Roku Developer Program

[IcesnakeFrostfy]

Issue: Client times out with large music collection
I have roughly 21,000 tracks in my music collection. My Roku box is able to catalog and play videos just fine (only about 2800 files there, and most of them still have not been converted to MP4), but when I had the music folder pointed to the full music collection, the client would sit (presumably cataloging) for a long time, then return an "unable to contact server" error. I copied a single album to a different location, made that the music library, and restarted the server. Viola! Music! and it plays.

So: Is there any way to force a pre-compile on the server for large collections, or am I stuck with video-only or small sub-sets of my music collection? My idea would be to have the server pre-generate the XML for the collection once a day, or on demand (from the server console itself), possibly as a scheduled task.

[iball]

I'm so silly. I figured it out!!!

Make sure to change the ip on the springboard to YOUR own computer IP. And also change the settings in the My Media channel to match that IP.



Its working great, thank you!!

[renojim]

"seracious" wrote:
Hey folks,

So, I'm out of my league here but follow instructions well. I have the latest Python, disabled the terminal run, and enter all the fields correctly to Install and Launch Client. However, the little white window doesn't offer the button to stop it. Nevertheless, the My Media Channel shows up on the box, but with the "Cannot Retrieve Media List" error. It has my computer's IP correct with the 8001/feed" end of the line, but that's where I'm stuck. Maybe it isn't actually running since I don't have the option to stop it, or maybe something else is wrong.

Any ideas? Running on a Mac and used the How To instructions for such very carefully. Am I missing something?
Thanks.
Mike

Mike,

If you downloaded the latest release from here, you DO NOT want the "/feed" at the end of the server ip. It should have taken care of that for you, unless you added it back on. If you're using any release prior to that one, you do want the "/feed" at the end. The example on the setup screen for the server ip shows whether the "/feed" is necessary or not.

If you're still having a problem, make sure you can browse to your server from a computer. You can use the server itself if you don't have another computer, but a second computer would be better to test everything. Browse to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8001, where the x's represent your server's ip. If you add "/feed" to the end of that url, you should see the RSS feed.

-JT

[renojim]

"IcesnakeFrostfyre" wrote:
Issue: Client times out with large music collection
I have roughly 21,000 tracks in my music collection. My Roku box is able to catalog and play videos just fine (only about 2800 files there, and most of them still have not been converted to MP4), but when I had the music folder pointed to the full music collection, the client would sit (presumably cataloging) for a long time, then return an "unable to contact server" error. I copied a single album to a different location, made that the music library, and restarted the server. Viola! Music! and it plays.

So: Is there any way to force a pre-compile on the server for large collections, or am I stuck with video-only or small sub-sets of my music collection? My idea would be to have the server pre-generate the XML for the collection once a day, or on demand (from the server console itself), possibly as a scheduled task.

Do you have all of those tracks in one directory, or are they split into separate directories by artist/album, for example?

-JT

[IcesnakeFrostfy]

"renojim" wrote:


Do you have all of those tracks in one directory, or are they split into separate directories by artist/album, for example?

-JT

They're split by letter of the alphabet, then artist, then album. So a typical album would be:

d:\music\A\Aerosmith\Greatest Hits\track name.mp3

[renojim]

Hmm... strange. Let me look into it. I wonder if the single letters are messing it up since the server also tries to divide by letter. Try setting the 'max_folders_before_split' in the tk Server Configuration to -1 (or you can just edit config.ini and change it there). Be sure to restart the server.

The size of your music collection shouldn't matter if they're split into directories. I can see how having thousands of songs in one directory could cause problems, but that doesn't seem to be your issue.

-JT

[IcesnakeFrostfy]

My movies are divided by alphabet too, no problem with them.

[renojim]

I just created a subdirectory under my top level music directory for each letter of the alphabet and had no problems no matter what I set 'max_folders_before_split' to. Do you have any other subdirectories immediately under your top level music directory that could be causing a problem? When you start the channel and select "My Music", the Roku client sends a request for the top level music directory that you have configured. The server returns just that one level, so the size of your collection does not matter at all. There's no indexing or cataloging that ever takes place (that's one of the nice features of the channel). Have you tried to browse to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8001/feed (where the x's indicate your server's IP address)? Click on "My Music" there and see what happens.

You may want to check the server log (my_media_log.txt) that's created in the same directory as rss_server.py to see if anything shows up there.

Also, you're not by any chance running an old version of the channel, are you? Get the latest version here.

-JT

[IcesnakeFrostfy]

I'm on the latest (beta?) that handles photos as well, just got it today. I will try moving the so-far uncategorized stuff into another folder (which I will call "uncategorized" because I'm just that way).

EDIT: Apparently I had enough unsorted tracks that it was the problem; when I moved them all to a subfolder, the problem was solved. Thanks for the idea!

[seracious]

Thanks RenoJim for the tips.

I'm still not having any luck. I'm using the older version (with Python 3.1.2) with /feed, but I'm still not getting any button after I Launch, nor can I access the ip from my machine or another on the same network.

There are a couple points worth raising though I'm not sure they matter. I'm still running on Mac OS Tiger (yeah, yeah, upgrading later this week). I'm unsure of the python_path, if that matters. Also, it should be the ip of my laptop as the server, not the network/router, right? Also, if I'm wireless on my laptop with a Linksys router, could that configuration cause trouble? I know so little about the workings of this that I'm not sure I'm using the right setup or providing enough info to help others troubleshoot for me.

Any further advice would be most welcome. I will try again with Snow Leopard later this week if that matters.
Thanks,
Mike