WDTV Live not displaying all files. Options

[leonius]

Hi

I've just bought a new WDTV Live and when I connect my WD 1TB External HDD it only displays about half the video and half the audio files that are on the HDD. I haven't networked it yet - so I haven't updated it to the latest firmware. I've tried rebooting it and restarting it, both the HDD and the WDTV to no avail.

Is it just a matter of updating the firmware? Should my External be in a certain format? Pretty sure its FAT32, not 100% sure on that but.

Thanks.

[Trendecide]

Drive format is irrelevant... I've used both FAT32 and NTFS successfully on the WDTV, but oddly enough FAT32 seems to work best, especially when plugging into other devices (like your TV and/or DVD player). Unfortunately individual files on a FAT32 drive over 4GB may or may not work and will eventually corrupt the drive's contents [and force you to reformat] as time goes on (you'll get a famous "do you want to repair this drive?" prompt) which makes NTFS ideal when you're dumping HD videos on the drive. If you haven't formatted your external drive yet, it's FAT32 from the factory 99% of the time. I highly recommend NTFS if you don't plan on using external drive outside of your PC and your WDTV (Samsung anything tends to not agree with NTFS).

I don't know what formats your video files are in, but I'd recommend updating the firmware on the WDTV before troubleshooting any further as I know the WDTV has had MKV, ISO and other file formats added/modified over time which might identify the files you're missing.

[leonius]

Well I've checked and it is NTFS. I ran the firmware update to the latest version. Still no luck. It basically can't see any files past the letter "L" - if I deleted a bunch of files that I no longer want would that help the cause perhaps? Can it only load a certain number of files? Do I need to reformat the drive? I have no problem viewing MKV files.. these are the majority of my movie content - it's just that half of them aren't there to view. This is really annoying!

Thanks again.

[leonius]

Bingo! That was the answer. I just had to delete a whole bunch of stuff. I think I had maybe 600GB worth of stuff on there? So maybe that's a reference for anyone else who gets this same problem. Just take a load off and delete some unncessary stuff and it'll work. Interesting that you should have to do that but there ya go.

[Rev Drew]

you shouldn't have to delete anything other than the .wd_tv folder, that is the library / database folder of what the player thins is on the drive..

I have 3 1TB drives that all have less than 100GB of free space and there is no issues at all with any of them.

[leonius]

Ah right I did notice that folder.

So it makes that wd_tv folder automatically.. but it shouldn't be there? What's the point of it? Will there be any repercussions to anything else if I delete that folder?

[Rev Drew]

it scans the drive every time it's hooked up, if you delete the .wd_tv folder it takes a little longer to scan but it creates a better library / database of files on it..

[leonius]

So will the WDTV automatically create a new folder every time it scans the hard disk? ie. Will I have to keep deleting the folder?

[WDUser]

Normally you shouldn't touch that folder unless you're having problems. That is the media library database folder, so if you have the media library feature turned on, the USB drive will be completely re-scanned and the folder recreated every time. Since this is time consuming (and can possibly lead to more wear and tear on the drive), unless you have issues, don't delete the folder so that only new files are re-scanned when the drive is connected.

Also run a thorough disk check on your USB drive. Remember to always safely remove/eject a drive when you're done watching. Don't simply power down and yank the USB cable.

If you want, you can disable the media library. This way you can still navigate your drive's folder structure, but the media won't automatically be aggregated together under headings like Audio, Video etc.

[VortexSB]

I have similar problem concerning files from network HDD (WD 1 TB "Green").
WD TV Live can't see all movie files, only some of them, no matter what extension (avi, mkv, mpg...).
For instance, I have 130 movies and device shows only 90.
When I rename some of them, they become instantly visible to WD TV, but when put back old name to the files, they "dissapear" again. FW is 1.04.22.
Hard facory reset, scanning HDD for errors etc... don't help.
Very strange and ridiculous problem. What's going on??? Some limitation maybe?

[Rev Drew]

likely, it seems these devices don't like certain characters in the file names.

[LookN4Help]

I am having the same problems. Everything worked great until I started movie my files around trying to clean-up and re-organize my HDD's. Now a lot of my files are not showing up when i use network shares. In one folder only 58 out of 104 show up and another folder only 66 out of 118 show up but all the folders show up under my network and everything shows up and plays fine when I use media sharing through WDTV and through my Xbox's.

It's getting very frustrating as I have been trying everything (except for re-installing win 7)for the past week and a half. I have messed with all my share settings, homegroup settings, but I don't believe it has anything to do with my settings, because if I take the missing folders and make a new folder inside the original folder they show up and play fine but as soon as I move them all back to the original folder they disappear again. I would just love to have it work the way it suppose to without having to have numerous folders in folders just to get all my files to play.

