Filesystem Synchronization / Scan
One of the core features of LimboMedia is the binding of existing files and folders somewhere in your filesystem to make them web-accessible. When you access and manipulate these files only via LimboMedia you're fine. Otherwise you need to synchronize LimboMedia with your filesystem from time to time to keep the LimboMedia file index up-to-date. This metadata index is required for fast browsing, search and rights-management. When configured, LimboMedia will scan your disk for new files and folders to add them to the index and will remove deleted files.
Keep in mind, that this synchronization goes always in one direction: from filesystem to LimboMedia. The filesystem is always the 'master' and we do not delete, create or move any files or put strange metadata, thumbnails or other shit into your folders.
You can choose when and how often to run these filescans. We recommend nighty runs since you can trigger the folder synchronization manually by clicking the button right beside the folder, in urgent cases.
Background Media Converter
Prepare your media at night for flawless playback every day.
LimboMedia does it's best for a nice and fast user experience. Therefore images are resized (thumbnails, preview), media files (music, videos) are transcoded to the well supported and open WebM format and subtitles extracted from the original video, if required. This makes LimboMedia fast, saves bandwith and guarantees audio and video playpack on your devices without plugins or additional software.
By default images are resized and subtitles are extracted upon the first request. They are stored on disk for upcoming requests. Music and videos are transcoded to WebM when required/requested. This happens on-the-fly and no data is stored/cached on disk. Transcoding requires a strong cpu and might cause problems when it comes to seeking or fast-forwarding on playback.
Configure the 'Background media converter' to create all the resized images and encoded videos at night, for flawless playback on the next day. You decide which sizes or formats to create. But please be careful: Audio and video encoding takes a lot of time and requires a lot of disk space.
Here's a brief list of all the different types and formats with information about defaults and when they're used, so you can find the right mix between on-thy-fly transcoding and nighly pre-encoding.
Image
| Image Layouts | Details | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| THUMB_S | 30x30 px - Crop | Thumbnails in list view |
| THUMB_M | 60x60 px - Crop | Thumbnails in android app |
| THUMB_L | 148x148 px - Crop | Thumbnails in gallery view |
| XS | 360x360 px max - Resize, Keep aspect ratio | |
| S | 720x720 px max - Resize, Keep aspect ratio | |
| M | 960x960 px max - Resize, Keep aspect ratio | Fullscreen browser & android app |
| L | 1280x1280 px max - Resize, Keep aspect ratio | |
| XL | 1920x1920 px max - Resize, Keep aspect ratio |
Audio
| Audio Formats | Details | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| WEBM_VORBIS | WebM container / Vorbis codec | Default transcoding format if original codec is not supported. |
| MP3 | MP3 container / MP3 codec |
Video
| Video Formats | Details | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| WEBM | WebM container / Vp8 codec | Default transcoding format if original codec is not supported. |
| MP4 | MP4 container / H264 videocodec / AAC audiocodec | Not transcodable. |
| Video Layouts | Details | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| P360 | 360p aka 640x360 - about 500kbit/sec | Mobile and low bandwidth |
| P720 | 720p aka 1280x720 aka HDReady - about 3mbit/sec | Good deal in quality vs. bandwidth vs. server-CPU-requirements. |
| P1080 | 1080p aka 1920x1080 aka FullHD - about 6mbit/sec | High quality but requires high-bandwidth and a hell of a CPU. Not recommended for on-the-fly transcoding. |
| Subtitles | Details | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SubRip | Widely used and broadly compatible subtitle text file format. | |
| WebVTT | Web Video Text Tracks - Modern approach for subtitles, captions, and more. | Requires an up-to-date ffmpeg version. |
Cleanup of converted and encoded data
As an administrator there're some cleanup actions to delete converted images and encoded audio- and video files. Original files are kept, so these actions are usefull whenever you decide to save some space and use transcoding instead of pre-encoded files or for development and whenever the design changes (image sizes, video formats, ...).