This will be a long post describing my initial and ongoing experiences with Mezzmo.
I have a large movie collection; my DVDs are all ripped to disk in VIDEO_TS format. I’ve been looking for DLNA streaming software for a while and ended up on Mezzmo’s doorstep due to research on the ‘net. I’ve downloaded several DLNA packages and none of them worked correctly, if at all. My tests have been with a none-too-smart BluRay player: the BDP-S570/BX57. This suffices since it’s perhaps a more difficult test and it is allowing me to investigate best practices (software and televisions and directory structures) before making purchase decisions.
I’ll describe my initial experiences with Mezzmo in a blow-by-blow fashion. I’ll then try to point out any underlying problems. Finally, I’ll try to sum things up.
Please note that the following is written as succinctly but kindly as possible. Below you’ll find critique that is genuine and perhaps not overly flowery but that has been written with a desire to connect with the developer(s) in a positive manner in order to improve the product.
INITIAL EXPERIENCE
Here is a running tally of my initial impressions of the product. Look at the Real-*.jpg attachments for pictures.
Upon first running the software, Mezzmo asked me for libraries to scan. It defaulted to a set of My* folders (“My Music,” “My Videos,” etc.) that I had to delete. I then proceeded to enter my movie folders, agonizingly, since Mezzmo uses a tiny, outdated files dialogue and one that kept defaulting to the wrong drive or wrong folder deep inside a drive tree, and I kept forgetting to select [Video] from the drop-down. Mezzmo should have initialized the folders from my Windows Libraries.
I clicked [OK] and Mezzmo went to town and tore through my libraries, looking for videos and subtitles and thumbnails and what-not. Wow! Mezzmo is a Grand Master of multi-threading. Congratulations, as thread handling and async operations are among the most difficult challenges facing a programmer.
Mezzmo was finished, for the most part, in 1-2 minutes. However, it spent another 5-10 minutes “getting video thumbnails.” At the time, I think I understood that, as a MediaBrowser user, I had relied upon its cache rather than manually creating files for every DVD rip (folder.jpg, backdrop*.jpg, MyMovies.xml or movie.xml) and that Mezzmo, lacking JPEGs in each DVD directory, was forced to read the video file for a thumbnail. This is a great feature but it produces lousy thumbnails—thumbnails that are neither elegant nor representative of the movie. I decided to consider the issue, later.
I went upstairs and fired up the Sony BDP-S570. I went to the first menu item—All-Video-Files—assuming quite naturally that, being first on the list, it was the primary method for perusing your movies. I hit enter 2-3 times to get to some video—any video—and to my surprise, something streamed! That was a first. Clearly this software “works,” which is more than I can say for the other package I tried.
What a mess! Under All-Video-Files were thousands of files: *.mp4, *.m2ts, etc. It was impossible to find anything and scrolling the entire list would have taken twenty minutes. Clearly, something was very wrong. I played around with the other menu items and found that I could navigate by Folders and find the movie I wanted to play, but that it was still a very long list and that in the end the best way to find a movie was to remember what year it came out and navigate through the Year folder. I was disappointed, but at least I could recline upstairs and watch a movie from my desktop in the office.
My next order of business was to reformat my directories. Mezzmo provided a list of DVD “Titles” but interspersed in the long (and I mean LONG) list of video files were thousands of *.m2ts files; those were mostly BluRay files, I learned. I quickly discovered that Mezzmo knew nothing about BluRay directories; the only thing it could do was list each m2ts file. So I split out my movies into e.g. D:\Movies.DVD, D:\Movies.BluRay, etc. Now off to Mezzmo to change the scan directories. To my displeasure, I could not for the life of me find the menu item to manage them. I was looking for a dialogue like “Manage Libraries” where I could delete my old directory paths and enter the new paths and, upon hitting [Enter], have the software re-read all of my files. The only thing close was the Tools→Setup and it did not show my previous directories. So I did my best to clear everything out by right-clicking in Video and All-Video-Files, etc., and hitting the delete key and they I re-ran Setup. When I went upstairs, everything was doubled or tripled, at least!
In an attempt to clean up my scan folders, I uninstalled Mezzmo completely. I re-installed it and put in my *.DVD folders and voila!—a semi-clean list of DVDs from my Sony BDP. I did this 2-3 times to get everything right and, unfortunately, I now had 2-3 Mezzmo icons on my Sony BluRay player. It seems that Mezzmo picks a new DLNA “token” of some sort on every install and that every install ends up with a new “live” DLNA source but leaves behind multiple “defunct” sources. At this point, I think I have 5-6 defunct Mezzmo’s on the Sony’s menu. A picture of the problem is attached, naturally.
