I am connecting my Z9X to my Windows Home Server 2011 replacing my Mede8er MED600X3D. It is all working fine except when it comes to adding my movies over 550 mainly Blu-ray with a few 4K ones, it stops scanning before it is complete with only about 150 scanned. I have spent several hours repeating the process and I have just now found the problem. The WHS2011 only sets up 60GB partition on my boot 500GB drive which is now nearly full as the Z9X is writing back to it and when full then stops the scan. On my Mede8er the library data was written back to a USB memory stick plugged permanently into it. So is it possible to do a similar thing on the Z9Z. I have looked into partition software to increase the C: partition size to use up some of the wasted space on my 500GB boot drive which it mapped as F, but because as it is classed as a server the prices are extortionate for a one-time use.
BUMP Can anyone help as I am pulling my hair out with this piece of c***, or it is destined for the bin despite it only being 1 day old. It keeps screwing up my WHS2011, changing my permissions to access certain folders. I have now set it up as someone in this forum suggested to use the onboard memory for the media library and it now scans all my media but only shows these: Blu-ray shows only 141 out of 569 (mainly ISO & some MKV) 4K 3 out of 3 (MKV & ISO) DVD 3 out of 3 (ISO) TV Series 153 out of 181 (ISO, MKV,VOB,AVI) It is also still writing back to my server with a .theatre folder but now in my Blu-ray folder share, but at least not in the root of my boot drive and not quite as much. The instructions which come it are absolutely useless and of no help whatsoever compared to my excellent Mede8er manual in full colour and COMPLETE instructions. Colin
The .hometheatre folder only holds poster and backdrop jpgs and then only when accessed. There are some settings files located there also, but the overall size should be insignificant, especially with a library of only 500 odd titles. So not sure what's going on with that unless you have literally no space left on your partition at all. That database itself is always located on the Zidoo box. That said, simply change the poster directory in HT4 settings to "custom" as described in the thread below which means the .homeheatre directory remains on the box and not the source, then delete the directories on your sources. http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...for-rtd1619-players-vs10-sdr-pdf-added.82695/
Hi thanks for your reply I have already changed the poster directory as you have described which I found earlier from another post. I do have around 756 titles in total but only 300 have been mapped. My Windows Home Server 2011 system boot drive only has a small 100MB hidden partition and a 60GB partition which is created automatically on first install, with MS recommending a 160GB hdd minimum, which currently leaves me around 16GB left out of the 60GB C: partition which is normally ample as nothing much is normally req'd, all I have is Stablebit DrivePool installed for the disk pooling of my remaining 8 HDD's. The remainder of my 500GB system drive is mapped as Drive F: and has around 403GB out 405GB remaining apparently MS states that is for tombstones whatever they are. This is why I was thinking of disk partitioning s/w to increase my C: partition but the cost was too much just for a one-off use, all the free stuff is for non-servers. Tomorow I was going to try and add a 64GB USB 3.0 stick to the box and try to map that as the default custom directory in case the onboard 16GB is insufficient. My total storage on my server is 24TB with around 8TB free. My old Mede8er also added all the clip art and xml files within each movie folder, which I intended eventually to remove once the Zidoo is up and running properly, but I do have another Mede8er in my lounge on my main system to think about, before I get around to replacing that as well, if this works out OK. Otherwise, I will just forget about putting my 4K movies on the server and stick with the Mede8er's. I do have Samsung 4K tv's in both my lounge and PC room along with a 4K monitor on my PC, and both TV's have 4K standalone players and with a 4K recorder in my PC. Currently my total of 80 4K Bluray collection are stored in my PC room where I normally play them, and the standard Blu-rays stored in the lounge. Sorry for the long post but does adding a 64GB USB stick to the Zidoo seem possible as a solution if indeed that is the problem. I did intend initially of getting a Dune HD Real Vision 4K player which was slightly cheaper but was concerned about customs charges from Germany and the Zidoo got slightly better reviews. Colin
Missing posters are mostly issues with file names. 1. Is there anything in the Unmatched widget? 2. Give us some file name examples of the missing files.
Hi thanks for the reply. There were only about 6 items unmatched which I resolved quickly. Currently I have just set the Zidoo back to factory defaults. My problem I do not think is down to file names as all my movies were scanned with my 2 Mede8er's with TMDB, the same database used for the Zidoo. I have done the factory reset at least 6 times and the result is always the same regarding a large number of titles missing and I have noted that the alphabetical list to the left stops at the letter T, i.e., no U, V, W, X where I have several titles. Also, after each reset and scan I have noticed several differences where movies were present on one reset but absent on another reset, an example is my complete Harry Potter collection on the first scan all movies were present and on the last scan prior to a reset several titles were missing. This leads me to think that it is a capacity problem, initially I had it on default settings, and it was writing back to my Windows Home Server 2011 boot drive which only had its default capacity of 60GB set by MS and when it was almost full the scan stopped, normally there is about 16GB free. After advice on this forum, I set the Zidoo to use its own internal storage (the bottom option in HT4), but again the scan stops at around 300 out of the 756 titles it found. So, I am thinking that maybe the 16GB internal is either insufficient or faulty, which is why I suggested a 64GB memory stick plugged into the Zidoo and set that as the default storage source, if possible, which is what I was going to try today. If that fails again, I am going to give up and try to raise a complaint on eBay to send it back for a refund as being possibly faulty or relist it on eBay for someone else to sort out. This was a brand-new unit where the seller had 2 to sell and this was the last one. I should have got the Dune HD Real Vision 4K player which was first choice.
