Iomega TV With Boxee vs. D-Link Boxee Box

I have yet to find the perfect media player for playing my archived music and movie collection.

 

I’ve tried building my own using small form factor computers like the Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11, Nano AD10, and Nano VD01. I’ve tried software like Windows Media Center, XBMC, MediaPortal, and Boxee. I’ve tried commercial products like the WD TV Live Plus, Popcorn Hour C-200, A-210, PopBox 3D, Apple TV, D-Link Boxee Box, and Iomega TV With Boxee. But, they all have problems and shortcomings.

 

I currently have three D-Link Boxee Boxes in my house, the D-Link Boxee Box does have problems, but so far it is the best I’ve found. The following are some of the most annoying problems:

• The form factor is unique, but also impractical, it looks odd, uses too much vertical space, and does not fit in with the rest of the media components.
• The fan gets loud and is audible in a quiet room. Covering the SD slot suppresses the sound somewhat.
• There is no low power standby, it is always using full power even when not in use. Apparently this is a shortcoming of the Intel CE4110 SOC platform.
• Every time Boxee releases a firmware update they break something that used to work. The most frustrating was the recent 1.2 firmware update that broke SMB network authentication and resulted in poor performance causing constant network re-buffering. In the end I had to install NFS on my Windows Server 2008 R2 box to get things working again. To make it worse, there is no option to opt-out of firmware updates, even a manual install of an older version just gets auto-updated again. I don’t mind auto updating functionality in products, but I do mind if the update breaks something that used to work, and there is no way back.
• When using a HDMI switch, and the HDMI switch is already powered on when the Boxee powers on, there is no sound. The HDMI switch must be powered off when the Boxee powers on, then the HDMI switch can be powered on. This bug has been around since I bought the first Boxee, and the same switch works flawlessly with a variety of other hardware, including a Motorola HD-DVR, Motorola HD-STB, XBox 360, PS3, Roku 2 XS, Panasonic BD player, and a Sony DVD player, so it is not the switch, it is the Boxee.
• Even after switching to NFS for networking, I still get network re-buffering and HD audio dropouts when watching certain high bitrate BD MKV movies.
• Unlike XBMC, there is no separation between TV series and movies in Boxee, this makes it very difficult to find or watch TV shows, and Boxee rarely gets the metadata associations for TV shows right. XBMC does a much better job of treating TV shows as shows, with discrete seasons and episodes.
• The metadata scrapers are incapable of correctly identifying titles from file and directory names that contain a “;” instead of a “:”. In NTFS a “:” is not a legal character for use in file or directory names, so when a show title contains a “:”, I substitute it for a “;” in the filename and directory name. This issue is not unique to Boxee, and I don’t understand why scrapers can’t do common substitutions or removal of punctuation when performing a search.

Even with all these issues, the Boxee Box still works most of the time for most content.

 

When the Iomega TV With Boxee was announced, one thing that stood out was the 1Gbps network port vs. the 100Mbps port on the D-Link. Theoretically 100Mbps is fast enough for BD content playback, but given the network re-buffering and HD audio dropouts on high bitrate content I was experiencing, I hoped it may help. I could not find official sources of hardware specs for the D-Link or the Iomega, but an ifixit teardown and a Wikipedia article on Boxee shows the devices may have similar processor specs, with the Iomega having gigabit networking and analog video output.

 

The Iomega Boxee is not available in the US, but I around the end of November I pre-ordered an import from Expansys USA. The box arrived a few days ago, end of December, and I started setting it up by replacing one of my D-Link Boxee’s.

 

The box comes with very little documentation, as an example, there are no instructions on how to open the remote to insert the batteries. It took me a few minutes to figure out where the battery compartments, yes there are two, were on the remote, and how to open them, i.e. press on the little arrows, apply lots of force, and slide the lids off.

 

The power supply is 12V 2A, 110V to 220V, with EU/UK power plugs supplied, I used a universal adapter to plug it into a US 110V outlet.

The box itself does not include WiFi capabilities, but Iomega supplies a WiFi USB dongle with the kit.

 

The form factor of the Iomega box is much more practical compared to the D-Link, it fits in nicely with the rest of my AV equipment. Iomega does supply a stand to mount the device vertically if you want it that way.

 

 

The Iomega remote is a bit larger than the D-Link, but it also includes some handy buttons missing on the D-Link remote.

 

 

The Iomega powered on and displays IO on the screen while booting, unlike D-Link that plays a startup animation, the Iomega box has no startup animation. As with the D-Link, the first thing I had to do was calibrate the screen overscan.

 

The next step was to login to my Boxee account, and this is where things started going wrong. I could not get the remote to work correctly, it would not respond, or it would enter the wrong characters. The keyboard on the remote has a little button that needs to be pushed to activate the keyboard, once activated, you can enter keys using the keypad. Pressing the button again deactivates the keypad, and you can use the navigation buttons on the front. I tried using the navigation buttons and the on-screen keyboard, the cursor would either not move, or jump way over to the wrong location, or start entering characters when I press navigation buttons. I tried the keyboard, and it would enter a few characters fine, and then just stop working, I could never get the backspace key to work.

 

I did some general troubleshooting by replacing the batteries, and power cycling the device, but still the same issues. I found a few user reports of similar troubles with the remote. Since my Iomega is an import, there is no chance for local support, but given the general complaints about the remote, I am not going to bother trying to replace it.

