Windows Media Player, one library shared by many Windows machines on a LAN?

Question

Hi folks,

Windows 10, Windows Media Player question. Since I have lots of network shares all over my home LAN that are media collections (music, videos, etc.), I'd like to be able to use Windows Media Player to have one library "somewhere" that keeps track of what media is out there on my LAN, and what device it's on. This is particularly important if I'm trying to play a media file that is on a device that's not powering up or connecting properly. It's also helpful for managing backups or alternate versions of the same media content.

Can Media Player do this in a reasonable way?

And can I build one library, on one machine (acting as a server) that all other devices on the LAN can look into and see? Or do I have to have a library on each client device, and depend upon each client's add / change / update to the content that's stored 'wherever' be done in a UPnP-compatible way that causes the library manager (WMP, VLC, whatever I end up using) to notice and properly update its catalog?

Ideas, thoughts, etc., most welcome.

***Move from Windows / Windows 10 / Settings ***

Answer 1

Hello.

The media files on the computer are stored in the C: \Users\Public path by default. If you want the server to share all the media files on the computer and allow users on the same LAN to access them, you only need to set Public to the shared file and add the corresponding sharing permissions and Ntfs permissions.

Best Regards

Zunhui

Answer 2

Thanks, but, I don't think you answered my question. WMP (like any media manager program) builds a library database file in which it collects and stores metadata about each media file -- and that metadata can include genre information, thumbnail pictures, preferences and ratings I assign as a user, and so on.

With five machines on the LAN, I don't want to have to build that library database on each computer. I suppose this question is really asking "how can I set up Windows Media Player as a server, and have other client machines on the LAN access media, media descriptions, etc., through the server?"

I've found that WMP seems to store this data at

Contains stuff like:

So I guess I'm wondering how to have ONE folder on the network (somewhere), that has all of this data in it, but that each instance of WMP running on other client machines points to on that one (server) device?

Answer 3

Hello,

According to your needs, I suggest that you first create a shared file on the server and set the corresponding share permissions and Ntfs permissions so that all clients can access it through the network, and then set the Media Player file of each client as a shared file.

The following is a command to copy files. The source path is changed to the local path of the shared file set by the server, and the destination path is changed to the network path of the shared file of each client. Then you can write the following command as a script file and set a scheduled task program on the server to execute it regularly.

robocopy <source path> <destination path> /Copyall /E /dcopy:T /b /R:3 /W:1 /Log:C:\robocopy-log.txt /tee

Best Regards

Zunhui

Answer 4

Hello again, Zunhui,

Thanks for this. As I kept rereading your notes, I think I'm getting a clearer picture of things. And part of what I need is already in place: WMP clients, running locally on different Windows machines on my LAN. This is good.

However, WMP does not seem to automatically update their library databases on any given local computer to be in sync with all of the shared Music, Pictures, and Videos libraries available on the network. I have to click on the ORGANIZE, APPLY MEDIA INFORMATION INFORMATION CHANGES button, to make this happen. But in any event, it does NOT duplicate the media files themselves from machine to machine and this is good!!

But I'm having problems now getting each local client WMP to recognize that new machines have been added to the network (or, rather, that Music and Videos files have been shared on the network by other hosts).

Here's what WMP shows me, for example, on one machine (which I'll call WORK):

Clearly, WMP is already looking across my LAN and seeing the content of those shared libraries. And when I opened WMP on the HP Laptop Libraries host machine, it is currently "updating library" from the shared folders on a third machine on this LAN, called SPOUSE... but while Windows on WORK can see shared folders on that SPOUSE machine (called "Music Library" and "Videos on 8TB" respectively), WMP on WORK cannot seem to find that these exist as other libraries.

So that brings me to Playlists and Libraries and Search. More questions:

1. How can I create a playlist on one client machine (using WMP), and have the other WMP client machines share that playlist? Is there some kind of "publish" function that can share playlists (or library structures) across several different clients on a LAN? (Without having to do something like an automated robocopy script).
2. How can I search across multiple libraries, without having to do the search library by library?
3. I've added FILE PATH to the VIEW settings, but this shows me IP addresses rather than host names. As I don't tend to memorize too many IP addresses, is there any useful way to have these show by machine name? (IPv6 addresses are even less meaningful to me...)

Thanks again. Most helpful "talking" with you about this!

Cheers,

Mike