simple-dlna-browser is unable to find multimedia by filename

[javier-lopez]

Hi Javier,

Thank you for the simple-dlna-browser script. I have been able to use it
on my Puppy Linux PCs to access my DLNA host (which is another Puppy
Linux PC running a version of minidlna). Simple-dlna-browser is very
lightweight compared to VLC, Kodi etc etc! Just what I was looking for.

May I ask you a question please? Mostly the playback is working well for
me but I notice a symptom that I do not fully understand. It may be
something to do with the minidlna server rather than simple-dlna-browser
client.

First let me explain how I use the browser script:

• I start the minidlna server on the host PC
• I start a bash script on the client PC which asks the user to enter a
  character or characters from the title of the song they wish to play. I
  then enter that character into the terminal command that invokes s-d-b
  as follows:
  #simple-dlna-browser c | xargs mplayer
  (where "c" represents the character or string that the user entered).

for example:
If I want s-d-b to play only one song I can enter the exact song title
eg: winner takes it all
(This will play the Abba song "The winner takes it all")
If I want s-d-b to play a selection of songs I can enter a less unique
string eg: winner
(This will play the same abba song above but also the song "Winner" by
Pet Shop Boys)
If I want s-d-b to play a whole bunch of songs I can enter the character
"w" and get both of the songs above, as well as all other songs that
have a "w" in the title.

This works really well for me - ok I am not really using the browser
functionality at all but it does let me access my DLNA server from my
client PCs in a very lightweight way - with none of the "hook up" delay
that I get using VLC.

So here is my problem:

Consider the song "Wind Of Change" by Scorpions. On my server I have
renamed this as "winds.mp3" just for convenience.
For some reason it does not play when I type "winds" - one of a small
number of songs that does not play even though I can see it available on
the server and can see it available within the sql database created by
the minidlna server.

As far as I can tell the song is not playing because it has been
renamed. The file name is visible in the database - however s-d-b
obviously does not find that song as a valid entry in the database. When
I export the database as a .csv file I can definitely see the song in
there but in the title column it is shown as "Wind Of Change" (not
"winds") so I assume that there must be some ID tag carried within the
song that is causing minidlna to make it available with a different name
to what I wanted to give it.

I have attached a gnumeric file showing the output of that csv file. In
order to test this problem I made a series of folders (4 deep) and put
some "filedepth.mp3" test files in each level so that I could see what
s-d-b was able to find. You can see in row 32 that my file name on disk
(column A) matches the name in the database (column D) for all other mp3
files except the "winds" file.

After seeing that I realised that I was able to get s-d-b to play that
particular song as long as I used the file's "internal name" of "Wind Of
Change" rather than the title that I had given it.
(sorry about the long winded explanation)

Are you able to tell me if this is something to do with the way that the
minidlna server prepares the database - or is it a limitation of s-d-b
please? If it is a limitation of s-d-b is there any easy way to get it
to search on the song title as given by the user - and ignoring any ID
tags or online database/album info?

Sometimes I like to rename my songs to prevent confusion and it would be
nice to know I was searching on the correct filename. Obviously if I was
properly using the browser function of s-d-b I would be able to see the
actual filename as found in the database - but I struggled to understand
the formatting of the file and folder names (such as '64$2' etc). I
eventually worked out how to navigate but I was too slow and decided to
let s-d-b do the character match method - much quicker!

Many thanks for any information you can offer.

Regards
Ian Williamson
Auckland
New Zealand.

[hoehermann]

It depends on the server, I guess. I am under the impression, minidlna (also known as "Ready Media" nowadays) does not actually support a search by filename. It purely relies on tags. Only if a media file has no usable tags, the filename (minus the extension) is used as a stand-in title. Other fields (eg. artist) may or my not be populated.