 

The Iomega remote is an IR remote, while the D-Link remote is an RF remote. When I first started using the D-Link RF remote I found it a bit of an inconvenience to switch between my Harmony One universal IR remote, and the dedicated D-Link RF remote, but I must say for fast accurate navigation, the RF remote works great. In fact, I wish there was a standard for RF remotes, so that something like a RF Harmony One can be built, this would alleviate the annoyance and frustration of having to aim at IR devices.

 

I had a spare D-Link RF remote with a USB dongle, and I eventually plugged that into the Iomega, it worked fine, and I could login to my account, and configure the Iomega.

 

As I was configuring the device, I noticed that the Iomega was running firmware version 1.2.1.20452, while the D-Link was running 1.2.2.20482. Manually running an update said that 1.2.1 was the latest firmware for the Iomega. Strangely, the Iomega support site lists a firmware version 1.3061, but the version number format does not follow the typical Boxee a.b.c.d formatting. I tried to install the 1.3061 firmware using the manual USB update procedure, but the firmware install never completes, and a hard power cycle is required to boot back up. So I really don’t know what this 1.3061 firmware is supposed to be or do.

 

While applying the firmware, I noticed that there is a mouse cursor on the screen, and I noticed that the Iomega IR remote acts like a trackpad, as I slide my finger over the directional buttons, the mouse cursor moves around the screen. I did not try it out, but this may be useful for web browser navigation, if the remote actually works.

 

US content providers like Hulu, Vudu, and Netflix were not available on the Iomega, or at least I could not find them in any obvious way. I don’t know if this is because of regional targeting differences, or because the Iomega has analog video output and content provider DRM requirements may prohibit such content on this device. The lack of content providers is not a big deal for me, as I only use the Boxee for local content playback. For Netflix and Amazon Instant Video I use a Roku 2 XS. Boxee does not offer Amazon Instant Video, and the Roku’s Netflix experience is far superior to the Boxee’s.

 

The next difference seemed rather weird, the D-Link has HDMI audio passthrough support for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD, but the Iomega does not list any HD audio formats. When I tried to play a MKV file with TrueHD and AC3 tracks, the Iomega automatically selected the AC3 track. When I manually selected the TrueHD track, there was no audio.

 

I configured the Iomega the same way I configured the D-Link, using NFS, I added my music, movies, and TV series, hosted on a Windows server 2008 R2 server, accessed via gigabit Ethernet. Just like the D-Link, it took a while to catalog all the content, and just like the D-Link, the device is less than responsive while cataloging content.

 

Once the activity light stopped flashing, and the device appeared idle, I started playing some movies that suffer from network re-buffering and audio dropouts on the D-Link. The Iomega played all content perfectly, no re-buffering, and no audio dropouts. Unfortunately this is not really a meaningful test, as the more problematic content contains HD audio tracks, and the Iomega can’t play HD audio.

 

I will leave the Iomega connected to get some more airtime with it, but unfortunately the lack of HD audio is a deal breaker, not because I need HD audio, but because many of my BD MKV rips only have an HD audio stream. So either the Iomega needs to decode and play HD audio, or it needs to do bitstream passthrough. I doubt this is a hardware limitation, so hopefully a future firmware update adds HD audio passthrough support.

Rotation confuses face recognition

I have around fifty thousand digital photos in my library, and it has become impractical to browse through them looking for some event, or some place, or some person. So other than archiving, there really is no value in collecting photos if you can’t go back and find the ones you are looking for.

A few years ago I switched to using Image Ingester Pro and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to import and catalog my photos. Now one of the first things I do after importing photos, is to add keywords describing the event, the place, and the people. But, I still have tens of thousands of photos that have no keywords, and there is no easy or automated way to add keywords to these photos. One thing that can be automated is adding people keywords to photos based on automated face recognition.

Unlike free Windows Live Photo Gallery, or free Google Picasa, or free Apple iPhoto, none of Adobe’s products offer face recognition, something often discussed and complained about in Adobe forums. Professional photographers may argue that face recognition is a gimmick, and I agree that for professional workflows it may not be required, but at less than $300, Photoshop Lightroom is an ideal tool for use by amateur and family photographers, and I think face recognition is a must have feature.

Although Lightroom does not directly offer face recognition, there are convoluted ways to add people keywords to Lightroom using Google Picasa and Jeffrey Friedl’s Picasa Face-Recognition Import plugin. The process requires you to add all your photos to Adobe Lightroom and Google Picasa, then use Picasa to detect faces, and assign them to contacts, then use Jeffrey’s import plugin to add the Picasa people as keywords to photos in Lightroom.

Picasa is not the most friendly app to work with, it may alter photo metadata without your intent, adding support for new RAW formats takes a long time, there are lots of bugs related to managing people and duplicate contacts happens all the time. The Picasa to Lightroom conversion experience is not something I am prepared to deal with on an ongoing basis, unfortunately I am also not aware of any other ways of automatically tagging people in pictures in Lightroom.

The next best thing would be to use an application that does support face recognition in addition to Lightroom, even if the two tools do not integrate or share metadata. Since I was already quite familiar with Picasa, and I have a Mac but don’t use it as a primary machine, that left me with Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG).

