How to Create Your Own Custom Navigation Trees

[Twonky_Rick]

Shoot. We've had to resort to some extreme measures in order to keep the spammers at bay. If you can send it to me at tmm-beta@pv.com, I'll see if I can post it.

- Rick

[monty68]

Thanks RIck, I'll email across + wording for the post so should be a simple cut and paste job

[Twonky_Rick]

Per your request, I'm posting your PS3 tree for others to enjoy. I'll let you comment on it. Thanks.

- Rick

[prmusic]

After I was creating a customer navigation tree - which worked perfectly - I experienced problems when new media files have been added to the DB. The files have been copied to a folder on the harddisk but have been show in a different folder in the view of the Twonky DB. Once trying to access them i.e. with my PS3 I got an error returned because the files are not available at that place. A rescan didn't fixed the problem. A rebuild of the DB seems to cause a freeze when creating the DB.
I uninstalled the 5.1.1 from my WHS now and reinstalled the Windows Version of the 5.1.3. Without changing the views right now the DB was building up normally.

Any suggestions?

prmusic

[teros]

Hi all,

I looking into creating a customer view i've looked through the modified ones doing a search (seem to be mostly music related) my main issue is i am trying to seperate by Movies and TV shows... I've got a mount going on for several dirs to appear on the 1 box but i need to create the view to show the following.


TV Shows
limited to:/shares/PUBLIC/Episodes

Movies
Limited to:/shares/PUBLIC/TEROS/Movies

And /shares/PUBLIC/Mount/Movies

From what i've seen no ones actually limited the structure by directory am i correct?

Looking through the folderview.xml

<container id='video' >
<link id='video/all' />
<link id='video/folders' />
</container>

Does not really show anything that stands out the only thing might be 'video/folders".. any help would be muichly appreciated.

[sorna]

Hi,

I just wonder whether substring match is still supported in Navigation trees. I wanted to group songs by '10 years' (decades?) so I can have 50s songs, 60s songs etc. But both buildon='dc:date[1:2]' and buildon='pv:year[1:2]' somehow group songs by years (tried with TMS 6.0 beta 3). I am not sure if I am doing something wrong. Any insight is welcome.

Thanks,
Sorna.

[sorna]

Hi Rick,

Any information whether substring match is still supported in 6.0? It was not mentioned in the addendum for 5.1+ (TMS-5-1-View Configuration.doc). Hope this feature is not dropped.

Thanks,
Sorna.

Hi,

I just wonder whether substring match is still supported in Navigation trees. I wanted to group songs by '10 years' (decades?) so I can have 50s songs, 60s songs etc. But both buildon='dc:date[1:2]' and buildon='pv:year[1:2]' somehow group songs by years (tried with TMS 6.0 beta 3). I am not sure if I am doing something wrong. Any insight is welcome.

Thanks,
Sorna.

[Twonky_Rick]

I'll check and get back to you when I hear back.

- Rick

[sorna]

I'll check and get back to you when I hear back.

- Rick

Ok. Thanks.

[Twonky_Rick]

Here is the response I received. Let me know if it doesn't make sense to you.

1. Yes, substring match is still supported for most properties, e.g. buildon='upnp:artist[3]'
2. No, subtring match is no longer supported for dc:date, pv:year, pv:month and pv:day - it has been discontinued already a long time ago (somewhere between TMS 4.x and TMS 5.0).

- Rick

[sorna]

Here is the response I received. Let me know if it doesn't make sense to you.

1. Yes, substring match is still supported for most properties, e.g. buildon='upnp:artist[3]'
2. No, subtring match is no longer supported for dc:date, pv:year, pv:month and pv:day - it has been discontinued already a long time ago (somewhere between TMS 4.x and TMS 5.0).

- Rick

Hi,

It is sad that it is no longer supported for date/year fields. But thanks for the reply Rick.

Regards,
Sorna.

[sorna]

Hi,

One more question Rick. Is there any place I can find all the database properties that are supported for Navigation trees?

