What a hassle to register for this "Forum".
Not user friendly or intuitive.
No 'UK English' option.
All working against a positive feeling for your product.
I have no computing qualifications at all - everything that I have been able to achieve with Windows 10 has been by sheer doggedness and determination.
1tb of music (overwhelmingly classical) is downloaded per month.
I use MusicBee as my music player (and impro music server). Have used MonkeyMedia as player and server in the past.
It would look from my reading that I need to instigate another music/media server and then I encountered MinimServer (MS) BUT....
..even your introductory material is very difficult to comprehend and when I read on further it's pretty evident that it is all well beyond me - so much "googling" and cross referencing would be needed. A very steep learning curve required - all obviously designed for "cognoscenti of the computing arts"!
In the past I slavishly re-wrote all the tags that emanated from the various web sources, mostly written by people not understanding the classical genre.
Your MS2, seems from my reading to be the one most appropriate for me - but not really sure. All my music is stored as 1tb hard drives which are played via MusicBee - very happy with this software, but tagging is not something that I have worked on with this piece of software. I want something that will automatically tag classical music.
Can you help?
Cannot even get your programme to "open". Been looking for a ".exe" file to open it with - always seems to default to "7z extract" and not go anywhere subsequently.
Feel like giving up completely.
Do you have "an idiot's guide" to your software.
How do I start it? Unpack it? Install it?
Not even sure whether MS will be of any help to me.
Thanks in anticipation for any encouragement or help that anyone can give.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
Thank you for your feedback on MinimServer. I will do my best to respond to the points you have raised.
MinimServer does not add tags to audio files. It reads and indexes the tags that are already in your files. There are other programs that can add tags automatically, such as
SongKong.
MinimServer 2 has a Quick Start guide for Windows, available
here. In the section on installing MinimServer 2, there is a link to the
Installing MinimServer on Windows page. This page contains instructions for what you should do if MinimServer does not start when you double-click the launch icon. Assuming that you already have Java installed, the solution is usually to use the
Jarfix program.
MinimServer is a UPnP music server and requires a UPnP control point and renderer, I am not sure whether MusicBee includes these UPnP features. I don't recall seeing any forum posts from people who are using MusicBee in combination with MinimServer.
I don't understand what you mean by the lack of a 'UK English' option. All the MinimServer website pages are in UK English including the online User guide. Are you perhaps referring to the forum software (MyBB)? If you could provide a specific example to illustrate the problem, this would be helpful.
I am guessing that your reference to difficulty in registering with the forum might relate to the registration security question that requires you to enter some information that can be found on the MinimServer website. I have found this to be the most effective way to prevent spam bots from registering and posting. If this is not the issue that you had in mind, please clarify.
If you have any "how to" questions, you can post them here. You should get a quick and helpful response from the MinimServer community.
(15-07-2020 21:29)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you for your feedback on MinimServer. I will do my best to respond to the points you have raised.
MinimServer does not add tags to audio files. It reads and indexes the tags that are already in your files. There are other programs that can add tags automatically, such as SongKong.
MinimServer 2 has a Quick Start guide for Windows, available here. In the section on installing MinimServer 2, there is a link to the Installing MinimServer on Windows page. This page contains instructions for what you should do if MinimServer does not start when you double-click the launch icon. Assuming that you already have Java installed, the solution is usually to use the Jarfix program.
MinimServer is a UPnP music server and requires a UPnP control point and renderer, I am not sure whether MusicBee includes these UPnP features. I don't recall seeing any forum posts from people who are using MusicBee in combination with MinimServer.
I don't understand what you mean by the lack of a 'UK English' option. All the MinimServer website pages are in UK English including the online User guide. Are you perhaps referring to the forum software (MyBB)? If you could provide a specific example to illustrate the problem, this would be helpful.
I am guessing that your reference to difficulty in registering with the forum might relate to the registration security question that requires you to enter some information that can be found on the MinimServer website. I have found this to be the most effective way to prevent spam bots from registering and posting. If this is not the issue that you had in mind, please clarify.