Unlike Picasa that uses its own built in image rendering technology, WLPG uses Windows Imaging Component (WIC) technology to render and interpret image metadata. The downside is that you need to install RAW image WIC codecs in order for WLPG to display RAW images, the upside is that you can install a WIC codec instead of waiting for the app to natively support the RAW format. As an example, the Panasonic DMC-LX5 was released July 2010, Picasa added support for DMC-LX5 RW2 files in Picasa 3.9, released December 2011, 17 months after the camera’s release.

WIC does have its drawbacks, some camera manufacturers do not release WIC codecs at all, and some big name manufacturers, like Canon and Nikon, are stuck in the dark ages with no x64 codec support. At this time I am aware of two alternate suppliers of RAW WIC codecs, Axel Rietschin's FastPictureViewer Codec Pack, and Microsoft’s Camera Codec Pack. Microsoft’s Camera Codec Pack is free, but offers limited camera support, and as we’ll see later, limited Explorer and WLPG integration support. FastPictureViewer Codec Pack (FPVCP) costs $14.95, is frequently updated, supports almost all camera’s and formats under the sun, integrates with Explorer and WLPG, and is what I use.

With FPVCP installed, WLPG was easy to use, the contact and names feature integrated nicely with Windows Live contacts, without any of the weirdness of the equivalent functionality I found with Picasa. Once faces were tagged, a semi automated process requiring manual verification, it was easy to find photos I was looking for, e.g. I could say show me all photos in December 2010, with me, my wife, and our daughter in the picture.

So this finally brings me to the actual problem I wanted to write about. I noticed that WLPG would get confused when tagging faces in some portrait rotated pictures. When you view the image standalone, the faces are correctly recognized, and the bounding rectangles are correctly drawn over the image. But, the thumbnails are completely wrong, taken from a different part of the image. It seems like the thumbnails are taken from the landscape coordinates view of the image, not portrait coordinates of the image.
See the following pictures as an example, note how the thumbnails in the portrait view image are taken from the wrong part of the image:


I reported the problem in the WLPG support forum, and after some back and forth, I provided sample pictures where I could reproduce the problem, but I was told that they were unable to reproduce the problem using the same pictures. As I was not crazy, and I had seen this behavior on two different machines, I wanted to create steps to reproduce the problem.

The sample images were taken of a magazine page taped to a door, using a Canon 5D Mark II, a Panasonic DMC-LX5, a Panasonic DMC-ZS7, and an iPhone 4. I took 5 pictures with each camera in each mode; face centered, face top-left, face top-right, face bottom-left, and face bottom-right. I did this in landscape mode, portrait mode, JPG mode, and RAW mode.

I fired up a clean Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 VM, installed WLPG v15.4.3538.513, and Picasa v3.9, and I dropped my collection of sample images on the machine.

As I viewed the images in Explorer, I immediately noticed a difference between my machine and the test machine, the test machine Explorer view did not display the JPG images using the correct rotation, while my machine did. This is when I remembered that I have FastPictureViewer Codec Pack installed on all my machines, and that this may have something to do with the face rotation problem.

See the following pictures of the Explorer view with and without FPVCP, note how the FPVCP version displays the CR2 thumbnails and displays the JPG files in the right rotation:


Testing Windows Live Photo Gallery showed that as with Explorer, it also does not display the images using the correct rotation. This was a real big disappointment for I can’t believe that a photo application with all the bells and whistles of WLPG neglects to correctly rotate images.

See the following pictures of WLPG with and without the FPVCP, note how the FPVCP version displays the CR2 thumbnails and displays the JPG files in the right rotation:


Since WLPG did not correct the rotation on portrait images, it was unable to recognize any faces in these images. So when Microsoft said they can’t reproduce the problem, they neglected to mention that the portrait images did not render correctly nor detect any pictures at all.

See the following pictures of WLPG with and without the FPVCP, note how the FPVCP version displays the JPG files in the right rotation, but WLPG uses the wrong image coordinates:


Interestingly enough, RAW images in both landscape and portrait detected the faces correctly:


I repeated the tests using Microsoft’s Camera Codec Pack (MCCP).

Notice how MCCP does not correct the rotation of JPG images in Explorer, nor does it render the CR2 file thumbnails in Explorer, vs. FPVCP that does both:


Notice how MCCP does not correct the rotation of JPG images in WLPG, nor does it render the CR2 file thumbnails in WLPG, vs. FPVCP that does both:


I will reply to the Windows Live Photo Gallery support thread with this information, and I will also open a support ticket with FastPictureViewer, let’s see what happens.


[Update : 28 December 2011]
I received an email from from Ardfry Imaging, informing me that they were shipping a x64 DNG codec before FPV existed, and they they are still offering a variety of codecs.

Synology DS2411+ Performance Review

In my last post I compared the performance of  Synology DS1511+ against the QNAP TS-859 Pro. As I finished writing that post, Synology announced the new Synology DS2411+.
Instead of using a DS1511+ and DX510 extender for 10 disks, the DS2411+ offers 12 disks in a single device. The price difference is also marginal, DS1511+ is $836, the DX510 is $500, and the DS2411+ is $1700. That is a difference of only $364, and well worth it for the extra storage space, and the reliability and stability of all drives in one enclosure. I ended up returning my DX510 and DS1511+, and got a DS2411+ instead.