The information on my television was incomplete and incorrect; I understood immediately that Mezzmo was bereft of *.xml movie data. The next day I bit the bullet and used Media Center Master to create files for every single movie on my hard drives (folder.jpg, backdrop*.jpg, and now only movie.xml as I found that MyMovies.xml had been deprecated). I felt that if I was to run more than one software package to watch movies, it was now time to have complete, stand-alone trees of movies and metadata. After doing so, I deleted my MediaBrowser cache and let it rebuild and I went to Mezzmo to do the same. Again, I was forced to uninstall and re-install because it was not clear to me how to force Mezzmo to “re-scan” my libraries. After having done so, I was disappointed to find that Mezzmo ignored all of my movie posters (folder.jpg) and that the shiny XML data did not positively affect the Artist and Creator information: they contain thousands of permutations of concatenated artists…almost one menu item per movie.
In an effort to divide my movies into manageable, navigable groups, I played with File→Create-Playlist. I saw Playlist, Smart, Active, Linked…? Who knows what’s what. There is no easily accessible information on these—no bubbles, etc. I did a quick Google search and with that and some playing around I discovered that a Smart List would do what I wanted: to break out my movies by first letter (‘A’ for “A.I” and ‘B’ for “Braveheart,” etc.) Tediously, I entered twenty-six SmartLists called ‘A’ through ‘Z’. Upstairs, I found that “All Videos” (which, itself, start with an ‘A’) and the other menus were interspersed with my letter menus—not what I wanted. Back to Mezzmo where I renamed each SmartList with a prepended period (.A, .B, etc.) The period is lexographically smaller than any letters and I had what I wanted…I thought.
Back upstairs, I found, upon deeper examination, that my titles were somewhat intermixed. The Smart Lists contained titles that did not begin with the designated letter. Many movies were in the ‘.T’ category because their title began with the word “The.” MediaBrowser is smart enough to sort without the leading “The;” the Smart Lists are not.
On a more upbeat note, I ran a difficult test using a movie that had to be transcoded. Mezzmo performed brilliantly. It engaged all six cores of my I7-3930K and stayed well ahead of the stream. See attached pictures of CPU activity during and after transcoding. Like I said, Mezzmo is a master of multi-threaded performance. I was tempted to throw it five balls to juggle and to ask it to pat its head and rub its tummy as well, but I’m sure it would have done so elegantly.
All of this happened over the course of a week, on and off. In an effort to write this feedback, I created a small directory tree as a test case. It is attached as well as the Test-*.jpg pictures that demonstrate some of these problems in the test case. I’ve deleted the test folders, uninstalled and re-installed Mezzmo, and have my original folders available again, sans .A—.Z Smart Lists which I have yet to recreate (as it’s a pain and they don’t automatically update, anyway). And I now have my ninth or tenth “defunct” Mezzmo icon on the Sony BDP.
PROBLEMS / ENHANCEMENTS
Here is a list of the problems I found (bugs, etc.) and enhancements that I believe are necessary. There are some duplicates, and these observations parallel some of the above recollection—I jotted down the following, stream-of-consciousness style.
All-Video-Files should automatically be partitioned by first letter (A...Z), or done so when the #-of-files exceeds a certain threshold. Better yet, provide a drop-down to select a partitioning strategy. When setting up the subfolders under Music and Video and Photos, the user should choose from a strategy to create them and organize them. Internally, this can map to the Strategy Pattern. Although I didn’t test with music, I imagine the same is true of Music→All-Music-Files or Album-Artist: a large collection of MP3s would require breaking down by [A…Z].
Neither Artist nor Genre are usable as they generate long, concatenated keys—permutations of artists and/or genres—almost one per movie I imagine, unless two movies have the exact, same actors or it’s a multiple-disk set or television series with the same actors. Instead, list only one artist so that a search for “Gene Kelly” yields the movies in which he played. A good structure would be Artist→{Starring, Costarring}→[A...Z] / <decade-i.e.-50s-60s-70s-etc> / ???.
It would be smart to ask for which software (if any) the directories have been formatted. If, for instance, one’s choice was “Media Browser” then Mezzmo could (very-ambitious-code-alert!) peek into the C: MediaBrowser cache for video posters. At the very least it should look for folder.jpg and/or backdrop.jpg files, which leads to the next observation. When it cannot find the files, there should be a choice to go to the internet for the information or a scrollable warning log so that the user can say “Ah! I forgot to run Media Center Master on this, that, and the other movie.”
Mezzmo appears to create a poster from the video information; rather, it should take the folder.jpg or backdrop.jpg. To do this requires knowing that it’s dealing with ripped DVDs, which leads to the next observation.
In order to tame the presentation of my movies I was forced to create 26 Smart Lists from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ for movies whose name start with that letter. This is a somewhat arduous task. If you do so then “All Video Files” and “Artist,” etc. are interspersed with the first-letter lists on the TV’s menu; I was forced to name all of my Smart Lists .A, .B, .C, etc. (i.e. prefixed with a period). There should be a way to enforce a certain ordering to the content lists.
When adding folders, ask not only what type of file (video, music, etc.) but what type of predominant folder structure: { ripped DVDs, freestanding files… } so that a good, default view can be set up; e.g. Video → [A...Z] for DVDs. A drop-down with the choices (under Library Management) should automatically reformat the presentation of the Library and its menu sub-items.