I know that there is a list is in the appendix of TMS-5-1-View Configuration.doc. But as some properties you mentioned (pv:month and pv:day) are not in that list, I wonder (with hope) if there are any other properties that are supported as well.

Thanks,
Sorna.

[Twonky_Rick]

I've requested this information for you.

- Rick

[sorna]

I've requested this information for you.

- Rick

Hi Rick,

Just wonder if you got any information yet?

Thanks,
Sorna.

[Twonky_Rick]

I just pinged them again. Everyone has been busy getting ready for the TwonkyServer 6.0 and TwonkyManager 2.0 launches. I'm sure they'll respond on Monday.

- Rick

[sorna]

I just pinged them again. Everyone has been busy getting ready for the TwonkyServer 6.0 and TwonkyManager 2.0 launches. I'm sure they'll respond on Monday.

- Rick

Ok. Thanks.
Sorna

[pdneri]

Hi Rick,

in ByFolder view, I'd like to see the "root"shared folders as first level of the tree.
When I share 2 or more folders, their subfolders are shown all together as first level.

To be enough clear, this is the situation:
I want to share:
folderA with subfolderA1 and subfolderA2
folderB with subfolderB1
When I use ByFolder view I'd like to see:
folderA
folderB
While I actually see:
subfolderA1
subfolderA2
subfolderB1

I know that I could get it rearranging the original folders to be shared, but for some reasons I could not.
Is there an easy way to do that?
Thank you very much!!!

I am testing Twonky 6.

Davide

[Twonky_Rick]

I just pinged them again. Everyone has been busy getting ready for the TwonkyServer 6.0 and TwonkyManager 2.0 launches. I'm sure they'll respond on Monday.

- Rick

Ok. Thanks.
Sorna

I didn't forget about you. I got a short response, but not the info you requested. I need to find out why.

- Rick

[Twonky_Rick]

in ByFolder view, I'd like to see the "root"shared folders as first level of the tree.
When I share 2 or more folders, their subfolders are shown all together as first level.

I want to share:
folderA with subfolderA1 and subfolderA2
folderB with subfolderB1
When I use ByFolder view I'd like to see:
folderA
folderB
While I actually see:
subfolderA1
subfolderA2
subfolderB1

I know that I could get it rearranging the original folders to be shared, but for some reasons I could not.
Is there an easy way to do that?

You always need to share the parent folder. Create a new parent folder and move everything (A and B) into it. Folder view would then show as below as requested:

A
B

Opening A would show:
A1
A2

Opening B would show:
B1

Does this make sense?

- Rick

[P.S. Thanks to Bri and Christian for responding to this question]

[sorna]

I didn't forget about you. I got a short response, but not the info you requested. I need to find out why.

- Rick

Thanks Rick, appreciate your efforts.

One more question. The TwonkyMedia server features listed in the website includes the following
-User-generated tags

Are these custom mp3 tags? If so, how they are supported? Would be great if we can use them in Navigation Trees.

-Sorna

[Briain]

Hi Sorna

I have been creating custom trees for a while and a link to the latest ones is posted here. The location of them depends on the device on which you have installed Twonky, but look for a directory called 'resources' and in that one you will find 'views' which contains the XML files (i.e. the trees) that create the menu structure you see on your control point.

Bri

[Twonky_Rick]

Sorna,

I finally got a more substantial answer to your question, but I'm afraid it's not the answer that either of us were hoping for.

The bottom line is that Christian would rather not share any additional information beyond that which has already been shared. His perspective is: answering one question leads to a never ending stream of additional questions.

One thing is for sure. The server team is very busy working on new features. Hopefully some of those will be beneficial to you in the future. Fortunately, there are other expert users here like Briain that seem always willing to jump in on tree related questions.

- Rick

[pdneri]

Rick, thanks for your answer but it was not what I was looking for .... infact I wrote "I know that I could get it rearranging the original folders to be shared, but for some reasons I could not" ... due to how WHS manages the duplication of shared folders.
I hoped there would be another way .....