To test the DS2411+, I ran the same performance tests, using the same MPIO setup as I described in my previous post. The only slight difference was in the way I configured the iSCSI LUN; the DS1511+ was configured as SHR2, while the DS2411+ was configured as RAID6. Theoretically both are the same when all the disks are the same size, and SHR2 ends up using RAID6 internally.
iSCSI LUN configuration:


At idle the DS2411+ used 42W power, and under load it used 138W power. The idle power usage is close to the advertised 39W idle power usage, but quite a bit more than the advertised 105W power usage under load.

I use Remote Desktop Manager to manage all my devices in one convenient application. RDM supports web portals, Remote Desktop, Hyper-V, and many more remote configuration options, all in a single tabbed UI. What I found was that the Synology DSM has some problems when running in a tabbed IE browser. When I open the log history, I get a script error, and whenever I focus away and back on the browser window, the DSM desktop windows shift all the way to the left. I assume this is a DSM problem related to absolute and relative referencing. I logged a support case, and I hope they can fix it.
Script error:


Test results:

Device	ATTO Read	ATTO Write	CDM Read	CDM Write
PM810	267.153	260.839	256.674	251.850
DS2411+	244.032	165.564	149.802	156.673
DS1511+	244.032	126.030	141.213	115.032
TS-859 Pro	136.178	95.152	116.015	91.097

DS2411+:

DS1511+


The DS2411+ published performance numbers are slightly better than the DS1511+ numbers, and my testing confirms that. so far I am really impressed with the DS2411+.

Synology DS1511+ vs. QNap TS-859 Pro, iSCSI MPIO Performance

I have been very happy with my QNap TS-859 Pro, but I’ve run out of space while archiving my media collection, and I needed to expand the storage capacity. You can read about my experience with the TS-859 Pro here, and my experience archiving my media collection here.
My primary objective with this project is storage capacity expansion, and my secondary objective is improved performance.

My choices for storage capacity expansion included:

• Replace the 8 x 2TB drives with 8 x 3TB drives, to give me 6TB of extra storage. The volume expansion would be very time consuming, but my network setup can remain unchanged during the expansion.
• Get a second TS-859 Pro with 8 x 3TB drives, to give me 18TB of extra storage. I would need to add the new device to my network, and somehow rebalance the storage allocation across the two devices, without changing the file sharing paths, probably by using directory mount points.
• Get a Synology DS1511+ and a DX510 expansion unit with 10 x 3TB drives to replace the QNap, to give me 12TB of extra storage, expandable to 15 x 3TB drives for 36TB of total storage. I will need to copy all data to the new device, then mount the new device in place of the old device.

I opted for the DS1511+ with one DX510 expansion unit, I can always add a second DX510 and expand the volume later if needed.
As far as hard drives go, I’ve been very happy with the Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2TB drives I use in my workstations and the QNap, so I stayed with the larger Hitachi Ultrastar 7k3000 3TB drives for the Synology expansion.

For improving performance I had a few ideas:

• The TS-859 Pro is a bit older than the DS1511+, and there are newer and more powerful QNap models available, like the TS-859 Pro+ with a faster processor, or the TS-659 Pro II with a faster processor and SATA3 support, so it not totally fair to compare the TS-859 Pro performance against the newer DS1511+. But, the newer QNap models do not support my capacity needs.
• I use Hyper-V clients and dynamic VHD files located on an iSCSI volume mounted in the host server. I elected this setup because it allowed me great flexibility in creating logical volumes for the VM’s, without actually requiring the space to be allocated. In retrospect this may have been convenient, but it was not performing well in large file transfers between the iSCSI target and the file server Hyper-V client.
  For my new setup I was going to mount the iSCSI volume as a raw disk in the file server Hyper-V client. This still allowed me to easily move the iSCSI volume between hosts, but the performance will be better than fixed size VHD files, and much better than dynamic VHD files.
  Here is a blog post describing some options for using iSCSI and Hyper-V.
• I used iSCSI thin provisioning, meaning that the logical target has a fixed size, but the physical storage only gets allocated as needed. This is very convenient, but turned out to be slower than instant allocation. The QNap iSCSI implementation is also a file-level iSCSI LUN, meaning that the iSCSI volume is backed by a file on an EXT4 volume.
  For my new setup I was going to use the Synology block-level iSCSI LUN, meaning that the iSCSI volume is directly mapped to a physical storage volume.
• I use a single LAN port to connect to the iSCSI target, meaning the IO throughput is limited by network bandwidth to 1Gb/s or 125MB/s.
  For my new setup I wanted to use 802.3ad link aggregation or Multi Path IO (MPIO) to extend the network speed to a theoretical 2Gb/s or 250MB/s. My understanding of link aggregation turned out to be totally wrong, and I ended up using MPIO instead.

To create a 2Gb/s network link between the server and storage, I teamed two LAN ports on the Intel server adapter, I created a bond of the two LAN ports on the Synology, and I created two trunks for those connections on the switch. This gave me a theoretical 2Gb/s pipe between the server and the iSCSI target. But my testing showed no improvement in performance over a single 1Gb/s link. After some research I found that the logical link is 2Gb/s, but that the physical network stream going from one MAC address to another MAC address is still limited by the physical transport speed, i.e. 1Gb/s. This means that the link aggregation setup is very well suited to e.g. connect a server to a switch using a trunk, and allow multiple clients access to the server over the switch, each at full speed, but it has no performance benefit when there is a single source and destination, as is the case with iSCSI. Since link aggregation did not improve the iSCSI performance, I used MPIO instead.