Eliminate the ‘The’ on titles when sorting alphabetically. Better yet, provide a check box for user preference.
Regarding my .[A-Z]/ smart lists: Mezzmo is confused when sorting by title, alphabetically. Titles that begin with ‘A’ are found in my .V folder, etc. The smart lists are only 80% correct; it seems that I would have to manually move things around to fix this, and what happens when I rip new movies? I have no intention of manually entering the data into Mezzmo; it should automatically pick up new data. The smart lists are not automatically maintained. But neither are the folders—they are not scanned for new material and they’re not accessible anywhere in the product except for the initial Setup dialogue!
The code does not update smart lists when new material is added; selecting Smart-List→Refresh does not search for new material. It seems to do nothing. There appears to be no way to automatically update Mezzmo other than to uninstalled, re-installed, read the folders, recreate the smart lists, etc. Update: I can find no “rescan library folders” option in any menu or any right-click context menu; I’m convinced that Mezzmo is incapable of syncing with my Libraries / directory paths.
The product does not really understand DVDs; some DVDs are completely unwatchable as different cuts are interspersed throughout the VOB files and playing VOBs sequentially yields the same scene from different angles. I imagine that there are post-IFO instructions to skip over batches of VOBs based upon internal DVD “registers.” That’s how you can choose angles, editions, follow-the-white-rabbits, etc. No matter how you slice it or dice it, Mezzmo must learn (no matter how painfully) to be a DVD player; perhaps the author of pgcedit (or et al.) could be enlisted to help with the code.
The product in a perfect world would also understand BluRay—but that’s a pipe dream. I have three BluRay software packages and not a single package can play all of my disks. They all have problems in different areas, some able to play certain disks and not others, some hanging on certain disks, etc. Alternative, real-world to-do item: make Mezzmo understand that any directory with subdirectories of BDMV or CERTIFICATE are BluRay directories; the BDMV/STREAM/*.m2ts files should be ignored when searching for video files, otherwise you end up with 1000s of useless files listed. Better yet, (1) have a drop-down or checkbox with the choice, or (2) have a whitelist / blacklist of BluRays that can be played (since the entire movie is in one, huge file), or (3) contact some service like TMDb or IMBDB or et al. to discover which m2ts files are movie files and the correct ordering therein.
The product plays non-English audio (e.g. “Yes Man” et al.); this happens presumably when English is not track #1 on the disk. Solutions: (1) a whitelist / blacklist section to force audio for certain titles; (2) an entry in movie.xml or a stand-alone XML that decorates the directory; (3) a call to TMDb or IMDBb or et al. to find DVD information by disk signature (DVD-ROM or rip), returning audio and title and etc. data (if there is such a web site).
There is no Library-Maintenance item that makes sense to me. When first installed, Mezzmo asks for folders to scan. Good: I enter 4-5 folders that contain home movies, my DVDs, my BluRays, etc. I expect them to be scanned on every start, looking for new or changed content. There is no place to find the “scan folders” afterward so that I can add new folders, delete old ones, etc. In Tools→Setup I find the original give-me-initial-folders-to-scan dialogue, but it no longer lists the original folders I inputted and if you give it a new folder it merges it into the old folders. There appears to be no way to remove old “scan folders” except to uninstall and re-install.
Mezzmo uses a very tiny and clunky choose-your-file(s) dialogue. With four hard drives and thousands of directories it is very onerous to find a directory or file. Furthermore, certain operations insist on opening to “%USERPROFILE%\...\My Documents” every time which means you have to scroll up, up, up and collapse the C: drive and then expand your D: drive, etc. Mezzmo needs a larger and smarter file dialogue or at least a memory of where the user was last, e.g. perusing the D: drive, or maybe at the very least open with everything collapsed. But in this day and age, using such a passé file dialogue is hardly excusable.
Include an option to shutdown at a certain hour. Until such time as I’ve installed a 24x7 server in the basement (a TO-DO item for me), I’ve been leaving my desktop running on the 1st floor. Before going to sleep, I use Remote Desktop from my laptop to launch shutdown.exe; an automatic shutdown at <hour> or after-X-minutes-of-inactivity would be great. Look at uTorrent and its Quit / Shutdown / etc. options after Done-Downloading, etc.
Mezzmo does not seem to read the Windows Libraries. When it starts, it assumes that media is in %USERPROFILE%\My* folders. I have none. All of my media is across D: and E: and I can access them from Explorer using Libraries→Music (D:\Music), Libraries→Movies.DVDs, Libraries→Movies.BluRay, etc. Mezzmo should be honoring the Windows Libraries entries since many users will have them configured and, after all, that’s what the entries are for. Make sure that custom libraries are honored, e.g. I have a Movies library created by Explorer→Libraries→New→Library and it contains six directories across two drives.
