How does it work?
The TwonkyMedia can scan your hard drivefor music, picture and
video content. It automatically extracts the available metadata.
For WAV files a file naming schema is supported, which enables you
to provide information about the title, album and artist of the
music track.
The TwonkyMedia is integrated with existing media management tools
like Winamp, iTunes and Photoshop Album. It utilizes the metadata
libraries of these tools. Playlists created with Winamp or the Windows
Media Player can be imported by the MediaServer as well.
For client devices that do not directly support Internet radio,
the TwonkyMedia acts as a proxy and translates Internet radio stations.
For these clients each radio station is interpreted as one never-ending
MP3 song that can be selected and played like a locally available
piece of music.
From the avialable metadata TwonkyMedia automatically creates a
navigation tree.
Navigation on music collections
TwonkyMedia provides you with a much more flexible navigation structure
than any other media server. Most media servers just organize your
music according to your own folder structure and some organize your
tracks into the categories artist, album, genre, and all tracks.
TwonkyMedia provides you by default with further navigation levels
including categories like genre/artist, artist/album, year/album,
year/artist, and alpha/artist. Alpha group search is convenient
when your client device only has a small display.
Twonkymedia handles compilations separately, so that it does not
create separate artist entries for each song of a compilation.
Pictures and Videos
For picturesTwonkyMedia supports inbuilt transcoding
of all kinds of requested picture sizes and picture formats, for
example, transcoding of JPEG pictures to YUV for the Sony clients.
Pictures are initially poor on metadata, but you may use Adobe Photoshop
Album to add descriptions and apply your own set of tags. TwonkyMedia
imports descriptions and tag information from this application and
utilizes it to build your personalized navigation structure based
on your tags. If there are no tags provided for your pictures, TwonkyMedia
will use the folder view, which is also used for video content.
Content formats
- Music: MP3, WMA, WAV, 3GP, M4A, MP4, LPCM, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC,
MP2, AC3, MPA, MP1, AIF, ASF
- Photo: JPEG, PNG, TIF, BMP, GIF
- Video: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG2-TS, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, VOB, DivX, 3GP,
VDR, ASF, MPE, DVR-MS, Xvid, M1V, M4V
- Internet Radio: vTuner, Shoutcast
- Playlists: WPL, PLS, M3U
Note: the actual formats supported depend on the individual client
devices. The current version of TwonkyMedia does not provide transcoding
functionality.
Client support
TwonkyMedia supports a large variety of UPnP enabled clients, and
it also automatically detects the connected client devices and can
react to their special abilities. A music client, for example, is
not provided with the entries for pictures or videos. Clients that
support quick navigation keys on the remote control, like the D-Link
devices, are provided with the corresponding content when the short
key is pressed.
How can I try it?
A 30-day trial version of TwonkyMedia is available here.
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