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User

25.09.2007 06:48:04

Movie library on a network drive

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Hi there

I've just shifted my movie library onto a network drive, and Remote Buddy seems to be having a lot of trouble finding it. It takes over a minute to find it every time, during which time RB just hangs.

I've disabled the Spotlight search and told RB exactly where to look for the library; and the network drive is always mounted. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

All the best
Peter

These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic:

Behaviours

Can I also add DivX/AVI/MOV files to the built-in movie library and not just VIDEO_TS folders? (FAQ015E0200)
Yes. All you need to do is to install VLC and organize your files in a given folder structure. It's also possible to add covers then. If, for example, you want to add the file MyMovie.avi, the folder structure should look like this:
```
Title of my movie/VIDEO_TS/MyMovie.avi
Title of my movie/File with Cover.jpg
```
You can add movies that are split up into several files the same way. The folder structure then looks like this:
```
Title of my movie/VIDEO_TS/MyMovie part 1.avi
Title of my movie/VIDEO_TS/MyMovie part 2.avi
Title of my movie/VIDEO_TS/MyMovie part 3.avi
Title of my movie/File with Cover.jpg
```
The names of the movie- and coverfiles are freely choosable - you only need to make sure the suffix fits the format of the file. Supported formats for cover files include JPEG, PNG and GIF.

In Remote Buddy's menu, you can then start playback of your movies complete with existing covers in the context menu of the VLC Behaviour.

Hardware - Apple® Remote

After uninstalling/quitting Remote Buddy, my Mac® no longer reacts to the Apple® Remote. (FAQ015E0241)
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.

Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.

Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.

User

25.09.2007 11:23:02

Re: Movie library on a network drive

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Hi Peter,

Remote Buddy will scan the entire directory tree below the directories
you point it to.

So, please make sure to point Remote Buddy directly to the parent
directory of your VIDEO_TS folders. Otherwise, the entire volume will
be scanned, which will take its time depending on your network, OS and
server performance (I've experienced very poor performance with Samba
volumes hosted on a Linux box in the LAN lately - you can check yours
by using Activity Monitor and copying a big file).

Best regards,
Felix

User

09.10.2007 11:13:01

Re: Movie library on a network drive

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks Felix.

I have made sure to point the movie library at the lowest possible folder (called "DVDs" on my network and accessed via AFP) but it still causes Remote Buddy to hang for between 10 and 30 seconds every time the Movie Library is selected. It is clearly accessing the network but very slowly -- about 30KB/s where file transfers from the network run at about 10MB/s.

Are you using a Finder search along the lines of Kind=Folder and Name=VIDEO_TS? I tried that and it's not that speedy either but a bit faster than the Remote Buddy search. It looks like it might be a problem with the way the Finder does searches of networked drives.

Would it be possible maybe to cache the results of the first search and use those results for every time the Movie Library is selected after that? With a menu option to manually refresh the Movie Library if you've added something -- which would do the search again?

(Or could this be a Preferences option?)

Obviously don't worry about it if it's just me, but if other people are having similar problems with network storage it might be a way to speed things up.

Best
PJC

User

10.10.2007 01:16:01

Re: Re: Movie library on a network drive

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Remote Buddy makes direct use of Carbon filesystem calls - which is
the fastest way to do filesystem operations on OS X. I've written a
complete abstraction layer for the filesystem for Picture Arena, that
is now also used in Remote Buddy, that optimizes and caches filesystem
accesses.

The more I'm surprised the scan is taking that long for you, as a
simple scan of a few directories clearly should hardly be noticable.

How many direct subfolders does your DVD folder contain?
And how many of them contain non-VIDEO_TS-structured data?

Caching the search result is not difficult at all - however, automatic
change tracking is. At least in Tiger and assuming a completely free
layout. And in Leopard it's no longer required as - and that's what
Apple officially says on their website - Spotlight is a lot faster
and also works on your network volumes.

Best regards,
Felix

User

10.10.2007 01:45:30

Re: Movie library on a network drive

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Hi Felix

I guess I've got about 40 DVDs archived in the DVDs folder; almost all of them are in the format DVDs/MovieName/VIDEO_TS/etc, although some (eg movie trilogies) are like DVDs/TrilogyName/MovieName/VIDEO_TS/etc. There's nothing in the DVDs folder that doesn't come from a DVD, though one or two of the movies have additional stuff in the main folder for the "special features" (HTML files, Mac/PC executables).

I'm surprised it takes that long too, but it might just be a problem with the way my NAS and the Mac talk to each other.

I'll see what happens with Leopard!

Thanks again
PJC

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