Mezzmo needs to know more about other software packages. If you look at Media Center Master, its configuration page has many, many tabs and hundreds of options. It understands other software packages and what they require. It can create backdrops, various *.xml files, and on and on. Mezzmo needs to do the same. At the very least it should read folder.jpg files. Ditch most of the scattered and confusing menu items and make one Edit→Configuration item which brings up a huge, tabbed interface like Media Center Master.
CONCLUSION
Mezzo is almost a great product. It’s a grand master of threading; it’s fast and takes advantage (but does not overburden) multiple cores; it actually streams DLNA (what does that tell you about the competition?). I think very highly of this product and congratulate the developer(s). But it falls very short of being an outstanding product. The menu system is confusing. The UI is confusing. It has no wizards for common tasks. It is configurable, but only through the blood, sweat and tears of the user. The television’s on-screen menus are an unending, twisted disaster (at least on my Sony BDP). Mezzmo needs to understand DVDs better, and at least recognize and possibly ignore BluRays. It needs the concept of autoscanning folders and a method to easily manage them. It needs to read folder.jpg files et al. and it needs understand and interoperate with other software in this space (MediaBrower, Media Center Master, etc.).
It’s possible that trawling through the Mezzmo forums might provide enough information to mitigate much of the above critiques, but it’s not practical. Nobody should have to plow through forums to make software work—software should Just Work™ and it should have good documentation. Due to so many sharp edges and missing features, Mezzmo feels like a single-developer project—one person coding away to the best of his/her ability. If that’s the case, I heartily reiterate my congratulations to him/her: what a feat! But Cowboy Coding can only get you so far. Maybe Mezzmo should be open-sourced so that other developers can collaborate and make it truly great. A Mezzmo Professional Edition with some features held back (tag editors, internet skimmers, skins, etc.) could generate the revenue.
I may continue looking around or continue to evaluate Mezzmo. If it proves to be the current best of breed then I’ll pay for it and hope for its constant improvement.
Excellent review & feedback! Many thanks for taking the time to detail your thoughts. We really appreciate it.
Many of your issues are easily circumvented/fixed and we'll explain how to do that. We'll go through each piece of feedback you mention and respond shortly.
1. You can group your files by the first letter (A..Z) using active playlists. This helps the situation where you may have 1000's of files. See this post - http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread...2720#post22720 or click 'Create Playlist' -> 'Active Playlist' and then click the Help button for more details.
2. Mezzmo can get your "folder.jpg" as artwork for your video files. By default, this is turned off. Go to the Options dialog (Retrieving Metadata page) and click the Metadata Retrieval Settings button to adjust this and other metadata settings that Mezzmo uses when adding files or when maintaining your files.
3. Mezzmo does not (yet) read Blu-ray rips or Blu-ray ISOs. We plan to have this in an upcoming version. Mezzmo does read DVD rips and DVD ISOs.
4. If you wish to remove folders or files from your Mezzmo library, simply select them and press the Del key on your keyboard. For folders & playlists, you will see a confirm message appear that also lets you also remove the files contained in these folders and playlists form your Mezzmo library. In addition, you can maintain your Mezzmo library at any time using the Tools / Maintain Library menu item (or toolbar button). The Maintain Library dialog lets you tell Mezzmo to find new files, update existing files or remove missing files.
5. Mezzmo does create a unique UUID identifier for your Mezzmo server. On Sony products, it keeps listing servers even if they are turned off or no longer existent on your home network. To fix this, on your Sony BDP, you need to go to Settings -> Network -> Server Display and press the Options button on your remote control. Delete all servers. Press the Options button again and Update the server list. You should see one Mezzmo server now.
6. The current version of Mezzmo (v3.1) does group the genres in a comma delimted list (and the same for actors and directors). We agree that this is of limited value for browsing / searching. We are looking into this now & planning to enhance this in an upcoming version.
7. Instead of creating smart playlists with each letter 'A' .. 'Z', try using an active playlist and per my (1) answer.
8. We are planning to have words like 'The' and 'A' skipped when categorizing by title. This list will be user configurable.
9. Re: Partitioning All Videos by A..Z. Create an active playlist under Videos. In the Active Playlist dialog, call it (say) "Mike's All Videos" and add the 'Group By First Letter' keyword and restrict the active playlist to video files. That should get what you are after.
10. Smart (and Active and Linked) playlists are automatically updated as you add more files into your Mezzmo library or change the details for files. Files in folders are dynamically listed every time you browse that folder or sub-folder. So your folders will list any added or will not list any removed files from your folders. If you do wish to maintain your collection of files, playlists and folders (i.e. your Mezzmo library), then run Maintain Library.
11. Regarding wrongly playing DVD VOBs, we'd like to fix this. Can you email us more details about this to support [at] conceiva [dot] com. We may require the IFO file(s) or even the complete DVD rip to reproduce the problem you have found.
