How do you add new folders to be shared from Windows Media Player 12 via DLNA?

Question

I'm using Windows Media Player 12 as a DLNA server in Windows 7. When I add new files to my %USERPROFILE%\Videos directory, they show up on my DLNA clients just fine.

However, I've tried adding new folders to the Videos Library by clicking on the <#> locations link from the Videos Library and choosing Add.... Note that this is the same dialog that comes up from going to Organize->Manage Libraries->Videos in Windows Media Player.

I've also tried dragging and dropping the files directly into Windows Media Player so they show up there.

Neither of these options made the files show up on my DLNA clients.

Is there a way to get Windows Media Player 12 to share video files outside of %USERPROFILE%\Videos over DLNA?

Answer 1

I figured this out, for the most part. There are several factors at work here.

1. You do indeed add new folders by adding them to the Videos Library, which can be done from Windows Explorer or Windows Media player, as described in the question.

2. The files are indexed after being added to the library. I'm not sure exactly what process does this, but I believe it has something to do with Windows Media Player itself. It sometimes seems to speed the process up if you launch Windows Media Player after adding a new folder to the library.

3. Many large files will take a while to index and appear as available over the DLNA connection. I do not see anywhere that you can check the status of this, but that would be a great feature for Microsoft to add in the future.

4. Some DLNA clients appear to cache the list of files from the server and I'm not sure how to force them to manually update the list. This was also causing me to think that no new files were added. I confirmed this caching is happening by taking a server offline. The files still showed up as available.

The answer is, add the folder to the library and wait. How long? No clue. I found it easiest to add a new folder to put a small video file in a folder and then add it to the library. Then I can easily test that the new folder is being indexed for the DLNA server.