playing from mapped network drive

[lar282]

Hi guys
Just built another htpc that uses the disk drives on the other htpc downstairs. The one downstairs works flawless and I took the XL directory to the new one. I mapped the drives on the new one to the one with all the disks so I can share the media.

The wierd thing is that I cannot play all movies and I can't see the red line in the problem.Some works some don't. Some on same share some not.Some mkv files works some not. When it DOESN'T work I do not get an error, but zoomplayer just wont open.If I take the parameter from the event and manually run zoomplayer, it works.

Has anybody seen wierd things when using mapped drives and playing movies from them?
If only Xlobby had a LOG feature(like all plugins!!!hint Steven) I am sure I could figure it out but now!

any hints......

regards

//Lasse

[jji666]

I use Xlobby to launch PowerDVD to watch HD-DVDs off a hard drive. Since my version of PowerDVD will only launch .xpl files (the playlist file for an HD-DVD) that are local, I have to use mapped hard drives for all my HD content. I just recently implemented this, but I have not noticed any problems stemming from the use of mapped drives. But I don't think Zoom has any similar "locality" restrictions for any content it wil play.

At the risk of suggesting something basic that you probably already thought of, when you transferred your XL installation to the second PC did you re-import the database or are you just using a copy of the database from your other PC? If you haven't, I would delete the database and re-import from the PC where you are having problems. It could be a path issue. Another thing to try, just to see if it's XL or Zoomplayer, is just to open windows explorer and open the media directory and drag and drop a movie file onto Zoom. If it plays like that, I think this is pretty similar to how XL launches the movie file. I'm thinking this is a path issue or a parameter issue.

Good luck!

[lar282]

I took the database and "search and replace" all c:\ to z:\ and d:\ to y:

its not the databse, if I take the %parameter% and send that manually to zoomplayer it works..I also include the file type event so nothing is wrong there.


//Lasse

[jji666]

I cannot purport to be the expert, but if you did a global replace in the database could that be a problem if you have your media stored, for example, in the "my documents" directory which is really a long path and not just "c:\my documents?

Anyway, that's all I got. I would just try to re-import. If you don't want to disturb your current database then maybe create a new one and temporarily assign the screen category to your new database just for testing. It's possible that something hardcoded into the movies import template isn't too happy just with the global replace. At least that seems a logical test to exclude that as the problem, whatever the technicality of the cause.

[lar282]

I did try to reomport but its the same.Done wanna keep that database since I got 2 XL running sharing same media disks. Running spiders again on 250+ dvd's is NOT funny.
Gonna change the first htpc to run from mapped drive(even if it is local) but wanna make sure it works first.
Guess I will change to the latest XL on the new one instead. Wanted to wait until V3 is out but I guess it's time. Hopefullt Steven will release that soon


//Lasse

[rhinoman]

Lasse,

you only need to use a UNC path instead of a mapped drive ie

//server/films

Then you could just use xnet to share the database of the main machine.

If some stuff plays on one machine and not the other its most likly a missing codec.

[tswhite70]

Like Lasse said, you need to make your connections to the "server" using UNC.

So in Xlobby Basic Setup, instead of having:
Movie Import Folders = C:\movies, D:\movies, etc change it to \\Servername\ShareName or \\Servername\ShareName\movies (if using a root level share)

Also make sure your server has a fixed IP address (or a reservation in your router). Personally as I have Music, Pictures, and Movies on each of my 6 server drives I have each drive shared out at the root level (Data1, Data2, Data3, etc) So my import paths look like -\\ServerName\Data1\movies
\\ServerName\Data2\movies
...
\\ServerName\Data1\music
\\ServerName\Data2\music
.....

If you have any trouble after switching to UNC's try using the server ip address instead of the server name (to make sure you are not having any intermittent name resolution issues).

Good luck,
tsw

[lar282]

thanks u for the unc tip. I will try tonite.
Personally I do not see the difference if using a mapped drive ( z and y) from a unc path. Both should work, but I will try. Maybe XL handles unc differently then a mapped network drive?
codex problem it's not since it plays if I run zoomplayer on that movie manually.

Q for u guys that uses unc path. IF(god forbid) the network is down when u start XL on a second machine. What happens when u try to play a movie after the network comes back up again. Does it fail so XL must be started with connection to the network, or is XL so smart that it doesn't care and senses that the network is up agian?

//Lasse

[rhinoman]

I've found unc to be more robust that mapped drives but if the network is done when you start xlobby it won't be able to get the database and you'll end up with no data. Just restart xlobby when its back up.

[lar282]

u mean restart with mapped or with unc too? Or just mapped?

[cmhardwick]

I use only unc, that way I don't have to have tons of mappings on my individual machines (and remember to map the drive when I use xLobby on another machine). The connections are always there. So, i think the answer to your question would be, when the network comes back up, just restart xLobby and all will be fine. (with UNC)

[hvs69]

One useful debug tool in such scenarios is the use of a "dummy" DOS batch file. You can create a file (say dummy.bat) with just one command "pause". Try to pass the %parameter% to that dummy.bat file. This will cause the DOS console window to open and echo the commandline and pause. The commandline will tell you what xlobby is actually passing to your script or batch file.

The other thing to remember is that if you have a space in your %parameter% you will need to put quotes ("%parameter%").