12. You can choose the audio language in the Properties dialog (Video tab) for the video file. Right-click on the video in Mezzmo and click Properties to display the Properties dialog. The preferred video and audio channels can be set there so that they are streamed to your device(s). Select the "Only stream the preferred channels to devices" checkbox if your device does not let you select the audio channel using your remote control.
13. We'll test reading Windows Libraries folders and fix any issue we find.
14. Mezzmo does know about metadata files produced by popular media organizing tools (MediaBrowser, MediaCenterMaster, XBMC, ThumbGen and others). It reads these metadata files (.XML, .NFO, .TBN, .TGMD, etc.) when adding or maintaining files. Use the Metadata Retrieval Settings dialog to control what external metadata Mezzmo reads. If you have external metadata files that Mezzmo is not reading, let us know and we'll fix that.
To the developer(?) that responded to my forum post: thank you for a timely and polite response! I think we may have a winner here, folks: a company that has a drive to exceed and to pursue best practices. So many times I run into developers simply treading water, more interested in defending their software than in building something great with contrite determination.
COMMENTS RE: THE “HI MIKE” RESPONSE
>> “1. …(A-Z) using Active Playlists.”
[A..Z] needs to be a default. Most people will have hundreds of files.
Again: there must be a selection of "Strategies" for media types. When you add a folder and select "predominantly videos" from the drop-down, there should be another drop-down with the strategy for organizing the subfolders. The default strategy for video should create a Videos→[A..Z]. The first menu on the TV that I used was All-Video-Files because it was first on the list. I assumed that the first menu item would be the preferred / easiest method of search for content. I assumed that the Mezzmo author(s) would arrange for that. In fact, the 1st item, All-Video-Files, is the worst: 1000s of files without any structure. Mezzmo must create default TV menus that are immediately useful.
>> “3. We plan to have [update BluRays]…”
Until such time, there must be a drop-down to skip all BluRay files, or include only those >4GB, etc.
>> “4. …The Maintain Library dialog lets you tell Mezzmo to find new files, update existing files or remove missing files.”
Maintain Library does not let you manage your scan folders (the ones put in with the Setup function). To change them, you have to uninstall and re-install. They should be listed right there with options to delete (and cascade the deletes to all content under the folder), rename, etc.
Please do the following: pretend that you’re a beginner and are moving your movies around in different directories while you figure things out. Use Mezzmo against C:\Users\Joe\My Videos. Now you move your movies to a more “public” area: C:\Movies with a new Windows Library pointer created in Explorer. Too many movies for your 500GB hard drive: you move them to a new 2TB D: drive: D:\ Movies. You decide to split them into D:\Movies.DVDs and D:\Movies.BluRay. This parallels my own experiences. You’ll see that there’s no way to maintain your source / scan directories in Mezzmo.
>> “5. Mezzmo does create a unique UUID…”
Do not create separate UUIDs on every install. Transform the MAC of the ethernet card into a UUID or use the serial # of the Windows installation, etc. The UUID should remain constant for the same machine. In spite of the instructions, it still took me 10 minutes to find the deeply buried option on the BDP to erase the defunct servers. Plus, I shouldn't have to do that!
>> “11. …wrongly playing DVD VOBs.”
I found a great test case: Dead Poets’ Society. I can supply ripped DVDs and carefully crafted test cases. I’ll require a specific address, e.g. bob-the-dev@conceiva.com, and a physical address to which I can mail a DVD or HD or USB key. Send that information to my Email address on file and I will keep the information confidential, if you like.
>> “12. ….Right click on the video in Mezzmo…stream default audio…”
I had no idea that a further dialogue was hiding under the video thumbnails. Again, Mezzmo needs serious UI polishing. There should be a hover bubble that says “right click to set video properties” or something like that. Side note: that hidden dialogue is almost indecipherable with cryptic options! UI, UI, UI.
BTW, "Only stream the preferred channels to devices" resulted in unplayable video streams. The BDP-S570 reported “File is corrupt or unsupported.”
REITERATION OF ITEMS THAT WERE NOT ADDRESSED
I don’t believe that my original comment re: “knowing about other software” was completely understood. I did not mean “please read folder.jpg.” I meant knowing how to reach into other software’s caches and how to invoke other common executables. In a sources tab where you should keep the scan directories, provide a drop-down that lists{MediaBrowser, MyMovies, etc.} allowing the user to tell Mezzmo what software they already use. When source directories are scanned you can reach into e.g. C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser and copy the existing and preferred meta-data. Did you know that MCM (Media Center Master) downloads pictures of actors and stores them directly into C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\ImagesByName? It understands MediaBrowser. Another example: when scanning sources, annotate the actions in a log window: folder.jpgs missing, videos that were skimmed for thumbnails, videos that went to the internet, etc. Clicking on each “missing folder.jpg” link should exec MCM or go to TMDb.com or IMDB.com or whatever. Be specific and prolific in listing what Mezzmo did and provide the user with help in maintaining their source directories.