I set up a test environment where I could compare the performance of different network and device configurations using readily available hardware and test tools. Although my testing produced reasonably accurate relative results, due to the differences in environments, it can’t really be used for absolute performance comparisons.

Disk performance test tools:

• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1b
• ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46

Server setup:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise SP1.
• DELL OptiPlex 990, 16GB RAM, Intel Core i7 2600 3.4GHz, Samsung PM810 SSD.
• Intel Gigabit ET2 Quad Port Server Adapter.
• LAN-1 192.168.0.11, LAN-2 192.168.1.12

Network setup:

• HP ProCurve V1810 switch, Jumbo Frames enabled, Flow Control enabled.
• Jumbo Frames enabled on all adapters.
• CAT6 cables.
• All network adapters connected to the switch.

QNap setup:

• QNap TS-859 Pro, firmware 3.4.3 Build0520.
• 8 x Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 2TB drives.
• RAID 6.
• 10TB EXT4 volume.
• 10TB iSCSI LUN on EXT4 volume.
• LAN-1 192.168.0.13, LAN-2 192.168.1.14

Synology setup:

• Synology DS1511+, firmware 3.1-1748.
• 5 x Hitachi Ultrastar 7k3000 3TB drives.
• Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) 2 drive redundancy.
• 8TB iSCSI LUN on SHR2.
• LAN-1 192.168.0.15, LAN-2 192.168.1.16

To test the performance using the disk test tools I mounted the iSCSI targets as drives in the server. I am not going to cover details on how to configure iSCSI, you can read the Synology and QNap iSCSI documentation, and more specifically the MPIO documentation for Windows, Synology and QNap.
A few notes on setting up iSCSI:

• The QNap MPIO documentation shows that LAN-1 and LAN-2 are in a trunked configuration. As far as I could tell the best practices documentation from Microsoft, DELL, Synology, and other SAN vendors, say that trunking and MPIO should not be mixed. As such I did not trunk the LAN ports on the QNap.
• I connected all LAN cables to the switch. I could have done direct connections to eliminate the impact of the switch, but this is not how how I will install the setup, and the switch should be sufficiently capable of handling the load and not add any performance degradation.
• Before trying to enable MPIO on Windows Server, first connect one iSCSI target and map the device, then add the MPIO feature. If you do not have a mapped device, the MPIO iSCSI option will be greyed out.
• The server’s iSCSI target configuration explicitly bound the source and destination devices based on the adapters IP address, i.e. server LAN-1 would bind to NAS LAN-1, etc. This ensured that traffic would only be routed to and from the specified adapters.
• I found that the best MPIO load balance policy was the Least Queue Depth Option.

During my testing I encountered a few problems:

• The DX510 expansion unit would sometimes not power on when the DS1511+ is powered on, or would sometimes fail to initialize the RAID volume, or would sometimes go offline while powered on. I RMA’d the device, and the replacement unit works fine.
• During testing of the DS1511+, the write performance would sometimes degrade by 50% and never recover. The only solution was to reboot the device. Upgrading the the latest 3.1-1748 DSM firmware solved this problem.
• During testing of the DS1511+, when one of the MPIO network links would go down, e.g. I unplug a cable, ghost iSCSI connections would remain open, and the iSCSI processes would consume 50% of the NAS CPU time. The only solution was to reboot the device. Upgrading the the latest 3.1-1748 DSM firmware solved this problem.
• I could not get MPIO to work with the DS1511+, yet no errors were reported. It turns out that LAN-1 and LAN-2 must be on different subnets for MPIO to work.
• Both the QNap and Synology exhibits weird LAN traffic behavior when both LAN-1 and LAN-2 is connected, and the server generates traffic directed to LAN-1 only. The NAS resource monitor would show high traffic volumes on LAN-1 and and LAN-2, even with no traffic directed at LAN-2. I am uncertain why this happens, maybe a reporting issue, maybe a switching issue, but to avoid it influencing the tests, I disconnected LAN-2 while not testing MPIO.

My test methodology was as follows:

• Mount either the QNap or Synology iSCSI device, power of the other device while not being tested.
• Connect the iSCSI target using LAN-1 only and unplug LAN-2, or connect using MPIO with LAN-1 and LAN-2 active.
• Run all CDM tests with iterations set at 9, and a 4GB file-set size.
• Run ATTO with the queue depth set to 8, and a 2GB file-set size.
• As a baseline, I also tested the Samsung PM810 SSD drive using ATTO and CDW.

Test result summary:

Device	ATTO Read	ATTO Write	CDM Read	CDM Write	Total (MB/s)
PM810	267.153	260.839	256.674	251.850	1,036.516
DS1511+ MPIO	244.032	126.030	141.213	115.032	626.307
TS-859 Pro MPIO	136.178	95.152	116.015	91.097	438.442
DS1511+	122.294	120.172	89.258	105.618	437.342
TS-859 Pro	119.370	99.864	76.529	89.752	385.515

Detailed results:
PM810:
 
DS1511+ MPIO:
 
TS-859 Pro MPIO:
 
DS1511+:
 
TS-859 Pro:
 

Initially, I was a little concerned about the DX510 being in a separate case connected with an eSATA cable to the main DS1511+. Especially after I had to RMA my first DX510 because of what appeared to be connectivity issues. I was also concerned that there would be a performance difference between the 5 drives in the DS1511+ and the 5 drives in the DX510. Testing showed no performance difference between a 5 drive volume and a 10 drive volume, and the only physically noticeable difference was that the drives in the DX510 ran a few degrees hotter compared to the drives in the DS1511+.