[sorna]

Hi Sorna

I have been creating custom trees for a while and a link to the latest ones is posted here. The location of them depends on the device on which you have installed Twonky, but look for a directory called 'resources' and in that one you will find 'views' which contains the XML files (i.e. the trees) that create the menu structure you see on your control point.

Bri

Hi Briain,
Thanks for the information. I kind of know how to create the custom trees and had managed to create some of my own trees. I was just trying expand a bit and wanted to find out what other tags are supported. One thing I wanted was to have nodes of songs belonging to "10 years" (Something like 70s songs, 80s songs, etc..). But it looks like we cannot do this.

Anyway, your custom trees are very good. I am using them with some small modifications (to suit my preferences) and they are very complete. Thanks for them.

Cheers,
Sorna.

[sorna]

Sorna,

I finally got a more substantial answer to your question, but I'm afraid it's not the answer that either of us were hoping for.

The bottom line is that Christian would rather not share any additional information beyond that which has already been shared. His perspective is: answering one question leads to a never ending stream of additional questions.

One thing is for sure. The server team is very busy working on new features. Hopefully some of those will be beneficial to you in the future. Fortunately, there are other expert users here like Briain that seem always willing to jump in on tree related questions.

- Rick

Thanks Rick.

[edrikk]

Sorna,

I finally got a more substantial answer to your question, but I'm afraid it's not the answer that either of us were hoping for.

The bottom line is that Christian would rather not share any additional information beyond that which has already been shared. His perspective is: answering one question leads to a never ending stream of additional questions.

One thing is for sure. The server team is very busy working on new features. Hopefully some of those will be beneficial to you in the future. Fortunately, there are other expert users here like Briain that seem always willing to jump in on tree related questions.

- Rick

Hi Rick,

While I can see where Christian is coming from, I have to say that the reason why there is so much user confusion is due to the fact that TMS is becoming a very technical, but "hidden" application. By this, I mean, it seems to be going towards an application designed and written by coders, only to be fully leveragable by the technical users. Let me expand on this:

• Although the XML Tree structure is very powerful, the documentation is virtually non-existant. The only document that I know of is a little outdated (it was for 5.1.X), and can only be found by looking for a very specific string in your TMM forum. This is not good.
• The lack of existance of an XML Tree editor (even if it's a basic one) makes users not want to upgrade to 5. If it doesn't mean anything else, this should means loss of sales for PV management. If in doubt, take a look at the QNap forums... A lot of people complaining, and things got so bad that QNap had to offer the 4.4.17 version of TMS to their users wishing to downgrade TMS.
• I see in the TMS SQLite database there are fields for "actor", "author", "keywords", "rating" in the database. Why not document to the user HOW (meaning WHICH tags) to tag their movies (and audio) to populate these attributes, so that they can be used?
• Why not follow/support semi-standard tags? Most people have iTunes... So why not take advantage of tags such as iTunMovi (rating/advisory) and iTunEXTC (producers, cast, writers, etc)?
• The use of/following standards seems to be all over the place... TMS expects values in MP4 (well, any) tag to be ",". Well, the standard says it should be "/". But aside from the standards, it's quite simple from a developer's point of view to allow the user to define items such as delimiters, and not hard-code them. Why hard-code ANYTHING, when you can put a configurable default in your property file? Furthermore, make items such as "Folder.jpg" case INsensitive (I've been reading that in 6.X it is now case sensitive!)... Why would the devs do this?
  The above two items will ONLY serve to reduce the number of questions PV Support has to field, and ALSO make for a happier end-user.
• Maybe it's time to actually look through the forums (since no bug-tracker exists), and FIX the existing issues in the code? It seems like testing has taken a back seat... I know the devs are busy, but the fiasco from 5.1.3 to 5.1.6 was embarrassing (mkvs not being scanned, large files not being picked up, etc etc)
• Why is it that Microsoft's WMP12 product can show files on their competing Company's product (PS3) without a "*" next to the file name, but TMS (a much better DLNA product) can't? According to Sony, the "*" means:
  
  

  File names for data that is stored on servers that are not compliant with DLNA may have an asterisk appended to the file name. In some cases, these files cannot be played on the PS3™ system. Also, even if the files can be played on the PS3™ system, it might not be possible to play the files on other devices.

