I'm interested in purchasing a UHD3000 and curious how it indexes and manages a video library located on a network share. For instance, how often does it scan the network video library for new titles? How long does it typically take scan, say, a 1,000 title library? Where does it maintain its internal library database? Can that database be manually edited, for instance, metadata (e.g. title), posters, grouping into collections (and can a single title be grouped into multiple collections), etc? FWIW, I'm upgrading from a tried-and-true-but-long-discontinued Popcorn Hour C-200 so I've been comfortable with its customizable video "wall" interface and database via YAMJ. TIA!
Seems to be almost instant. I've been copying a new file into my NAS - Movie folder and it appears very quickly. I moved from a A-500 and the comparison is chalk and cheese! I've found the UHD3000 very responsive , albeit a few warts and imperfections. I was advised to use Tiny Media Manager to do difficult scrapping and edits etc. It's the equivalent of NMJToolbox. However the Zidoo's own Home Theatre works really well especially since the last few updates of HT. Things like metadata, posters and the like can be managed via TMM. Grouping and collections are done via the Menu button on the remote, you can also change posters from this menu. The main difference is the Zidoo seems to scatter functions all over the place whereas Popcorn put them all in settings. So it's a mild logical learning curve. My only annoyance is common to a lot of gear these days, no extensive centralised manual, either written or electronic, so some times it feels like extracting teeth. On the positive side there are a number of members with good info, so the forum is your friend - ask questions! One big plus compared to the Popcorn is the ability to take a screen shot of all the various menu's and settings page. I did this every time I opened a new settings page. The coloured buttons on the remote are programmable, so the I chose the Red button to do screen shots.
It doesn't scan for new titles periodically, it constantly monitors the network shares for changes and once one is detected, it will rescan in the background. This process is extremely fast. I have a 500 title library and I use NFO files and local artwork - this takes less than a minute to scan from scratch. Online scanning time is comparable. There is currently development to allow the use of MediaInfo during the scanning process to get codec info etc - since this will require each file to be queried, presumably this will increase the scan time, but by how much we don't know yet. The library is a SQLite database maintained on the device. It is accessible and editable (with knowledge of SQL) by creating a backup, editing it, then restoring it, but that's not generally necessary unless like me you tend to bugger around with things a lot... There is a web interface where you can change/add metadata, artwork etc. Artwork can be changed easily in the GUI. As @Netmask says, you can also use TMM to create Kodi compliant NFO files and artwork which can also be used in scanning.
