Media streaming known issue with Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials

Symptom:

While playing single music/video on RWA page, you will find that the repeat function does not work.

To reproduce this issue:

1. Log on to the RWA page, and then navigate to Media Library.
2. Click Browse Music.
3. Click a music file.
4. Turn Repeat on for the single music file.
5. When the selected music finishes playing, it does not repeat.

Root Cause:

The single music/video repeat function was not successfully enabled on the RWA page. This will only happen if you have single file in the playlist.

Solution:

Add at least one more music file to the playlist. The repeat function will work as expected when multiple files are in the playlist.

Symptom:

After moving video/photos/music files to a different folder that is out of the default media folder, these files will still be displayed on media streaming gadgets on RWA and Windows Media Player.

To reproduce this issue:

1. On the server, Move any media files from D:\ServerFolders\Music, D:\ServerFolders\Video, or D:\ServerFolders\RecordedTV to any other folders.
2. Log on to RWA page, navigate to Media Library, or log on to the server, and open Windows Media Player directly.
3. The Moved media files are still displayed on the playlist. However, when you click to play, it will not function.
4. After you have deleted these files from the new folders, they will still show up in the playlist.

Root Cause:

Indexes in Windows Media Player are not properly updated after the files are moved.

Solution:

1. Log on to any network computer that has access to the server shares.
2. Open the media folders (D:\ServerFolders\Music, D:\ServerFolders\Video, or D:\ServerFolders\RecordedTV) through a UNC path, for example,
    
   \\Server\ServerFolders\Music.
    
3. Delete or move files to a new folder from the share. The file will be deleted and will not show up in the RWA media library anymore.

 Update: This issue is fixed after Update Rollup 2 for WHS 2011 and Windows Stroage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
 After UR 2, the scheduled task will be automatically turned off by default.

Background

To ensure imported music files can be refreshed automatically with online album art, a scheduled task syncs media metadata regularly for files on WSH music shares. However, this task will also overwrite some customized properties of the tags.

Symptom:

To reproduce this issue:

1. Log to Remote Access website, and upload music files to the default music share; or from any network computer, copy music album files/folders to the default music share.
2. Customize the music file tags manually, or through 3-rd party tools. For example, update the album art cover pictures.
3. Wait for at least 24 hours.
4. Note online new Album Art Meta data are automatically downloaded with standard Windows Media Player attributes.
5. The original customized tag, for example, the album art cover picture, is overwritten.

Root Cause:

There is a scheduled task that will sync the media metadata (including album arts) automatically every 24 hours.

Solution:

You can follow these steps to disable the Scheduled Task:

1. On server, open Task Scheduler by clicking Start->Administrative Tools -> Task Scheduler;
2. Navigate to \Microsoft\Windows\Windows Server;
3. Right click “Media Streaming Metadata Synchronizer” and click “Disable”.
4. If the task shows as “Running”, select "Display all running tasks" on the “Action” Pane.
5. Select “Media Streaming Metadata Synchronizer”, click "End Task";

Background

Windows Home Server and Windows Storage Server 2011 Essentials currently agregates all media items into a single Media view. This causes music album art and other jpgs which not under picture share to be included in pictures view on RWA. This is not consistent with other media applications like Zune software and Windows Media Center, and people might argue that only music items should be included under music share.

Symptom:

To reproduce this issue:

1. Put some picture files under music folder.
2. Log onto RWA, and you will see the pictures show up in media collections.

Root Cause:

There're couple of different reasons:

1) The behavior comes from backend DMS stack, which is consistent with the DMS built in with Windows Media Player.
2) Part of the "issue" brings some benifits also, e.g., for videos in photo share, which is common for many digital cameras, will have a chance to surface to user.
3) Please note, music album arts will NOT show up in photo view by default, as long as they are hidden which is true by default.

Solution:

Set your music album art as "hidden" in its file attribute if you don't want them to show up in pictures view on RWA.

Error message “An error has occurred on the server. Please try again later. If the error continues, view Support Information for help.”  Shown up when playing music via Remote Web Access

Symptom:

While playing single music/video on RWA page, after about a minute, you will see an error dialog with error message: ”An error has occurred on the server. Please try again later. If the error continues, view Support Information for help.” 

Root Cause:

Media service of Windows home server gets timeout during calculates metadata info of music files.

Workaround:

Reduce the numbers of music files in Windows home server.