Thanks

[Herethos]

Hi
I have the same issue it worked fine before I updated to the 1.04.22 firmware.
Used the firmware before 2TB HD's usb mounting was blocked. (1.04.10)
Skipped updating to 1.04.17 since none of the updates really affected me.
Updated to 1.04.22 in the hopes of 6 chan aac dts audio playing correctly now, and video playback working correctly instead of stuttering on some files. (haven't checked yet since I converted the audio to 6 chan ac3 instead) Will have to rip them again to check.

***
I found a workaround it seems it is only able to display 45 folders after the firmware update for me, I got around this by splitting up the folders into subfolders with folders in each if I keep them below 45 they all show up. As for amount of loose files I haven't checked but it seems higher than the folder limit of 45.
If I want it to play 6 chan aac audio I have to set it to stereo instead of digital passthrough, kinda defeats the purpose.

[jessenj]

If someone figures this out, I'm all ears. I have a Windows 7 machine with shares that always worked prior to the last few firmware updates (both WDTVL and WDTVL+) but every folder I look at shows only partial directory lists, where it always worked in the past and these are the same shares and folders I've always used (long over a year).

[Robot Cowboy]

If someone figures this out, I'm all ears. I have a Windows 7 machine with shares that always worked prior to the last few firmware updates (both WDTVL and WDTVL+) but every folder I look at shows only partial directory lists, where it always worked in the past and these are the same shares and folders I've always used (long over a year).

I had the same exact problem. What I had to do to get everything working correctly was install the latest Windows beta of PS3 Media Server on my Windows 7 machine and just keep it running. Here is where you can grab it: http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/downloads/list

Some tips on how to get it to work:

• Your WDTV Live needs to be powered on before you start PS3 Media Server, or it may not detect it
• Once you start running it, you'll need to configure:
• Under the General Configuration tab, select Start minimized
• Under Navigation/Share Settings, best to uncheck thumbnails generation, check Hide #Video Settings# Folder, Hide #Transcode# Folder, and Hide media library folder.
• Also, check Enable the media library/cache (huge speedup bonus when browsing files)
• Still in Navigation, add some shared folders and choose the order you want the WDTV Live to display them when browsing
• Make sure to click Save at the top, then click Quit and restart the program with the WDTV Live still on
• Finally, in the WDTV Live, go to Video > Media Servers > PS3 Media Servers
• Now, you should be able to browse and play EVERYTHING again, probably even faster than before.

Note that Digital Passthrough for Audio doesn't work for me anymore either, so, I have it set to Stereo in the Audio settings on the WDTV Live for files that use DTS. Also note that PS3 Media Server has a custom config for the WDTV Live that will ensure it lets the box do the transcoding, except in the case of FLVs which the WDTV cannot play natively. So, if you download flash videos, they will now be transcoded by your computer so that they can be played on your WDTV Live, which is an added bonus.

Overall, this has been working much better than the Network Shares method, especially since 10 minutes ago when I read that previous post in this thread about the Audio settings!

Also, although you may not see this as an optimal solution due to the additional and somewhat buggy software you have to run, I promise you that the results will not disappoint you.

[LookN4Help]

I had the same exact problem. What I had to do to get everything working correctly was install the latest Windows beta of PS3 Media Server on my Windows 7 machine and just keep it running.

Awesome, Thanks so much this appears for now to list everything hopefully WD will eventually fix their product.

[Robot Cowboy]

Turns out, for me at least, the problem was with Avast v5. I upgraded to the pre-release of Avast 6, and now everything is back to normal. Weird.

From another forum:
RESOLVED...

For my system: Windows 7 32 Bit and Avast Antivirus 6,
But I think it's the same for the Windows 7 64 Bit and Avast Antivirus 6.
1) Download from Avast site the pre-release (beta version) 6.0.1044
2) Simply install over the previous version
3) Restart The system

links of pre-release:
http://files.avast.com/files/beta/6.0.1044/setup_av_free.exe
http://files.avast.com/files/beta/6.0.1044/setup_av_pro.exe
http://files.avast.com/files/beta/6.0.1044/setup_ais.exe

Have nice day!

[VortexSB]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) You were absolutely right Robot Cowboy.
This resolved my problem. This was very strange issue, who would think Avast! had anything with it.
Thanks for your effort.

[sdido]

Robot Cowboy, you are the man. I was about to get crazy with this issue. It has nothing to do with characters in the file/folder name, it was all about avast antivirus, not only v5 but also with v6. I installed the 6.0.1044 BETA and now everything works great.

Thank you so much for sharing it with all of us.

[Rev Drew]

LMAO! now you know why avast is free..