and is great at organising media.
Unfortunatley the WDTV live doesn`t have a PLEX client so you won`t be able to display most of the metadata (so far i`ve only been able to display thumbnails) but it will easily stream to the WDTV and organise your media very effectively

iMADEtheBBC

Thanks, going to give that a try - I don't need metadata just the filename. Have just rebuilt all my Windows7 libraries in a vain attempt to fix it and WDTV can't even see the windows shares. Very frustrating.

It can see the Twonky library but it's too simple.

superleedsdub

Well with Plex you can point the server to a number of folders where you have media stored and will organise the media

e.g. If you have a number of movies stored in different folders, drives etc and you add the locations to the movies section, PLEX will organise them into alphabetical order and all you have to do is select the movies folder in the PLEX media server on the WDTV live. You can then have a number of ways of accessing your movies (e.g. by letter, year, genre)

You can also create collections - e.g. Star Wars or Batman movies

iMADEtheBBC

Thanks, I tried Plex and it's good but the problem was similar to Twonky: all the videos were put into a flat folder structure. Plex menu (on the WDTV live side) seemed very slow to respond (I have a large library)

I took a look at Tversity which seems to be faster and will allow me to keep the folder structure I've created.

I've completely given up on the media sharing in Windows7. It's flaky and despite rebuilding all the libraries from scratch it refuses to share when it had been working perfectly for over a year.

Thanks for the pointers- I might create a 'kids only' library using Plex for the kids and and a grown-up movie library for us violence-loving adults

superleedsdub

Glad to see you`ve found a server that suits your needs - we`re spoiled for choice these days with the amount of Options available:-)

I`ll give Tversity another go myself. I haven`t experienced any slowness when using plex and I have a 3TB library on my NAS

PS3 media server is another option - it keeps my file structures intact as well as displaying the thumbnails I`ve generated using thumbgen.

As a matter of interest - what way have you structured your library?

iMADEtheBBC

It's pretty simple: 3 top level folders which are each a library
Movies
Music Videos
TV Shows

in each of these folders there are individual files and subfolders

When windows7 libraries worked for me I could navigate to one of those libraries and see the subfolders & individual files in each.

on Plex it takes all of the 'Music Videos' and puts them at the root level. So if I have a folde with, say, 30 music videos in it they all appear at the root level of the library in Plex. Perhaps I had set it up incorrectly.

Tversity keeps the folder structure and , once I turned off transcoding (doh), it worked really fast.

Only problem is that I cannot seem to 'mount' .iso files via Tversity. The WDTV box will mount .iso files. I had backed up a lot of DVDs to .iso format so I'll have to figure out if there's a way to edit the profile.xml in Tversity which will tell tversity to allow WDTV see and mount the .iso files. No luck so far.

I was tempted to do a clean reinstall of Windows7 but life is too short - going to stick with tversity for now.

superleedsdub

You can still access this folder structure in PLEX by selecting the By folder option...
EDIT: I`m having problems accessing my content with this option - so scratch that:-)

As for the .iso files, is there a particular reason why you`ve chosed to convert to .iso (maintaining DVD menu`s or looking to write to a DVD in the future). I backed up all my DVD`s to .mkv using makemkv. I find it much handier to have files in .mkv format as most new media players recognise .mkv files.

I`ve downloaded Tversity again and I now remember why I don`t use it:-) Too many unnecessary folders show up on the WDTV live.

I`m not sure if PS3 Media server transcodes .iso files but if it does I think it may suit you best as it literally just shows up your folders on the WDTV live and in the way you have structured them without any add ons or unneccesary folders