NASLite Network Attached Storage

I make no bones about the way I came at you, I felt you came at this wrong in the start. I do not work for Tony and Ralph. They do not pay me, generally communicate with me, or in any other way influence me. That said, I help here when I can, mainly hardware since that is more my thing, because I enjoy it. If you took umbrage to my response, sorry but I call them the way I see them. Much to your credit, you acted like an adlt and explained your position to all. That goes a long way for myself and others here that help out. I do see your point about the DAAP support not being quite up to snuff. I bet that Tony and Ralph will be making revisions to the documentation soon, if I know them, to make these potential issues more clearly known.



Made me squirm a bit the first time I loaded it and then formatted the boot drive, Good point! Tony, Ralph, You got that?

Mike

Scott ma man, you must suffer from ADD cause you sure didn't get what the man wrote out for you. Let me call your attention to some key words that you got to get through.

Footnotes:
1. It sure as hell isn't. Naslite m2 will not take you to the apple itunes store or rip cds for you. It will not even play music for you, let alone video. Or shovel snow, or make coffee, or babysit your toddlers, or other cool shit that aint in the manual
2. DAAP stands for digital AUDIO access protocol in case that wasn't clear for you.
3. Yeah dude, with all that experience you know better right?
4. Shame on you scott
5. That's to play audio like Skinny Puppy mp3s and not video podcasts in case you missed it. I hear ogg is in next release.
6. I have no problem streaming music from m2. Works great too.
7. Itunes is BIG. 70meg on the pc and twice that on the mac. What do you think is in there?

I know you wont find that funny cause you'r just being pissy, but i don't see how the m2 description implied daap video streaming. It just said it supports daap for audio clients and that's what it does. So what exactly is your problem with it? What bugs is bugs? Yeah, and the thing about the boot partition, you have a point there. That's a fine detail that didn't escape the grasp of your intellect. Still tho, not a bug cause it ain't broken. You can safely remove your foot from your mouth and i promise not to laugh any more.

Now before you flame me, i'm not saying m2 is perfect, but that it does what it claims it will do. Getting bent out of shape about shit it wasn't made to do is pointless. I'll ditto mike's disclaimer but will not let you off as easy as he did.

I think that Scott has gotten the general gist of it. I also think that, with his help and that of other M2 users, Tony and Ralph are going to be able to expand the capabilities of M2 and fix those perceived "bugs" in this present distro.

Thanks Scott for your continued help to Tony and Ralph, in doing so you help me as well. Also, thanks for taking a beating here and coming back to help, it speaks well to your character.

Mike

Well Scott,

I'm not sure what exactly it is that you expect me to say here.

The DAAP protocol specification was never released to the public by Apple. Most work done on it for 3rd party support has been the result of reverse engineering with emphasis on audio. The protocol was designed with audio as the target media - hence the name. I am not aware of any product that would cleanly and fully stream video via DAAP other than iTunes. If I'm not correct in this, please point me in the right direction. The same goes for stock AppleTV support.

At any rate, the point is that both Ralph and I will love nothing more right now than to mesh things perfectly with iTunes in terms of video. We'd also love to support AppleTV out of the box as well as a host of other nice things iTunes can do. I assure you that we've spend a lot of time on that topic and are keenly aware of what's involved. That is why the best we can guarantee is DAAP audio. That is all we have claimed M2 will do. That's even though partial streaming of m4v and mov video from NASLite-M2 through DAAP is currently possible.

It's quite extraordinary what has been written. C'est le ton qui fait la musique. Tony got it down to plain facts, luckily.

