Art Work Images - Multiple Clients

[martinix]

Hi,

I'm new to MM5 testing so I apologise if this is a problem/observation that has already been noted/made.

I keep all my music media in folder on a network shared server folder. I set up MM5 on a Windows 10 desktop for testing. Library scanned correctly and all content, including artwork, displayed as expected per MM4. Looking at the setup/installation. It appears that MM5 (like MM4) keeps an MM.db file in the same folder as the top level folder containing my music content (in my case music is all stored in a network folder ..//Music/My Music/ and the MM.db file appears in the network folder ..//Music/.

I then installed MM5 on another Windows 10 desktop connected with a network connection to the same Server Network Folder. On installation, the library scanned/appeared as expected but most (approx 95%) of the Album/Artist Artwork images were missing. I tried re-scanning the database but the problem remains.

I assume that the desktop MM5 installation caches artwork images somewhere locally and they are not contained in the MM.db file? For some reason, it appears that the Artwork cache is not rebuilt when installing MM5 on a second desktop?

For information, I'm running Windows 10 Pro build 1809 17763.529 and MM5 5.0.0.2179

Very happy to do further testing if helpful. Many thanks.

[martinix]

Hi - A quick update on the observation above. Having investigated further, it appears that the mediamonkey.ini switch for MM.DB location [System] DBName=<shared location> may not be working in the current pre-release version of MM5 (5.0.0.2179). This may be an intentional restriction on the current pre-release build?

With MM5 (5.0.0.2179) if you update the .ini file to signify the MM.DB is in a shared location e.g. \\My-Server\Music and copy the MM.DB file to that location, then MM5 continues to look at, use (and if missing recreate) MM.DB in the default location e.g. C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\MediaMonkey5. This means your unable to share a version 5 MM.DB database between multiple MM5 clients and as such share library details such as Playlists.

I've checked with the latest MM v4 and .ini setting and use of shared MM.DB works correctly so the problem reported above is not a local installation/Network problem.

I've tried using the pre-release MM5 Server but while this works for sharing basic library content at present, it doesn't support shared playlists.

Will the functionality in MM5 for sharing an MM.DB between clients continue to work as in MM4?

Many thanks.

[Peke]

Hi,
Many things have been changed in MM5 regarding behavior in MM4. In your particular case Problem is that You use Normal MM5 install in Network environment and change only path to MM.DB.

Solution for you would be to Install MM5 as Portable on network path (eg. \\SHARED_MACHINE\SHAREDFOLDER\) and create shortcts to MediaMonkey.exe on each PC. That way you ensure that All caches, previews, converted tracks, ... are stored in network share and all PC that use that installation will use same files.

I also created https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=15718 so that UI settings can be saved locally on each PC to avoid issues with Different resolutions and desired behavior on each PC.

Let us know what you think.

[martinix]

Hi Pavle,

Thank you for your response and suggestion. I made a portable MM5 install on my server (\\MyServer\MediaMonkey) however, I cannnot get the app to work properly. When I run the server MM .ex(\\MyServer\MediaMonkey\mediamonkey.exe) on the W10 desktop the MM5 doesn't work properly. The main window opens showing the content of the library but when you try and play any media nothing happens - the player doesn't respond to any mouse inputs.

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong and/or I need to install additional files on the desktop?

Thanks,

Martin..