  
  
  Source: http://manuals.playstation.net/document ... tdlna.html
  

How great would it be to be able to know which tags to populate, the delimiter to use, and have a tree builder (if you don't know XML)? I'll give you a specific use case:

• Tag 4 MP4 files with all needed tags. The actor tag would have a delimited list of actors in the video
• TMS scans the MP4 files, parsing values, noting the delimiters.
• The user created tree is setup to order by "Actor". The user selects "Brad Pitt" folder, which in turns lists all videos in which the string "Brad Pitt" appears in the delimited list of Actors.

Is this too much to dream? It's the basic functionality that we need, not the use of a second browser front-end, using an arguably dying language (Flash).

Rick, I would appreciate it if my thoughts were shared with the folks in Berlin.

Thanks,

[Twonky_Rick]

I promise to share your entire post with the General Manager and Head of Engineering in our Berlin office.

There are plans to eventually release a tree editor to the public for free, but it keeps on getting delayed. I'll continue to push for this however, because I need it as well.

Thanks for your patience.

- Rick

[edrikk]

Thank you Rick!

I really hope that Twonky/PV gets back to its roots, and tries to give the people what they want... I mean at the end of the day PV wins via sales, and the user wins via a functional/understandable software.

Whether through an OEM and Direct sales, the end-user is still that guy using the product, and it's the Twonky sign they see on their interface!

[tbillinge]

Hi Briain, <edit: sorry Briain, I mis-addressed this previously!>

I notice that your navigation tree contains a rating node, and you also mention that you have a large flac collection. Does this mean that you've been able to get ratings information from flac tags? I've tried importing flacs rated by both MediaMonkey and JRiver (both use the "rating" tag, MM gives it a value 0-100, JRiver uses 1-5), but no amount of database rebuilding seems to make these available through Twonky. Is there something I'm missing?

Regards,

Tim.

[KNO17]

Dear People,

I have read and read and read and now I have a huge headache, but I know that what I need is in this thread somewhere.

I have Twonky Server 5.1.6 on a QNAP TS-210 connected to a Samsung TV.

I would like a custom xml file that basically shows me the folder structure on the NAS.

Which looks something like this:

QMultimedaia\Movies\MovieName\...\Movie.avi
QMultimedaia\Series\SeriesName\...\Episode.avi
QMultimedaia\Music\Album\Song.mp3

And that is IT, I don't beed sorting by artist, no sorting by year, I have build up and maintained this collection over the years, everything is in perfect order as it is, even though older stuff is sometimes not properly tagged. So working with tags is out of the question and unnecessary.

So please, probably Briain is my best bet, a small little tiny xml that just displays my existing folder structure.

Whoever can do this for me, thank you in advance. As I said, I know this has probably been done, but this thread has gotten so long and so confusing, I just can't find what I need.

[kgrosser]

important question to Rick:

I've been modifying Briain's excellent work to get closer to the navigation I had with Twonky 4.1.4 and I am almost there. However I miserably fail to sort albums in the album container chronologically instead of alphabetical. I tried various sortcriteria like dc.date, pv:year and, heck even what I could think make sense upnp:year.
Alas it just doesn't do anything. I have accepted that we have to do XML editing instead of clicking together the navtree to one's needs but why isn't there at least a proper documentation on all supported flags and commands. Will I really have to switch over to Asset? Please tell me otherwise!

[umgfoin]

but why isn't there at least a proper documentation on all supported flags and commands.

Perhaps not all-embracing, but good as a starting point:
http://www.twonkyforum.com/mediawiki/index.php/Custom_Navigation_Trees

[kgrosser]

Servus umgfoin,

Yes I knew these already, thanks regardlessly. The problem is they are for from complete.

I know that Briain has a "pv:year" flag working in his custom trees but this seem to only work with buildon=''pv:year' command.

