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freshhouse1
03-03-2012, 08:53 PM
Hi, newcomer to Mezzmo here.

I am still trying to find the best way to stream all my media content to my range of devices. My current setup is as follows;

All media is stored on a Windows 7 32-bit AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 3.01GHz PC with 2GB RAM. Video and Music are on an internal slave HDD, while Photos are on the primary HDD but a different partition to the system . The PC connects directly to my home network via a 100Mb ethernet connection.

Before trying Mezzmo, I used the following media servers on the PC:

InMethod Air Video Player to stream Video to iPad and iPhone (over Wireless G) using the Air Video app
Pro's - Works fine, no problems whatsoever
Con's - only does video and only to its own app

Samsung PC Share Manager to stream Video and Pictures to Samsung TV and HT (UE40C6500 and HT-C5550 both over 100Mb ethernet)
Pro's - Seems to stream almost everything to both Samsung devices just fine
Con's - Refreshing the shared media takes forever, meaning there is no point trying my Music library which is over 200GB. Changes to folder configurations don't always take effect, which leaves things untidy in the player interface. It can sometimes take several days for new/changed files to appear!

TVersity to stream Music to iPad and iPhone using PlugPlayer app, and to Samsungs.
Pro's - PlugPlayer works really well with this, really fast even when searching the entire library
Con's - No album art in PlugPlayer or Samsung. Samsung doesn't display Artist either, just "No Singer" for all tracks.

For Video and Music on the other PCs (wired and wireless) I've just been using shared drives mappings through bog-standard Windows Explorer as it seems to be the quickest and easiest way. Foobar2000, VLC, XBMC, even iTunes all work to a degree but I've found they're just not as consistently reliable as Windows Explorer.

For photos I still haven't found a suitable server I'm 100% happy with, WMP works ok on the TV, TVersity is ok on the iPad/iPhone using olimsoft AirPlayer, but ideally I just want one Media Server to do all content to all devices!

After reading lots of good stuff about Mezzmo I disabled all of the above and installed it on the 15-day trial. Installation was a breeze and after a few hours of carrying out the initial set up stuff it seemed good to go. I've been using it for about 24hrs now and have hit some real frustrations which if I can't fix easily I may have to give up and go back to my old set up.

1.) Streaming Music to PC - Windows Media Player is missing a large number of tracks - they just don't show in the Mezzmo library. I can see them in the Mezzmo on the host PC, but Windows Media Player can't see them (even on the host PC). In lots of albums I can only see a couple of tracks but Mezzmo shows them all to be present. I tried using XBMC instead, which initially worked fine, but navigating playlists or folders is so slow it often times out and says it can't connect to the server.

2.) Streaming Video to Samsung TV - My TV shows and films seem to stream fine initially, but several times playback has simply stopped and the player jumps to the next title. On several occasions this has actually caused the TV to reboot and the Mezzmo server to crash. My home videos recorded on digital camera (AVI) and iPhone (MOV) play with varying success - some eventually play after a long period of "Opening" (30 seconds or so), while others show "File Format not recognised" after the same delay while "Opening".

3.) Streaming Music to Samsung TV - Navigating the library is really slow, and there's a similar delay as with videos before playing anything. If I try and browse anything on the iPad or iPhone at the same time as media is playing on the TV, TV playback is interrupted and hardly ever resumes, displaying "Opening file" before "File Format Not recognised" - even though it's already been playing fine up to that point! I've also renamed and moved a couple of video files and tried using the maintain library function, but the old filenames still show in the player interface and won't play. Trying to play them also seems to make the server crash.

While writing this post Mezzmo has actually just crashed again and on trying to start it back up it's stuck at the "Initializing..." splash screen so I think I'll try a complete removal and reinstall later when I have time.

Any advice/tips/suggestions on any of the issues above are most welcome!

Paul
03-05-2012, 09:11 AM
Hi,

With your Samsung TV - can you please go to the Media Devices dialog and check which device profile you are using? If it's "Samsung C", I'd recommend trying "Samsung BDP", as it may work better and should resolve those playback issues.

I'm not sure I completely understand the issue with music and WMP. Are you using WMP as the client (player) and streaming from Mezzmo? So, you see tracks in Mezzmo, but not when browsing Mezzmo using WMP, right? If that's the case, please enable logging (see this thread: http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging) then browse to a playlist that doesn't show all files it should. After that, stop the server and send the logs to support, please also mention the files that didn't show up (but which can be see when using Mezzmo GUI).

When Mezzmo crashed - did you have any tasks running in the Status pane (e.g. maintenance, updating thumbnails, etc...)?

freshhouse1
03-05-2012, 08:42 PM
Hi Dennis

Thanks for the quick response. I will try the profile you suggest and let you know how it goes.

You're right about the WMP situation, I am using WMP as the client and streaming from Mezzmo. I haven't set up a playlist, I'm just browsing the library through the WMP interface and can't find specific album tracks either by browsing or searching. I'll create a test playlist and add some of the missing tracks, enable logging and try again.

When Mezzmo crashed I wasn't aware of any tasks running but the TV is in a different room to the PC so I can't be sure. I can use RDP to connect to the PC from there though, next time I stream a video I will keep it open so I can see what's happening.

freshhouse1
03-07-2012, 08:02 AM
Hi Dennis,

I've emailed support with the logs as suggested.

In case anyone else is interested;

I couldn't browse to, or find lots of music files in WMP (even though I could see them in Mezzmo) until I added them to the "Test Playlist", then they were searchable but still didn't appear in the library under Artist, Album or Genre.

In addition to this, I have tried using the Samsung BDP profile instead of Samsung C, and I couldn't recreate the problem where playback was stopping and moving to the next episode at first using the same .MKV file, but it happened when viewing an .AVI and playback kept buffering when viewing a .MOV and I had to cancel playback. When I went back to the server to stop logging, I accidentally clicked the "Network" tab at the bottom which caused the server GUI to hang. I left it for a couple of hours but it never came back so I ended it through task manager - but I think the logs were still being written to, as the zipped up logs were 12MB.

Another strange issue I noticed is when playing a MP2 file through the TV (on both the Samsung C and BDP profiles), the file size is miscalculated - in the one I tried is only 138MB but the TV thinks it's 1.3GB, and it plays at a much lower speed than normal. It seems to play fine on my iPhone through AirPlayer using the PlugPlayer profile though.

Paul
03-07-2012, 09:07 AM
Thanks for the logs - I'll get back to you via e-mail after checking them out.