Mezzmo needs a tabbed interface: [ Sources | Metadata | Transcoding | Status | tab5 | etc. ]
Sources: Lists the scan directories with options to rename them, delete them, add one. Perhaps each should have a checkbox to “actively watch” the directory tree. By default Mezzmo should install Windows explorer listeners to watch for renamed paths, new content, etc.
Metadata: this tab contains all of the checkboxes and radio buttons for controlling metadata retrieval. It has a list box of methods for retrieving thumbnails; the methods can be moved up and down like selecting BIOS boot orders so that “By folder.jpg” can be #1, “Skim from source” can be #2, “Query Internet” can be #3, etc.
Status: this tab contains a list of actions performed and warnings and errors and notations. Warning or errors (like missing folder.jpg files) are links that open informative web sites or start external programs (like MCM).
Re: the Maintain Library dialogue: it’s not obvious that clicking [OK] causes a re-scan to occur. That dialogue is not user-friendly. In fact, it’s scary: all of the verbiage about updating files caused me to worry that Mezzmo would shat on my directory trees; options like “choose files,” “update files,” etc. should instead be “choose sources” and “update Mezzmo database”. TO-DO ITEM: anytime Mezzmo refers to the user’s files use the word “source(s)” and when it refers to Mezzmo libraries use the word “database.”
MORE MEZZMO OBSERVATIONS / BUGS / MISSING FEATURES
DVD Feedback: wrong audio (Spanish): Yes Man, Dirty Harry, Dave, Close Encounters, Harry Potters, etc. Wrong audio (French): V for Vendetta, etc.. Many movies have the wrong default audio track, and the “set default language” option yields corrupt / unsupported files. Edit: good news – there is a way to switch audio on the BDP-S370 when streaming DLNA.
DVD Feedback: incorrect processing of VOBs (scenes repeated over and over due to different angles or different languages): Dead Poets Society, etc. I did not write them all down, but one example should suffice. I can provide a rip on DVD or HD or USB key and overnight it to Conceiva.
DVD Feedback: “file is corrupt or unsupported”: e.g. Castaway (Title 1) native, with no transcoding having been done. This DVD just does not play. I can provide the test case.
Deleting my 26 [.A...Z] Smart Lists was somewhat painful: the OK-to-delete dialogue has neither default selections nor keyboard shortcuts. One must point and click on the [Yes] button instead of <delete-key>, ‘Y’, <delete-key>, ‘Y’, etc.. All dialogues should have defaults and keyboard shortcuts so that [Enter] selects the default and <letter> selects the action.
Mezzmo may have a bug: when you fall off the end of a video, it moves to the next video (Okay) but when I went to play “Dirty Harry” (which was using the “default language” trick to get English), something went wrong. It started transcoding and immediately fell off the end and started playing “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” the next video on the list. Mezzmo was playing the wrong video while continuing to transcode the video I had actually requested! I doubt the utility of this feature: if a user wants to play title 1 of movie X, I’m not sure Mezzmo should be playing title after title like a jukebox. I think the user wanted Title 1 and Title 1, only. What if you’re watching Scooby-Doo with your children and the next video happens to be an NR-17?!
Mezzmo needs documentation and a UI revamp. There's no way to know what the different playlists are or what they mean. In my initial hours of playing with the product, I never did stumble across the Active-Playlist→Sort-By-First-Letter option. Nobody should have to refer to a forum for an off-the-shelf product. That's a sign of a UI that requires polishing and that Mezzmo needs to conduct user experience sessions (sitting with a new user and watching them struggle with the product).
Create bubble hints when hovering over every button. Many (most!) of the checkboxes have short, cryptic labels and require a bulkier bubble hint to explain what they mean.
Put all documentation online! Get rid of the absolutely ARCHAIC help system. I haven’t seen help like this since Windows 3.1. Hire a documentation contractor for 3-4 months to bust it all out–it would be money well spent.
The entire "Maintain Mezzmo Library" dialogue should be reworked. Why are there yet more options hiding under a large [Metadata Retrieval Settings] button? It would never occur to me to click a button to get to more options. BUTTONS ARE FOR ACTIONS! Make a large, tabbed interface like Media Center Master.
Where is the dialogue that controls the scan folders? I still do not see how to tell Mezzmo that my movies are no longer in D:\Movies but rather in E:\Content\Movies. Where do you delete a scan folder, rename a scan folder, add a scan folder?
Why are the scan folders not scanned? Nobody should have to click a Maintain Library button. When new content shows up it should automatically be included. How hard is it to keep a timestamp in the database and then look for content whose timestamp is greater than the last scan? This is simple and assumed functionality for all other programs of this ilk.
Teach Mezzmo to recognize BDMV and STREAM with an option to skip BluRay files. Options in a drop-down: skip BluRay directories, skip BluRay m2ts files less than 4GB (configurable) in size, etc.