Code: Select all

<container buildon='pv:year' class='object.container' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack'>

builds a container list with all years present in the tags.

However, in my test to use it with the "sortcriteria" it fails.

Code: Select all

    <container buildon='upnp:album' albumart='1' sortcriteria='+pv:year,+pv:numberOfThisDisc,+upnp:originalTrackNumber' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack' class='object.container.album.musicAlbum'/>


theoretically this should sort albums in this container after release year, disk nr successively. - at least to my understanding - but doesn't somehow, I also tried with pv:year being the only sortcriterium, no worky either. I am left clueless.....

[kgrosser]

Helloo ??!!! Helloooooo....??? Hellooo Echooo!!!

"o...o..o.ooooo"

This thread really seems somewhat deserted by the moderators

[Twonky_Rick]

Twonky here. Sorry for the delay. It's a busy time right now.

I'm forwarding your list post to an engineer who is an expert on this topic. I'll let you know what he says.

- Rick

[kgrosser]

appreciated....

[kgrosser]

2-weekly "bump" any news?

[Twonky_Rick]

Thanks for the reminder. I did not get a response, so I just resent. Crossing fingers...

- Rick

[twonky-burkhard]

Hi,

<container buildon='upnp:album' albumart='1' sortcriteria='+pv:year,+pv:numberOfThisDisc,+upnp:originalTrackNumber' createClass='object.item.audioItem.musicTrack' class='object.container.album.musicAlbum'/>

"pv:year" is not supported as sort criteria. You could use "+dc:date" instead, but this will probably give you not exactly what you are trying to achieve. Sorting on first level be be done on the full date, not only on the year. Sorting on second level will only apply if two albums have been released on the same day, which should be the case on a multi-disc set.

One more thing:

"+upnp:originalTrackNumber" this is most likely having no effect in your case. There is usually no track number assigned to an album container.

Regards
Burkhard

[kgrosser]

Thanks Burkhard,

as previously mentioned I tried with "dc:date" but not "+dc:date" would that make a difference?
Anyway, since it's not working on a second level, I will give up on this with Twonky, Asset can, and raumfeld just added it to the todo list....

What puzzles me completely, it that for me (and I'm not alone with this) it really seems only logical and intuitive to sort multiple albums within an artist/albumartist container in chronological order rather than alphabetical. It appears that coders come from a pure theoretical approach and only use very small and limited libraries for testing and conception.

[phibertron]

i soooo wish sortcriteria='+pv:year' worked
as with the below scenario its not even possible to do it with sortcriteria='+dc:date'

from all of my permutaions on trying, it appears that the buildon of pv:year is also limited in its sortcriteria

Code: Select all

<container name='byyear' id='video/year' createClass='object.item.videoItem.movie' class='object.container'>
<container buildon='pv:year' createClass='object.item.videoItem.movie' class='object.container' />
</container>


Sure, I could attempt to use buildon with dc:date
but then the return would for ex: 1900-01-01T00:00:00
as opposed to just 1900

[twonky-burkhard]

Hi,

using only "dc:date" in the sort criteria will most likely not work. You always have to specify the sort order together with the property. Use + for ascending and - for descending sort.

Regards
Burkhard

[Twonky_Rick]

Thanks Burkhard!

- Rick

[phibertron]

Hi,

using only "dc:date" in the sort criteria will most likely not work. You always have to specify the sort order together with the property. Use + for ascending and - for descending sort.

Regards
Burkhard

not sure if this in reply to my last post
but yeah i tried that to, it seems there is not way to get a container built of containers based on the year or date
that can be sorted up or down

[Briain]

Hi

To suit a new control point I'm beta testing (not yet out) that doesn't rely on the tree menus in Twonky, I've just added tweaked versions of some of the standard Twonky containers back into my custom trees. Oddly, I've found that by rearranging the container layout and assigning UPnP sort order to the Twonky containers (my own already had these) it has also shaved more than 20% from the database rebuild time compared to my previous custom tree (tested on Twonky 6.0.32) and it also seems to have speeded up album art loading to the newer control point I'm testing. These changes will also make the Twonky installation more compatible with certain other media devices which don't use the tree navigation (maybe Roku, maybe some DLNA TV's, etc).

