I have recently purchased a second Z9X for my basement TV. Is it possible to sync the two together so that HT will display the “Continue Watching” on both devices regardless which one I strted watching the show/movie on?
HT itself doesn't do that but you can do it with a Jellyfin server and use @andy22 's excellent Jellyfin client on the Zidoo. http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/jellyfin-tv-client-zidoo-edition-beta11-released.93903/ Although development has stalled, if you set it up correctly it works perfectly.
Yeah, I could do the same with Plex, I just really prefer the layout of HT 4.0. At the end of the day it’s not a huge problem, just a nice to have. Thanks for the response Mark!
I have two boxes I use day to day - one in the cinema and one in my den. I use the one in the den to scan and then once done, export NFOs and artwork so that when the one in the cinema is switched on it picks up exactly the same info. Doesn't give you resume but it keeps them both in sync as far as what HT shows.
That would be nice, the basement Z9 has required me to add everything separately. Do you mind telling me how to exports the NFOs and artwork?
When you're happy with the metadata and artwork on the "Master" box, goto HT/Settings/Library/Export and this will export NFO and artwork to the movie's folder. If the movie is in a collection, collection artwork is included. I also add a trailer.
I’m guessing you have to re-do this export every time you make a change or add a new movie? I’m assuming it re-exports everything, or, is it smart enough to only export what has changed? My concern is that I use an unRAID server for my media, and I don’t want to keep re-writing large numbers of small files, as this will fragment the storage eventually eating through the free space leaving lots of small deleted file “holes”. My previous media player use to store all its meta data in the media folders, and it was great with Zidoo I could finally clean up my media folders and delete all of the old meta files, just leaving my actual large media files.
The way it works for me is I have a "Master" box, so when I add a movie, I use that box to initially scrape from the internet. Once I'm happy with the scrape, poster, backdrop etc, I then export NFO (HT4/Settings/Library > Export and make sure to untick "Overwrite Old Files". I'll say that bit again - make sure to untick "Overwrite Old Files". That's important. So now all I've done is add an NFO and artwork for the new movie and I can then scrape with any of the other boxes and assuming NFO/Artwork Precedence is set, it'll add exactly the same data as for the "Master" box. Sounds a bit convoluted when you write it down, but it isn't, it's easy, and it take seconds.
Haha! I can tell you've been dealing with hard discs as long as I have - since the mid-late 80s in my case Actually - maybe it was early 90s... Fragmentation isn't the problem it used to be...
Yep, I'm old school. unRAID is using the XFS file system. As it wants contiguous space to write a new file, and media files are quite large, I've had issues where a particular drive might have say 50GB free space, but it fails (out of space) when trying to copy only a 20GB media file (which should still fit). This is because there is no longer 20GB of contiguous space left in the 50GB remianing free space! Caused by the deletion of lots of smaller files. In the past, the only way I have been able to *efficiently* rectify this "fragmentnation" issue, is to literally copy the entire contents of the fragmented drive to a newly formatted XFS drive (so that all the free space is now contiguous). As the media server is generally used as a write-once / read-many (for large media files), this only becomes an issue if you start repetitively deleting and re-creating lots of small files (which, 'Export and make sure to untick "Overwrite Old Files"', will undoubtedly do!).
Glad you repeated that. My 2nd Zidoo has just arrived, so I read your reply once again today. For some reason I’d originally interpreted it as “Overwrite old files”. Now I see that you were specifically saying DON’T overwrite old files! Sorry for misunderstanding. Makes sense to me now. LOL
I'll just add, it didn't work for me for some reason. I exported the NFO etc. to my unRAID NAS, which created thousands of files (looked good!). I also have a cache drive on my unRAID, so without the Mover scheduled, all the new files existed just on my Cache drive (no impact / fragmentation to the main storage drives). But, when I then got my new Zidoo to scan the unRAID server, it didn't seem to replicate what I had for folder images etc. I tried the import process a couple of times, with different import settings (to be sure I got it right), but no real joy. I also tried the back-up option on the Zidoo, but I couldn't restore it on the new one. I'm guessing my fail was because my old Zidoo Z9X is not he Pro version, and my new one is the Zx9 Pro (so I guess differing firmware etc / incompatibilities?). I ended up just having to (slowly), go though my scanned content to tidy it up again, to get to a place similar to my first Zx9. Hopefully, you have more luck than me.
Okay, thanks for the info. I will have two Pro's if that matters. I only have about 300 movies, and maybe 50 of them need adjusting, so maybe by hand, not a big deal... Thanks
Presumably you didn't have "Use local images first" switched on in HT4 Preferences? That's the only way the poster images could be different - if they were pulled from TMDB rather than locally. The other possibility is you didn't have "Export Posters and fanart" ticked when you exported - although that's ticked by default so you'd have to manually do that so I doubt that's the problem. You'd soon know because there wouldn't be poster and fanart jpgs in each movie directory.
My new Z9X Pro arrived today. I need to think about how to sync with my Z20 Pro, don't want to make mistakes? Well, I just Backed up and Restored on the new box, worked perfectly! Thanks, Tom
This is one of the reasons why I suggest that Zidoo should officially support media servers like Plex. People are looking to play content from their NAS across multiple devices and locations, hoping to have their media libraries and playback records synchronized across all devices. However, the official team is overlooking this potential demand, which could also represent a new business opportunity in the coming years.
