How to get MB map NAS drive through the internet?

[hirdon]

Hi
I'd like to access my music on the NAS (Buffalo) drive through the internet. (I read the NAS related topics but most of them concerned problems on home networks.) Everything works fine on my home network.


MusicBee is installed on my laptop. I'd like to use it away from home to play the music on my home NAS. The NAS has software installed for remote access (web access). It provides an URL where I can access my NAS. However, it just allows me to view the folders and files through the internet (browser) as a file explorer.

How can I get MB to map the music folder on my NAS through the internet?

Thanks for any help

[phred]

You'd something like SubSonic where MB acts as a server and your access it from a remote PC or Android or iDevice. There's a SubSonic plugin for MB, but I've never gotten it to work well.

There's also a DLNA/UPNP plugin, development of which has been discontinued. Some folks have gotten it to work and others have not. Note that if you do get it to work, it's a huge memory hog - sometimes to the point of bring down the PC.

Search the forum for both options as they've been discussed many times.

Other forum members may have other solutions or suggestions.

[hirdon]

My NAS drive has DLNA - it also works with my TV.
Can this help anyway - if yes how I can put it to work?

[phred]

I don't -think- the Buffalo DLNA will help as it's a server. You need the DLNA plug-in on MB so that MB acts as the server. But you'll also need DLNA 'receiver' to listen to your music on your remote device. As I stated previously MB's DLNA plugin may work for you or it may not. And if it does, it may crash your PC as it's got a massive memory leak for some users.

I suggest you read the DLNA/UPNP plugin thread. You may find some useful information and/or suggestions there. Any questions about its use should be posted to that thread.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Expose your Buffalo drive to the Internet, where you can access it from outside your network, and then add it as a monitored folder.

[Zak]

I'm going to burst your bubble and say that I don't think you will be able to do this.

I'm sure DLNA is only for sharing media between devices on the same home network (e.g. a mobile phone and television), and as mentioned works by having one device serving media to a second device that knows how to render (play) it. You can't use it to send any random file to any random device.
I've never seen it mentioned that DLNA can be used to access media remotely, and in MusicBee's case anyway the plugin is to send the media, not receive it.

As for remotely accessing the files on your NAS, this isn't as simple as just mapping a folder over the internet and pointing MusicBee at it. NAS servers do provide remote access to your files, but it's via WebDAV or FTP or possibly some other proprietary service. That's why each one provides their own mobile apps for accessing the files, images and media etc. on their devices. I haven't seen any way of just accessing files on a NAS via a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, which is what you'd need for MusicBee to access them. This doesn't mean it's impossible, but I don't think it will be easy. Even if you did find a way, I also question what kind of experience that would provide. MusicBee could read a lot of the track details from its locally stored database, but if it had to access the original file for any reason it would have to do so over the internet. If you're displaying a list of 30+ tracks and it had to access each one to read the bitrate or duration or whatever, I imagine that would be unusable. I don't know if that's how MusicBee works, but I figure it must be reading some of those details from disk some of the time.

Given that your question isn't really about how to get MusicBee to access NAS files over the internet, but how to get Windows to access them, you'd have better luck asking in a Windows networky / internetty type of forum, or possibly see what responses were given to similar questions on Buffalo's forum, which I assume is a thing that exists.

[phred]

I mentioned it before and I'll mention it again: SubSonic.

I use it when I'm traveling (not in the car, but in hotels, etc.) and I -do not- use MB's SubSonic plugin as it's never worked well for me.
I have my music tracks on a NAS and I set up the SubSonic server on a Windows PC and pointed it to the files on the NAS. I can access my music, using a web browser or Android app. The only issue you may have is that you need a (mostly) static IP address. There are applications out there that will notify you if your IP address changes. My ISP hasn't changed my IP is roughly ten years. And I do not pay for a static IP.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

[hirdon]

Expose your Buffalo drive to the Internet, where you can access it from outside your network, and then add it as a monitored folder.

Hi

I made Buffalo Nas accessible on the internet - I can reach it from anywhere. (see screenshot-1). But I still only have an URL. And I don't know how to add it as a monitored folder...or how to Scan the folder for music files. Adding folders for scanning or monitoring only allow to add local folders and "Network Share" which basically a drive or folder on _local_ network (see screenshot-2)

Any idea how to get the drive behind an url to be monitored or scanned - without using DLNA/UPNP  plugins/setup?

[hirdon]

1. Given that your question isn't really about how to get MusicBee to access NAS files over the internet, but how to get Windows to access them

....I haven't seen any way of just accessing files on a NAS via a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, which is what you'd need for MusicBee to access them.

NO - Sorry I don't know where did you get this 1st thing from...Nevermind. As you can see in my last post I'm fully able to access my NAS Drive from anywhere over the internet.

As you can see also, I can access my NAS drive in a browser - and shows its content as in a file explorer.

As for the musicbee access of the properties of a track: I don't have a knowledge about it but I would imagine that it stores the track related info in a library file. Streaming through the internet is not a big thing nowadays - plenty of bandwidth for music files even over mobile networks not to mention cable networks also available away from home (where I might like to listen to my music).

[Zak]

1. Given that your question isn't really about how to get MusicBee to access NAS files over the internet, but how to get Windows to access them
....I haven't seen any way of just accessing files on a NAS via a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, which is what you'd need for MusicBee to access them.