FWIW, my custom location (on my NAS) .HomeTheatre folder size is about 3.5 GB. I have close to 1,900 movies and about 20 TV shows in my Zidoo collection. Try using Media Center app first to see whether you can see the missing files in there. If not, then there is something wrong indeed with your storage configuration. For reference, the preferred naming convention is Movie Name (Year).extension. For example, Top Gun (1986).iso. Year is optional. Anything else in the file name can confuse the scraper. For example, 2160p, TrueHD, H265, etc. Note also that Zidoo has the feature to group multiple versions of the same files in the same poster. For example, if you have Top Gun (1986).iso and Top Gun (2022).iso then both would be grouped into one Top Gun poster and you will see "A" and "B" or something like that in the Top Gun folder. Point is that the files may already be scraped but put into the wrong posters.
I have spent all day doing several resets and tests, but I can only get about 100+ movies in the poster display out of about 756 found. It always leaves a handful as unmatched which I then correct. I eventually then looked in device manager and went into my video shares on my server and found all my folders Bluray, Bluray 4K, DVD and TV Series and I could access my entire library from the folders and play the movies, just cannot get any more to display in the poster display in HT4. After scanning I checked all the movies displayed with an excel printout of all my movies and there were a few missing here and there but after titles beginning with the letter J there was major omissions especially after titles beginning with T which were non-existent. It is though the Zidoo went so far then gave up. My naming convention is the same as yours Movie Name (Year). extension, for 99% of them, the remaining earlier ones have no year which work perfectly on my Mede8er's, but only in HD, hence the change to the Zidoo. In my server movie folders, I also have in addition to the image, the Jpegs for cover art etc and xml files created by the Mede8er when scanning. I am a bit concerned that when adding new movies does it scrape automatically as with my Mede8er you had to do a manual scan. I can put up with for a bit longer, but I am not happy that I cannot display everything in the poster display that I am used to. If after a little while if nothing improves, I will either go back to my removed Mede8er and forget about putting my UHD movies I have purchased on the server and just simply play them straight from disc, which I was trying to avoid for fear of possible damage or I will sell the Zidoo and buy my first choice a Dune HD Real Vision 4K, which cannot be any worse than this. Thanks anyway for your help.
Remove all the images and the files coming from the scrape of the Med. Just keep the video and the folder to their name if you want. Your naming convention seems to be the good one. The best is to copy the name + release date in TMDb. For the TV Show, all the episodes from all the seasons in an unique folder to the name of the show. No folder per season. No title of the episode in the name of the video: « name of the show » (year).S01E01 or « name of the show.S01E01. This is all what I did when I let my Med1000x3d for a Zidoo and that has worked like a charm. To store all the posters and background, I use the default setting so they are all stored on my different sources (an internal hdd + 4 individual hdds in a DAS and plugged to the Zidoo in USB). The Zidoo will scan the sources previously added to HT4.0 automatically (by default) so no need to do it manually.
I do not want to remove all the files apart from the video image itself as I have a second Mede8er MED600X3D in the lounge which will stop that working and if re-scanned it would only put all of them back on again which defeats the purpose. I do exactly what you say regarding naming convention in both movies and tv series which is the same as what the Mede8er requires. I have tried all combination of various settings over the last 3 days with dozens of factory resets linking my Z9X to my WHS2011, getting very frustrated in the process. Today I have just found that when in device manager by pressing the menu key, you get other options I had not noticed before where it states scanning etc, and by pressing the menu button you can stop the scan and when repeated you get the option to update to restart the scanning again. Since I have done this several times I have now a lot more of my media now being displayed in the poster display. Some of my movies including all my Mad Max ones are still not shown at all, and the titles are all correct as shown on the TMDB, so I do not know why. I think I will try copying those MAD MAX movies to my PC and delete those from the server, reboot the server and reboot the Zidoo and do another scan on the Zidoo then copy those movies back to the server without the added artwork etc and do another scan on the Zidoo. If that works, I will do that on the remaining movies that are not being recognised on the poster wall. I can then rescan on the Mede8er to put those movies back. If the Zidoo came with proper instructions as the Mede8er did then this would have not been a problem, but at least I am slowly getting there, as I was close to throwing it out the window. I know the prompt was there to use the menu key, but it was right at the bottom of the screen in small text and in white making it barely noticeable, instead of a more prominent position and larger, making it more obvious. Thanks for your help anyway.
I have finally sorted it all out with thanks to some forum members and it is now working as I expected it to. I have now just come upon another problem with my Mede8er MED600X3D, as I had just added some movies to my server which my Z9X managed with ease, but upon running the scan on my other existing Mede8er in the lounge, only to find it has stopped scraping the movie info, something it had done once before but was rectified by a clever user. According to their forum other users are now stating the same in the last couple of weeks, so it seems that the 8-year-old Mede8er is now past its useful life. So, I am now considering purchasing yet another Z9X in the very near future, so would I be right in assuming that as I have backed up my database to a USB memory stick, that I would be able to restore that on another Z9X with going through all the scan process yet again. Colin