As you can see from the results, the DS1511+ with MPIO performs really very well. Especially the 244MB/s ATTO read performance that gets close to the theoretical maximum of 250MB/s over a 2Gb/s link.

But technology moves quickly, and as I was compiling my test data for this post, Synology released two new NAS units, the DS3611xs and the DS2411+. The DS2411+ is very appealing, it is equivalent in performance to the DS1511+, but supports 12 drives in the main enclosure.
I may just have to exchange my DS1511+ and DX510 for a DS2411+…

[Update: 25 July 2011]
I returned the DS1511+ and DX510 in exchange for a DS2411+.
Read my performance review here.

Archiving my CD, DVD and BD collection

I am about two thirds done archiving my entire CD, DVD, and BD collection to network storage. I have been ripping on a part time basis for about 5 months, and so far I’ve ripped over 700 discs.

I have considered archiving my media collection for some time, but just never got around to it. Recently our toddler discovered how to open discs and use them as toys, so storing the discs safely quickly became a priority. I’d like to give you some insight into what I’ve learned and what process I follow.

 

After ripping, I store the discs in aluminum storage cases that hold 600 discs in hanging sleeves. There are similar cases with a larger capacity, but the dimensions of the 600-disc case allows for easy manipulation and storage in my garage. I download or scan the cover images as part of the ripping process, so I had no need to keep them, and I, reluctantly, threw them away. If I could I would have kept the covers, but I found no convenient way to store them.

Below is a picture of the storage case:

 

All the ripped content is saved on my home server, and the files are accessible over wired Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n Wireless. My server setup is probably excessive, but it serves a purpose. I run a Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V Server. In the Hyper-V host I run two W2K8R2 guests, one being a Domain Controller, DHCP server, and DNS Server, and the other being a File Server. The file server storage is provided by 2 x QNAP TS-859 Pro iSCSI targets, each with 8 x 2TB drives in RAID6. This gives the file server about 24TB of usable disk space.

24TB may sound like a lot of storage, but considering that I store my documents, my pictures of which most are RAW, my home movies of which most are HD, and all my ripped media in uncompressed format, I really need that much storage.

 

I am currently using Boxee Boxes for media playback. The Boxee Box does not have all the features of XBMC, and I sometimes have to hard boot it to become operational again, but it plays most file types, it runs the Netflix app, and is reasonably maintenance free.

Although Boxee is derived from XBMC, I really miss some of the XBMC features, specifically the ability to set the type of content in a directory, and to sort by media meta-data. Like XBMC, Boxee expects directories and video files to be named a specific way, and the naming is used to lookup the content details. Unlike XBMC, Boxee treats all media sources the same way, so when I add a folder with TV episodes and another folder with movies Boxee often incorrectly classifies the content, and I have to spend time correcting the meta-data. What makes it worse is that I have to apply the same corrections on each individual Boxee Box, it would have been much more convenient if my Boxee account allowed my different Boxee Boxes to share configurations.

 

Ripping and storing the discs is part of the intake process, but I also need a searchable catalog of the disc information, where the ripped files are stored, and where the physical disc is stored. I use Music Collector and Movie Collector to catalog and record the disc information. Unlike other tools I’ve tested, the Music Collector Connect and Movie Collector Connect online services allow access my catalog content anywhere using a web browser. The Connect service does allow you to add content online, theoretically negating the need for the desktop products, but I found the desktop products to be much more effective to use for intake, and then export the content online.

To catalog a CD I take the following steps: I start the automatic add feature, that computes the disc fingerprint and uses the fingerprint to lookup the disc details online. In most cases the disc is correctly identified, including album, artist, track names, etc. In many cases the front disc cover image is available, but it is rare that both the front and back covers are available. If either cover is not available, I scan my own covers, and add them to the record. I found that many of the barcode numbers (UPC) do not match the barcode of my version of the discs, if they do not match, I scan my barcode and update the record. If I made any corrections, or added missing covers, I submit the updated data, so that other users can benefit from my corrections and additions.

To catalog a DVD or BD I take the following steps: I start the automatic add feature, I use a barcode scanner and I scan in the barcode, the barcode is used to lookup the disc details online. In most cases the disc is correctly identified, including name, release year, etc. In some cases my discs do not have barcodes, this is especially true for box sets where the box may have a barcode but the individual movies in the box does not, or where I threw away the part of the box that had the barcode.

Since I buy most of my movies from Amazon, I can use my order history to find the Amazon ASIN number of the item I purchased. I then use IMDB to lookup the UPC code associated with the ASIN number. To do this search for the movie by name in IMDB, then click on the “dvd details” dropdown in the “quick links” section, then search the page for the ASIN number, and copy and paste the associated UPC code. Alternatively you can just use Google and search for the “[ASIN number] UPC”, this is sometimes successful. I don’t know why Amazon, who owns IMDB, does not display UPC codes on the product details page?

If I still do not have a UPC code, I search for the movie by name, look at the results, and pick the movie with the cover matching my disc. In most cases the disc front and back cover is available. If either cover is not available, I scan my own covers, and add them to the record. If I made any corrections, or added missing covers, I submit the updated data, so that other users can benefit from my corrections and additions.