I hope Scott found his ease, and accepts & understands the limitations of purchased software, and also understands that this is -somehow- a special place, with special, dedicated people.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Tony,

Thank you for your reply. I re read the thread and also Server Elements M2 home page. And you are correct. Your page does not specifically state full support for DAAP video streaming. Here is the source of my confusion:

Searching for "NASLite DAAP" in Google, the first two (non Server Elements) links that pop up:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/naslite/?branch_id=77393&release_id=292235
Exerpt

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=9100
Exerpt

The word "natively" said to me that I should expect the same operation streaming audio and video as I do with an iTunes-iTunes share. I also assumed that this meant Front Row would work as well. I apologize that I made these assumptions and attributed these claims to you and Ralph. This was erroneous on my part. Freshmeat.net and automatedhome.co.uk should be corrected for accuracy. And I will reiterate: I do have respect for what you and Ralph are trying to accomplish. My remarks are in no way intended to irritate. I look forward to corresponding and will help with reports on operation of M2. Can't wait for 1.01 to see how things have stacked up.

dimension:

Frankly, when someone starts a reply like this, I tend to discount their opinions. IMO, this is usually an indicator that the person has no desire to constructively criticize, but to tear another down. I have no use for p***ing contests.

I do not participate in flame threads. I find them useless, boring and counter productive. Apparently, from this remark, you expected me to retaliate. I will not. If you wish to make a point with me or alert me to a detail you feel I might have missed, you should, in the future, refrain from remarks that serve no purpose other than flame bait. Otherwise, I will continue to ignore you as I have ignored the majority of your reply.

Smiles!
Scott

I got it. The ADD comment was outa line and I retract it. The rest IMO was a fair and square observation.

I think this might be just a misconstruction of how it's read. M2 does stream successfully to UPNP clients like XBOX360 & PS3 video formats as supported. To do other then that would require a transcoder engine, which M2 doesn't have.

This video convergence, however, works fine for those clients. Because DAAP is an Audio Transfer protocol, I think the implication was that it was implied what would happen; DAAP for Audio, UPNP for UPNP ready devices that would support video type streaming.

In order to support something like Itunes, etc. would require major changes in the way Itunes manages video media, which is unlikely to happen from Apple's viewpoint.

While there are features I find missing from M2 as a general which have kept me from purchasing (the like of a Bittorrent client & an option to transcode) the general basis of what they are saying is valid, and you're unhappiness stews from the way it's being read. Both sides read it and emphasize different elements mentally rather then what's in the text. One implies a known value (DAAP is Audio, UPNP is both video and audio) the other does not.

Is there a directory structure within the MEDIA folder on each drive, or are media files (music, photos, videos) just dropped in that directory? I've got a PS3 and M2 with UPnP enabled. PS3 sees the MEDIA directory, but nothing within...

Please advise! Thanks.

Is your UPnP Profile set to PS3 in M2?

5 - UPNP Compliance Profile [ PS3 ]

It wasn't, but I changed it!

Also, please check your PM -- I am having trouble downloading 1.62 (I am currently on 1.61).

Ralph... Nevermind the PM -- it turns out that if I use the correct URL, it works fine!

Thanks for the guidance about M2 1.62 and the need to specify the UPnP type as "PS3" in M2's configuration. I've updated the configuration and updated to M2 1.62 (I was running M2 1.61). I rebooted, saw the NASbox come up, then I had to leave for work...

A few more questions, so I can move efficiently when I get home this evening...

1. Is there a required subdirectory structure within the MEDIA folder on each drive?
2. Do I just dump mixed files (MP3, video, photos, etc) in the MEDIA folder and M2 sorts them out automatically?
3. Can I use subdirectories (if they're not required)? If so, are there naming conventions or things to be aware of?
4. Can I put shortcuts (I use XP) in the MEDIA directory and will M2's UPnP index them?
5. Does M2 automatically re-index (if so, when?), or must I force the re-index?

Hi Drew,

1. Is there a required subdirectory structure within the MEDIA folder on each drive?
No.

2. Do I just dump mixed files (MP3, video, photos, etc) in the MEDIA folder and M2 sorts them out automatically?
Set the folder structure as you wish. M2 will crawl and index recursively everything under MEDIA.

3. Can I use subdirectories (if they're not required)? If so, are there naming conventions or things to be aware of?
(See 2) - No particular requirements other than proper extensions.

4. Can I put shortcuts (I use XP) in the MEDIA directory and will M2's UPnP index them?
I'm not clear on what you mean by shortcut. M2 can't access your local disk if that's what you mean.

5. Does M2 automatically re-index (if so, when?), or must I force the re-index?
Index on boot and on request via the admin menu. With the potential amount of data, automatic re-index can very quickly render your server useless when watching an HD stream.

Hope that helps...