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Nice work ! and a few questions
02-08-2012, 09:47
Post: #1
Nice work ! and a few questions
Hello,

I've tried and compared several upnp servers recently and most did not satisfy my expectations.
I have a huge music collection on PC, I use 2 Linn DS (Majik & Accurate) as renderers
and a few control point apps on my Ipad.
I do not want to mix music genres (i.e. Mozart & Madonna in Artists list),
so I need at least 2 upnp servers.
For my Classical Collection, I make use of Asset UPnP.
For Jazz, I've installed minim server and selected a folder with 50.000+ music files.
It is indeed a nice and well thought out application, with useful browsing features
and a small footprint.
So I would gladly contribute to your efforts with a donation and I intend to follow
the subsequent developments.
Now I have a few questions :
• You state that Songbook Lite is fully compatible but I can't see the CD covers
while they are visible with SongBook & Asset, and with Kinsky and minimserver.
I prefer SongBook because it is faster than Kinsky and has a search feature.
• Is there a performance benefit to use the 64bit version of minim server?
It won't work on my Windows7 64bit PC, seems to be Java related.
I've tried with Java6 64 bit alone and with both 64bit & 32bit Jave installed.
Maybe I should try Java7?
• Finally, I also had a look at "Wild Media Server".
Users are supposed to know how to make scripts in Pascal ou VB to enhance
the browsing layout : a non-starter for me.
But it has an interesting feature : you can browse the server database
and correct entries (genre, artist, etc.).
While with minimserver I have to look at the log, I've seen a few dozens entries
that need to be corrected (without modifying the file tags !)
I would be nice if there was a way to access minim server database directly.
I understand you want to keep the application minim(al) but more features in the GUI
would be interesting.
I send 3 screen captures : minim server with Kinsky and Songbook[
Bravo four your work.

[attachment=32]
[attachment=33]
[attachment=34]
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02-08-2012, 11:21
Post: #2
RE: Nice work ! and a few questions
(02-08-2012 09:47)R25097 Wrote:  Hello,

I've tried and compared several upnp servers recently and most did not satisfy my expectations.
I have a huge music collection on PC, I use 2 Linn DS (Majik & Accurate) as renderers
and a few control point apps on my Ipad.
I do not want to mix music genres (i.e. Mozart & Madonna in Artists list),
so I need at least 2 upnp servers.

You should be able to use Genre at the top level to select Classical or Jazz, then bring up an Artist list from within that genre.

Quote:For my Classical Collection, I make use of Asset UPnP.
For Jazz, I've installed minim server and selected a folder with 50.000+ music files.
It is indeed a nice and well thought out application, with useful browsing features
and a small footprint.
So I would gladly contribute to your efforts with a donation and I intend to follow
the subsequent developments.

Thanks!

Quote:Now I have a few questions :
• You state that Songbook Lite is fully compatible but I can't see the CD covers
while they are visible with SongBook & Asset, and with Kinsky and minimserver.
I prefer SongBook because it is faster than Kinsky and has a search feature.

There's a known problem in the current release with missing album art on some control points if the folder name for your content directory contains a space (or possibly other special characters). To work around this, you can rename the content directory.

Quote:• Is there a performance benefit to use the 64bit version of minim server?
It won't work on my Windows7 64bit PC, seems to be Java related.
I've tried with Java6 64 bit alone and with both 64bit & 32bit Jave installed.
Maybe I should try Java7?

Java 7 won't make any difference. You need to completely remove 32-bit Java from your machine and install 64-bit Java with 64-bit MinimServer. If this doesn't work, please post the error message you're seeing.

Alternatively, you can use 32-bit Java with 32-bit MinimServer on a 64-bit machine. I don't think there will be much performance difference.

Quote:• Finally, I also had a look at "Wild Media Server".
Users are supposed to know how to make scripts in Pascal ou VB to enhance
the browsing layout : a non-starter for me.
But it has an interesting feature : you can browse the server database
and correct entries (genre, artist, etc.).
While with minimserver I have to look at the log, I've seen a few dozens entries
that need to be corrected (without modifying the file tags !)

Why don't you want to modify the file tags?

MinimServer does have a way to override selected file tags using the tag updates facility. This is described in the user guide.

Quote: I would be nice if there was a way to access minim server database directly.

MinimServer doesn't have a database. It reads the file tags into memory and uses in-memory structures for browsing. It also keeps an on-disk cache for faster startup when rescanning music files.

Quote: I understand you want to keep the application minim(al) but more features in the GUI
would be interesting.

Apart from modifying tag data, is there anything else you'd like to see?

Quote:I send 3 screen captures : minim server with Kinsky and Songbook[
Bravo four your work.

The screen captures appear to be missing. I see some lines
[attachment=32]
[attachment=33]
[attachment=34]
but nothing happens when I click them.
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06-08-2012, 18:50
Post: #3
RE: Nice work ! and a few questions
Thanks for your detailed reply.

• About separating music genres :
I followed your advice and indeed, I created a genre list as top level,
than artist/album. Great.

• About album art not showing in some directories, yes, the problem
came from the directory name containing a space (JAZZ VOCAL)
I renamed all the directories : JAZZ-VOCAL, etc
and now I can see all the album covers!

• About modifying the tags from inside minimserver,
your user guide shows clearly how to do it but don't you find
this procedure cumbersome if you need to modify dozens of albums?
Anyway, this is not an issue because I use several tagging applications..

• About the windows GUI, maybe it could be more user-friendly.
I wish one had the ability to customize the layout of the tag indexes
like Asset UPnp does : adding ABC, etc..

• BTW I noticed Songbook Lite sees 16bit 44.1khz mp3 files
as "24bit mp3"
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06-08-2012, 19:50
Post: #4
RE: Nice work ! and a few questions
(06-08-2012 18:50)R25097 Wrote:  Thanks for your detailed reply.

• About separating music genres :
I followed your advice and indeed, I created a genre list as top level,
than artist/album. Great.

• About album art not showing in some directories, yes, the problem
came from the directory name containing a space (JAZZ VOCAL)
I renamed all the directories : JAZZ-VOCAL, etc
and now I can see all the album covers!

I'm pleased to hear this!

Quote:• About modifying the tags from inside minimserver,
your user guide shows clearly how to do it but don't you find
this procedure cumbersome if you need to modify dozens of albums?
Anyway, this is not an issue because I use several tagging applications..

Perhaps I misunderstood your earlier comment about wanting to correct index entries without modifying file tags.

The documentation for this facility isn't very good. I'll do a bit of work to improve it. It's actually very easy to make global changes across multiple albums without modifying the file tags. For example, to change all occurrences of
ARTIST=J. S. Bach
to
ARTIST=Johann Sebastian Bach
in all your albums, you would put the following in your tag updates file:
@ARTIST=J. S. Bach
=ARTIST=Johann Sebastian Bach

Quote:• About the windows GUI, maybe it could be more user-friendly.
I wish one had the ability to customize the layout of the tag indexes
like Asset UPnp does : adding ABC, etc..

You can use the alphaGroups property to add alphabetical groupings to all your indexes, or only to some of them. See the release notes for version 0.50 for a description of how to do this.

Quote:• BTW I noticed Songbook Lite sees 16bit 44.1khz mp3 files
as "24bit mp3"

I've checked the output from MinimServer and this is correct. It looks like this is a bug in Songbook Lite. MinimServer is sending 'bitrate=24000' (actually the number of bytes per second, as required by the UPnP specifications). It seems that Songbook Lite is incorrectly interpreting this as '24bit'.
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