Per the explanation in the prior post, I attempted to read folder.jpg files. Here is the comedy of errors that ensued:
ATTEMPT #1 – DID NOT WORK
[x] Get embedded
[x] Get external folder.jpg [turned this on per instructions in forum post]
ATTEMPT #2
[ ] Get embedded [turned this off thinking it was taking preference]
[x] Get external folder.jpg
ATTEMPT #3
[ ] Get embedded
[x] Get external (folder.jpg
[x] Update artwork (main page) [turned this on thinking it must be clicked]
ATTEMPT #4
[ ] Get embedded
[x] Get external folder.jpg)
[x] Update artwork
[x] Update all files [turned this on thinking it must be told to do ALL files)
FINALLY…
Select and [Delete] all video files – blow away the entire Mezzmo database – then Maintain Library and click [OK]. This, with the checkboxes above, finally worked. Moral of the story: Mezzmo needs use-case testing and user experience auditions.
Although I finally got all thumbnails to read from my folder.jpg files, there were several movies that were missing folder.jpgs. To find these, I had to scroll through the entire All-Video-Files looking for “wide” thumbnails (skimmed thumbnails are large whereas folder.jpg posters are tall and skinny). Why can’t there be a log or report window where Mezzmo lists each action taken, warning, errors, etc., including a list of missing folder.jpgs, etc.? Mezzmo needs a logging tab / TO-DO tab of actions taken and issue encountered.
The user should have the choice of selecting the strategy for retrieving thumbnails; they should be able to order the strategy like one would control the boot order in BIOS, moving entries up and down within a list of choices. The user should be able to bring Use-External-Files to the top, followed by Consult-The-Internet (if such a thing), followed by Skim-From-Video-Files, etc. The existing checkboxes are all free-standing, have no bubble hints and have no context to show that they're related (neither radio buttons nor visual grouping using panels). It’s not clear how / if they’re interrelated. These options should all be relocated to their own tab.
Retrieval of folder.jpg files should be the default, I think.
When multiple files are selected and the [Delete] key is hit, stop asking “Apply to all?” This is very bothersome. Any time something is done to more than one object, the same dialog appears asking “Apply to all?” Multiple selections means apply to all. Or, Mezzmo could provide a checkbox [X] “Always apply to multiple selections” and remember the user’s choice, no longer asking “apply to all?” on every operation on multiple selections.
How do you get TV series to show up under the “Series” category? My folder structure is D:\Movies→Star Trek→Season {1,2,3}→Star Trek SxxEyy-Ezz→VIDEO_TS (i.e. multiple Season directories and multiple SxxEyy-Ezz season-episode subdirectories). All directories have full meta-data (movie.xml, backdrop*.jpg, folder.jpg, series.xml). I think Mezzmo can be smarter in its Regex parsing of paths (file and directory names) in order to find VIDEO_TS directories that are really TV series. Look at http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Me...nization_Guide, http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title...files/TV_shows, and http://community.mediabrowser.tv/per...ia-collections. Please see the attached JPEG; Mezzmo is confused by my TV series directory structure.
Why do some shows fast forward lickety-split and some terribly slowly? On the BDP-S370 there are three levels of fast forward: 1, 2 and 3. Some shows on FF3 display jerky video but are no faster than regular play; some on FF3 skip extremely quickly. Between Mezzmo and the Sony BDP, FF does not work consistently and correctly. Mezzmo needs to fast forward using absolute time no matter the video source, i.e. FF3 jumps forward one video minute per each wall clock second.
In the [status] tab at the bottom where the user can see what’s being streamed, a visual “progress bar” would be nice, showing percent and minutes of current title being played. Like this:
1:45pm [================45%........................] 3:45pm
My search for DLNA streaming software has come to an end. We have a winner.
Requirements
I’ve been on a hunt for best DLNA practices for a while, now. I keep my media (DVDs) on local hard drives at the moment, but the overarching plan is to build a 24x7 server for file sharing, GIT, DLNA, a web site, etc. The server is on hold until the site is finished and until I have a firm idea of best practices re: CPU architecture, OS, hardware, server software, etc. Bear with me: this post absolutely regards Mezzmo, but first I want to touch on some of the other issues.
CPU Architecture: ARM is becoming a solid choice, but I’ve chosen x86 since an Intel processor can run any OS but not every OS can run on ARM.
OS: Between Windows and Linux my choice is Windows. Linux is incredibly capable (and free!) but Windows is ubiquitous and likewise has a huge choice of software. Other Unixii were options (e.g. OpenBSD or Solaris for its ZFS) but I need more than just a file server—I need an OS that will run the widest gamut of software available. And my main machines are Windows boxes on NTFS.
Hardware: I’ve come to the conclusion that I must build my own box. Although there are several good NAS boxes out there (Synology, QNAP, etc.), most of them are somewhat closed and the majority appear to run ARM CPUs. The boxes that run Intel are higher end (and higher cost) and still only pack lower end, power-saving CPUs. Since I want the ability to transcode video and run SQL Server, I need something relatively powerful.