NO - Sorry I don't know where did you get this 1st thing from...Nevermind. As you can see in my last post I'm fully able to access my NAS Drive from anywhere over the internet.

As you can see also, I can access my NAS drive in a browser - and shows its content as in a file explorer.

Yes, you can access the files on your NAS, over the internet, via a web page. That's because your NAS is running a web server that handles that for you, by showing you a web page designed to look like Windows Explorer. But that means nothing to MusicBee - it needs to read files from an actual Windows drive, not a URL.

My other comment was about usability, not streaming. Streaming is easy because it only requires the data from one (audio) file to be sent a little bit at a time so it can be played by the remote device. But you're asking about using a desktop application - not designed for streaming - to access files remotely. That could potentially require accessing dozens or hundreds of files at the same time over a remote connection. This will almost certainly be a terrible idea. Again, I don't know how much information from each track MusicBee caches or how it reads from its own internal database.

When you're browsing the folders on your NAS via that web page, how fast is it? I'm betting it's not nearly as fast as when you're browing the same folders on your computer at home.

Any idea how to get the drive behind an url to be monitored or scanned - without using DLNA/UPNP  plugins/setup?

This is not a thing. That's just not how it works.

[hirdon]

But you're asking about using a desktop application - not designed for streaming ....

No I didn't do that I was asking about any possible way - desktop application or any other, wouldn't mind if streaming or not

I mentioned it before and I'll mention it again: SubSonic.

I use it when I'm traveling (not in the car, but in hotels, etc.) and I -do not- use MB's SubSonic plugin as it's never worked well for me.
I have my music tracks on a NAS and I set up the SubSonic server on a Windows PC and pointed it to the files on the NAS. I can access my music, using a web browser or Android app. The only issue you may have is that you need a (mostly) static IP address. There are applications out there that will notify you if your IP address changes. My ISP hasn't changed my IP is roughly ten years. And I do not pay for a static IP.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

Static IP - Check; Access by web browser or android app - Check;

But I'd like to have MusicBee functionality and features for playing music. Now when accessing a music file through the browser it just downloads it - either I can save it or if I click "play" it downloads to a temporary folder playing.

So yes...I figure I would need to have some sort of streaming service... My NAS has DLNA and it works as my TV (also has DLNA funtionality) can can receive its stream. Things would be easy if MusicBee could recive DLNA even by a plugin.

MusicBee can play streams from the internet as easily as just giving it an URL in the menu "File/Open stream" - eg:

http://stream.tilos.hu:8000/tilos

[hirdon]

My NAS drive has DLNA - it also works with my TV.
Can this help anyway - if yes how I can put it to work?

Actually as you can see above the NAS drive can also stream to iTunes and act as an iTunes Server... I guess they thought that all others would or should be  served by the DLNA.

(Unfortunately there is no MuscBee server available on the NAS )

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

As for remotely accessing the files on your NAS, this isn't as simple as just mapping a folder over the internet and pointing MusicBee at it. NAS servers do provide remote access to your files, but it's via WebDAV or FTP or possibly some other proprietary service. That's why each one provides their own mobile apps for accessing the files, images and media etc. on their devices. I haven't seen any way of just accessing files on a NAS via a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, which is what you'd need for MusicBee to access them. This doesn't mean it's impossible, but I don't think it will be easy.

Lol It wouldn't be, which is why I pointed him to Google so he could do the research.

I made Buffalo Nas accessible on the internet - I can reach it from anywhere. (see screenshot-1). But I still only have an URL. And I don't know how to add it as a monitored folder...or how to Scan the folder for music files. Adding folders for scanning or monitoring only allow to add local folders and "Network Share" which basically a drive or folder on _local_ network (see screenshot-2)

Any idea how to get the drive behind an url to be monitored or scanned - without using DLNA/UPNP  plugins/setup?

As was explained by others, a URL won't work. You have to map the drive to Explorer, which will be difficult. You'll have to do the research yourself, which is why I directed you to Google. If you are able to discover a way to easily access your drive with Explorer through the Internet, we would love to hear it. Off the top, you could try setting up a VPN to your NAS drive, but accomplishing exactly what you desire is going to be a big pain in the ass. The conventional way of accessing media from outside your home network is serving your files over UPnP and using a web application or mobile application to play them.

So yes...I figure I would need to have some sort of streaming service... My NAS has DLNA and it works as my TV (also has DLNA funtionality) can can receive its stream. Things would be easy if MusicBee could recive DLNA even by a plugin.

There is a DLNA plug-in for MusicBee...

...but, that won't solve your problem, because DLNA only works over LAN, not the Internet.

[frankz]

There is a DLNA plug-in for MusicBee...

...but, that won't solve your problem, because DLNA only works over LAN, not the Internet.

I had this working for a while a few years back to listen to my MB library while out on walks until the DLNA plugin started crashing my computer and I removed it.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

I had this working for a while a few years back to listen to my MB library while out on walks until the DLNA plugin started crashing my computer and I removed it.

BubbleUPnP is great, I use it too! But, @hirdon wants access to his NAS drive using MusicBee, though, which BubbleUPnP can't provide.

The good news is that you don't need the MusicBee DLNA plug-in to use BubbleUPnP.