I've redone the two alpha-grouped ones (one for folks who don't use the album artist tag, and another for folks who do) and I'll do the two un-grouped versions later this week.

The 'Advanced Media View' (in both trees) show my custom menus and the other views show the standard Twonky menus (though I have added the album artist container to that tree's other views). As before, the folder views sort by disk number then track number (as opposed to Twonky's alphabetical sort).

I can't upload stuff here, so the two trees are on the Qnap forum (here) and the instructions on how to install them on a Qnap with the Twonky 6 QPKG are here. ReadyNAS users of the Super-Poussin Twonky 6 (or Twonky 5.1.x) add-ons can simply drop them (using Windows Explorer of Mac Finder) into the 'views' folder in the twonky share the add-on creates.

For those who can't be bothered navigating to these pages and know what to do already, the trees can be directly downloaded from the below links:

Update: The below links are to files on the Linn Products server (so no need to be a Qnap forum member to download them).

The below two options show art everywhere, but not at the top of the -Folder- containers (this is the option I vastly prefer, but I never use the -Folder- containers anyway):

Album Artist version: click here (Aug 2011)
Artists only version: click here (Aug 2011)

The below two are the same as the above, but these do show art at the head of all the -Folder- containers. This is great for the ultimate album folders, but it does look pretty silly everywhere else!

Album Artist version: click here (Mar 2011)
Artists only version: click here (Mar 2011)

Bri

[deaerator]

So far I am liking twonky but I do have a pet peve on the navigation tree and looking for some help.

I have twonky on my xeon server, and using a samsung tv as my renderering device.

This is a picture of the intial startup on my samsung tv.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxbullxx/5770065698/

And when entering video section of the of the media player.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxbullxx/5769526597/

I have my video all my whs server, and in different folders. Movies, Animation, IMAX, and Recorded TV.
I am not a programmer but looking for someone to help me out.

What i want to do is just display my network shares when i enter the videos from the main screen and just have the following folders showing up.

-Movies
-Imax
-Animation
-Recoreded Tv


Cheers
Deaerator

[tjpm1qtdtu]

Hi All,

I have a question that I've been trying to figure out for awhile. Here are a few specs: I'm running TwonkyServer 6.0.32 on a Ubuntu Linux machine and I'm currently wanting to stream videos to my Xbox 360.

Here is my problem - I have TV shows in a folder with a structure like this:

/TV Shows/ShowName/Season x/01 Episode1.m4v...etc.

The actual file names all have a track number at the beginning of the file name. Now for the issue - my Xbox displays all the videos in alphabetical order by the title, it seems. I would like to have them show up in the episode number order - in other words have them display in the order they actually are on the containing folder. I have tried setting up playlists from iTunes and exporting them for each tv show/season combination and Twonky sees the playlists fine and in the episode order, but the Xbox still seems intent on sorting by the title.

I've searched a lot and haven't found anything, so hopefully someone here can assist. It also may be that it's an Xbox thing and there won't be any solution; I hope that's not the case. I hope there is some kind of view I can create to make the Xbox display these videos in order by the epsiode(track) order, or even by the actual file name since the track number is at the beginning of the file name.

Thanks in advance.

[phibertron]

Sadly, there is no way to force the xbox to respect the sort odrer from the server
The xbox rearranges the data and sorts the display,as it sees fit
and it offers only two choices of sorting that list
not much we can do from twonky side of things

[Briain]

Hi Folks

My custom tree packs have moved to the Linn Products server:

In my post above I've changed the links for the custom tree packs to now point to the Linn Products server. Linn have kindly offered to host the trees as that saves people having to join the Qnap forum to download them (that's where they were before).

Bri

[ocoro02]

Hi all - is there an up-to-date document detailing the xml syntax for custom trees (I see the one for Twonky 5.1 but I'm guessing things might've changed since then?).