Server software: Now that I’ve chosen Windows on an Intel (or AMD) CPU, the software choices start coming into focus. File serving is a gimme: Windows will handle that. Every other software I might use (e.g. GIT, J2EE or ASP.NET, remote access, etc.) is available on Windows.
Finally, a DLNA server choice must be made. After quite a bit of research I narrowed it down to Plex, Serviio and Mezzmo. Some DLNA aficionados may bristle at the fact that I did not include Twonky in my lineup. I can only say that I had some prior experience with it and found that it was very finicky. Then there’s the PS3 Media Server—but I’m not a Sony / PS3 user. So now I had three contestants all vying for best-of-breed media streaming software and I went about demoing these three software platforms.
Plex Media Server
Plex has a good, web-based interface. A web-based interface seems quite handy since you can log in from anywhere and administer the server, even watch your movies over the web browser. Plex looks nice and all my media showed up in the browser. However, Plex refused to read my meta-data and after it was running, my Sony BDP-S370 (the test case for my research) failed to recognize the server. After looking around I found that this is a known issue and several forum threads are asking for a solution…all without answers from a developer or technical support engineer. Plex never got off the ground for a decent test flight.
Serviio Media Server
Serviio is an interesting product. It has a Windows service that serves the media and a “console” that attaches to the service to administer scan folders and media / meta-data configurations, etc. Then access to the media (and on-screen playback) is accomplished through the localhost web site which is quite nice.
However, the first problem I ran into is that Serviio is written in Java and would not start up: it silently died when double clicking on “Start Service.” After some trawling (which nobody should have to do) I found that (1) x64 Java must be installed from Oracle’s manual.jsp and (2) the console options file must be manually tweaked with the IP address of the box on which the software is running. After the service started I fed it my folders and found that it was slow and that my local meta-data was being ignored. In all fairness with regards to the latter, my local meta-data was at first ignored with Mezzmo, too—perhaps I could have convinced Serviio to read it as I was able to do (with some persistence) with Mezzmo, but…
Unfortunately, although the BDP recognized the DLNA server and Serviio automatically provided first-letter / [A..Z] submenus, the server had no idea how to interpret DVDs! Every DVD I own was being presented as dozens of files (the VOBs, I would suppose). Serviio got off the ground but quickly thereafter crashed and burned.
Mezzmo
My instincts have proven to be correct: Mezzmo is the best DLNA server available (in my opinion and for my particular needs). Firstly, it works—the Sony BDP-S370 recognizes it and it has a built-in profile for that device (that needs a tweak, I think). It reads my local meta-data (finally) and, crucially, Mezzmo has an extremely good understanding of DVD layouts and serves one main title per DVD plus further, additional titles when the DVD has bonus materials. Mezzmo appears to be a fast, native executable (Intel) and is a master of multi-threading and transcoding.
Mezzmo has some rough edges, to be sure. Its user interface is somewhat complex and inscrutable. And the UI is not web-based which I’ve concluded is a smart way of presenting the information due to ease of access. If I were the developer, I’d break the Mezzmo interface into two parts like Plex or Serviio. The configuration executable would remain mostly the same (hopefully to include many of my prior comments!) and in addition there would be a web-based interface for managing content and looking at titles and playing them in the browser. A web-based interface similar to Netflix would be great. I would start with DotNetNuke Community Edition and build upon that foundation to create the adjunct web site.
One problem Mezzmo will face is trying to extend into the NAS community. I think you need to be a Java executable to do that. I believe both Synology and QNAP have a Serviio or Twonky plug-in that runs under their respective Linux variants. I’ve also heard that DLNA running under those low-powers ARM devices is slow and cannot transcode. I believe the latter, as all six cores of my I7-3930K were 80% engaged by Mezzmo when down-converting one movie. Mezzmo stayed 3X ahead of the streaming on my muscle-bound machine, but I would think that a quad-core I5/7 would be the practical minimum for ANY software to transcode. So Serviio (or Twonky) will probably pick up the small NAS market segment unless Conceiva deigns to recompile for ARM under Linux. That would be a huge effort: it would multiply their support matrix in at least two dimensions (architecture * OS). Alternatively they could bite the bullet and transpose C++ into Java for a version 4.0, but would it be worth the hassle?
This brings me back to my original statements about requirements. I’ve made the (wise, IMHO) choice to go with Intel and Windows and commodity, off-the-shelf hardware. In this case, I can afford to run native x86 executables and enjoy all the power that the platform brings to bear. For my purposes, Mezzmo is a great choice as it really leverages the platform.
Conclusion
I hope everyone has enjoyed (or gracefully endured) my ramblings here on the Conceiva forums. In conclusion, I think Mezzmo is a capable and powerful product and is the best-of-breed in DLNA media streaming software. It has a great future ahead of it and I hope the developer(s) will go all out for version 4.0 and implement every feature request that they’ve received and also knock out a fantastic, web-based, Netflix-like adjunct interface. I endorse this product. Now it only remains to officially purchase it and register my support. Where’s my credit card?
Initial Impressions of Mezzmo
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