If you have any "how to" questions, you can post them here. You should get a quick and helpful response from the MinimServer community.
Many many thanks for your reply.
I will ponder on the comments that you have made and will answer them accordingly.
It's late now so I will bid you goodnight.
Be in touch tomorrow.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
(15-07-2020 22:16)coppinsuk Wrote: [ -> ]Many many thanks for your reply.
I will ponder on the comments that you have made and will answer them accordingly.
It's late now so I will bid you goodnight.
Be in touch tomorrow.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
Hi folks and particularly "Simoncn",
Didn't give up with "frustration" - I doggedly carried on - determined to get it to work!!
Yes there was a problem with the initial download, as I did not have Java installed, so downloaded that and Jarvix.
Then was able to access the files on my hard drive in order to form a "mini server", in my Windows 10 system, containing 1,826 files (equivalent to 302gb of music on my external hard drive).
Coming to terms how to use the software programme and what it will do and how it works.
I didn't refer to the your "guidelines" as they were somewhat over complicated and confusing, with terminology with which I was not fully familiar.
All seemed to work. Might regret my approach though, as time goes on.
I am now using my two tablets, laptop and smartphone to "throw" my music to my Chromecast Audios (and bluetooth devices) around the house.
I am happy and content now (for the moment).
SORRY FOR MY CRY OF HELP RESULTING FROM MY INITIAL FRUSTRATING ENCOUNTER WITH "MINIMSERVER".
Just need to work with it more - get to understand it.
No doubt be back here again as I learn about the product and encounter (hopefully) small issues.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
THANK YOU
I am pleased to hear that you have MinimServer up and running now.
It is difficult to know how much detail to provide in the installation instructions. There are a few issues that people trip over (notably jarfix and firewall) and these are described in the instructions in an attempt to be helpful. The downside of this is that it makes the instructions quite lengthy and this can have the opposite effect to that intended because it puts off some people from reading them.
Perhaps a better approach would be to provide a summary of the main points in the Quick Start guide with a pointer to the longer and more complete description on the Installing page.
(16-07-2020 12:21)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]I am pleased to hear that you have MinimServer up and running now.
It is difficult to know how much detail to provide in the installation instructions. There are a few issues that people trip over (notably jarfix and firewall) and these are described in the instructions in an attempt to be helpful. The downside of this is that it makes the instructions quite lengthy and this can have the opposite effect to that intended because it puts off some people from reading them.
Perhaps a better approach would be to provide a summary of the main points in the Quick Start guide with a pointer to the longer and more complete description on the Installing page.
Many thanks for your gracious reply to my comments.
It would appear that with now having installed 'MinimServer' that there may no longer be a need for a music player (such as 'MusicBee') on my laptop, as I can now play all my music (contained in 'MinimServer' located in Windows 10) through 'Chromecast Audio' by utilising the "players" in my various "renderers" such as 'Hi-Fi Cast', 'BubbleUPnp' and 'Foobar200' installed in my various tablets and smartphone? Am I correct?
Perhaps the music player (MusicBee on the laptop) will only be needed for sorting and tagging?
Would it be likely that my current music files (302gb on my external hard drive) will only consume about 1,779kb of memory space in 'MinimServer'?
No doubt many more questions will be following, the more I "play" with MinimServer.
Thanks in anticipation.
Cheers,
Douglas (UK)
You can use Hi-Fi Cast, BubbleUPnP and foobar2000 to play music from MinimServer on the phone or tablet on which the app is running. If you need to play music on your Windows PC, you can use the Windows version of foobar2000 to do that. I have not used Chromecast Audio myself as I don't have the hardware that this requires.
I don't know how you got the 1779 kb figure and whether this refers to disk space or RAM. MinimServer uses a disk cache and also uses RAM. The amounts of disk space and RAM that are used depend on how many audio files you have and what tags are in these files. The size of the audio files should not make any dfference.
You can check the amount of disk space used for the cache by looking at the minimserver/data folder. You can check the amount of RAM used by looking at Task Manager.