Below are screenshots of Music Collector and Music Collector Online:

   

Below are screenshots of Movie Collector and Movie Collector Online:

   

 

In terms of the ripping process, ripping CD’s is really the most problematic and time consuming. Unlike BD’s that are very resilient, CD’s scratch easily resulting in read errors. Sometimes I had to re-rip the same disc multiple times, between multiple drives, before all tracks ripped accurately. I want accurate and complete meta-data for the ripped files. Sometimes automatic meta detection did not work and I had to manually find and enter the artist, album, song title, etc. This is especially problematic when there are multiple variants, such as pressings and regional track content or track order, of the same logical disc, and I have to match the online meta-data against my particular version of the disc. BD’s and DVD’s typically have only one movie per disc, where each CD has multiple tracks, and the correct metadata has to be set for the album and each track. So although a CD may physically rip much faster compared to a BD, it takes a lot more time and manual effort to accurately rip, tag, and catalog a CD.

I use dBpoweramp for ripping CD’s, it has two advantages over other tools I’ve tested; AccurateRip and PerfectMeta.

Unlike data CD’s, audio CD track data cannot be read 100% accurately using a data CD drive. If the CD drive reads a data track and encounters a read failure, it reports the failure to the reading software. If the CD drive reads an audio track and encounters a read failure, it may ignore the error, it may interpolate the data, or it may replace the data with silence, all without telling the reading software that there was an error. As a result the saved file may contain pops, inaccurate data, or silence. In order to rip a CD track accurately, the ripping software needs to read the the same track several times, and compare the results, and keep on re-reading the track until the same result has been obtained a number of times. This makes ripping CD’s accurately a very time consuming process. Even if you do get the same results with every read, you are still not guaranteed the what you read is accurate, you may just have read the same bad data multiple times. You can read more about the technicalities of ripping audio CD’s accurately here.

AccurateRip solves this problem by creating an online database of disc and track fingerprints. A track is read at full speed, the track’s fingerprint is computed, and compared against the online database of similar tracks, if the fingerprint matches, the track is known to be good, and there is no need to re-read the track. This allows CD’s to be ripped very fast and very accurately.

I use the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) format for archiving my CD’s. FLAC reduces the file size, but retains the original audio quality. FLAC also supports meta-data allowing the track artist, album, title, and image of the CD cover, etc. to be stored in the file. Unlike the very common MP3 format, FLAC playback is by default not supported by Windows Media Player (WMP). To make WMP, and Windows, play FLAC, you need to install the Xiph FLAC DirectShow filters. Or use Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC). A typical audio CD rips to about 400MB in FLAC files.

Just like a CD track can be identified using a fingerprint, an entire CD can also be identified using a fingerprint. When the same CD is manufactured in different batches, or different factories, it results in different track fingerprints for the same logical CD. The same logical CD may also contain different tracks or track orders when released in different regions, also resulting in a different CD fingerprints. CDDB ID is the classic fingerprint, but with uniqueness problems, the more modern Disc ID algorithm does not suffer from such problems, and allows very unique fingerprints to be created by just looking at the track layout, i.e. no need to read the track data.

CD meta-data providers match CD fingerprints against logical album details. Some of this information is freely available, such as freeDB, Discogs, and MusicBrainz, and some information is commercially available, such as Gracenote, GD3, and AMG. Free providers are typically community driven, while commercial providers may have more accurate data.

PerfectMeta makes the tagging process easy, fast, detailed, and accurate. By integrating with a variety of different meta-data providers, including commercial GD3 and AMG, the track meta-data will automatically be selected based on the most reliable provider, or the most consistent data.

Below are screenshots of dBpoweramp ripping a CD, and reviewing the meta-data:

    

 

I use MakeMKV for ripping DVD’s and BD’s, it is fast and easy to use, and supports extracting multiple audio, subtitle, and video tracks to a single output file.

MakeMKV creates Matroska Media Container (MKV) format output files. MKV supports multiple media streams and meta-data in the same file. MKV is not a compression format, it is just a container file, inside the container can be any type of media stream such as an AVC video stream, a DTS-HD audio stream, a PGS subtitle stream, chapter markers, etc. MKV playback is by default not supported by WMP or Windows Media Center (WMC). One solution is to install codec packs such as the K-Lite Codec Pack, but I prefer to use standalone players such as Boxee, XBMC, or MPC-HC.

MakeMKV does not perform any recompression of the streams found on the DVD or BD, it simply reads them from the source and writes them to the MKV file. This means that the playback quality is unaltered and equivalent to that of the source material. This also means that the MKV file is normally the same size as the original DVD or BD disc, typically 7GB for a DVD and 35GB for a BD.

I hate starting a BD or DVD, and I have to sit there watching one trailer after the next, especially when the disc prohibits skipping the clip and the kids are getting impatient. I paid good money for the disc, why am I forced to watch advertising on a disc I own? MakeMKV solves this problem by allowing me to rip only the main movie, and when I start playing the MKV file, I immediately see the main movie start. The downside to ripping only the main movie is that disc extras are not available, and the downside to ripping in general is that BD+ interaction is also not available. Some people prefer to rip a disc to an ISO, and then play the ISO with a software player that still allows menu navigation, I have no such need, and ripping only the main movie satisfies my requirements.

When I make my stream selection I pick the main movie, the main English audio track, the English subtitles, and the English forced subtitles. If a movie contains an HD audio track, such as DTS-HD, TrueHD, or LPCM, I also select the non-HD audio track. I do this in case the playback hardware device does not support HD audio, or the player software cannot down-convert the HD audio to a format supported by the playback hardware. On some discs an HD audio and a non-HD audio track is included, but if not, MakeMKV can automatically extract DTS from DTS-HD and can extract AC3 from TrueHD.

On some discs where there are many subtitle streams of the same language, selection gets very complicated, this is especially true when the disc contains forced subtitles. Forced subtitles are the subtitles that are displayed when there is dialog in a language other than the main audio langue, such as when aliens are talking to each other, but when people talk there are no subtitles. On DVD’s the forced subtitles are normally in a separate subtitle stream, on BD’s the subtitle stream includes a forced-bit for specific sentences. MakeMKV can automatically extract forced subtitles as a separate stream from a subtitle stream that contains normal and forced subtitles. When I encounter a disc where I cannot make out which video, audio, or subtitle streams to extract, I use EAC3TO to extract the individual tracks, view, listen, or read them, and then decide which tracks to select in MakeMKV.

Ripping television series on DVD or BD has its own challenges. In order for players like Boxee and XBMC to correctly identify the shows, the files and folders must be properly organized and named. A disc typically contains a few episodes of the series, and some discs contain extras. When you make the track selections you need to include the episodes but exclude the extras. MakeMKV creates a folder for every disc, and names each file according to its track number on that disc. This results in multiple folders, one per disc, with duplicate file names in each folder. In order to re-assemble the series in one folder, you need to rename the episodes from each folder according to the correct season and episode number, such as S01E01.mkv, then move all the files to one folder. What makes this very complicated is when the episode order on disc is different to the aired episode order. The TV scrapers use community television series websites, such as TheTVDB and TVRage, to retrieve show information. The season number and show number must match the aired episode number, not the disc order number. It is a real pain to manually match the disc to aired episode numbers, and I don’t know why discs would use a different show order compared to the aired order? Once you have your episodes named, such as S01E01.mkv, it is very easy to correctly name the file and folder by using an application called TVRename. Point TVRename to your ripped television show folder, it will try to automatically match show names to the TheTVDB show names, you can manually search and correct mappings, it will then automatically rename the show, season, and filenames, according to your preference, and in a format that Boxee and XBMC recognizes.

Below are screenshots of MakeMKV with the stream selection screen for a DVD and a BD:

   

 

When I started ripping my collection I had no idea it would take this long. If I were to dedicate my time to ripping and ripping only, I would have been done a long time ago, but I typically rip only a few discs per week, in between regular work activities; get to the office, insert disc, start working, swap disc, continue working, swap disc, go to meeting, rip a few discs while having lunch at my desk, rip a few discs during the weekend, repeat. The time it takes to rip a disc is important when you stare at the screen, but less so when you have other things to do.

Over the months I’ve used a variety of BD readers, some worked well for BD’s, but were really bad for CD’s, some were fast and some were slow. To illustrate the performance, I selected a BD, a DVD, and a CD, and I ripped them all using the same settings, on the same machine, but using a variety of drive models.

Some drive models incorporate a feature called riplocking, that limits the read speed when reading video discs in order to reduce drive noise. A riplocked drive will read a video BD or DVD much slower than a data BD or DVD, and this results in slow rip times. I used an application called Media Code Speed Edit (MCSE) to remove the riplock restriction on some of the drives.

All drives include Regional Playback Control (RPC) that restricts the media than can be played in that drive by region. There are different regions for DVD and BD discs. RPC-1 drives allow software to enforce the region protection, RPC-2 drives perform the region protection in drive hardware. Most new drives are RPC-2 drives. Drive region protection is not an issue for MakeMKV, and it can rip any region disc on any region drive. RPC-1 versions of firmware is available for many drives at the RPC-1 Database.

I tested the following drives:

Drive	Firmware	Notes
LG BH12LS35	1.00
LG BH12LS35	1.00	Riplock removed
LG UH10LS20	1.00
LG UH10LS20	1.00	Riplock removed
LG UH10LS20	1.00	RPC-1
Plextor PX-B940SA	1.08	Rebranded Pioneer BDR-205
Sony BD-5300S	1.04	Rebranded Lite-On iHBS112
Lite-On iHBS212	5L09
Pioneer BDR-206	1.05

I measured the rip speed in Mbps, as computed by dividing the output file size by the rip time in seconds. The file size is the size of the MKV file for DVD’s and BD’s, and the size of all files in the album folder for CD’s. The rip time is computed by subtracting the file create time from the file modified time. The test methodology is not a standard test, and the results should not be used in absolute comparisons, but are very valid in relative comparisons. For more standard testing and reviews visit CDFreaks.

Test results:

From the results we can see that the Sony BD-5300S (a rebranded Lite-On iHBS112) and the Lite-On iHBS212 drives are the fastest overall ripping drives, the fastest BD ripping drives, the fastest DVD dripping drives, but second slowest CD ripping drives. It is further interesting to note that the stock Lite-On drives were still faster than the riplock removed LG drives. The Lite-On drives also have the smallest AccurateRip drive correction offsets of all the drives.

 

I still have quite a way to go before all my discs are ripped, but at least I have the process down; rip, swap, repeat.