Universal Media Server | Forum

Hello I've been using UMS for a few months now and almost every aspect of it has failed for me in some way, to the point where I felt I needed to make a thread here because clearly I must be doing something very wrong

++ An overview of my setup: ++
An old Mac Mini (10.13) running 15.6.0 for pre 10.15, with an external hardrive connected with folders for Movies, Shows and Music.

++ The main issues I've run into: ++

Case: I want to watch a movie or show on my iPad.
* Issue #1: The web interface in Safari on iOS26 shows "The Media Could Not Be Loaded Because the Server or Network Failed or the Format Is Not Supported" for every file. I checked a few threads related to this, some saying it was ad-blockers, some saying it was fixed already. After tinkering with it for 30 mins, the web interface on iPad simply does not work.

* Issue #2: Trying to watch a movie in VLC on iPad - playback works for about 60 mins, then VLC crashes. After this point the crashes get closer and closer together until I stop UMS, start it again, and then I get back to my original hour-ish of playback in VLC. I tried this with VLC on a laptop too and it did not crash but it did get a lot of digital artifact-ing, like you'd see on a bad satellite connection. This was tested with and without trans coding options.

* Issue #3: Trying to watch a show on an iPad - For my shows folder, VLC only shows the transcode folder for some reason. I can watch shows (minus the crash issue), but instead of moving to the next episode after playback has finished, it plays the same episode again in another trans code format.

Case: I want to listen to music on my iPhone.
* Issue #1: The only player I can find that supports UMS is foobar2000 - this is not a UMS issue as such, but it would be really helpful to have a list of good UMS compatible clients.

* Issue #2: When I try to play an album with multiple discs, it displays all the disks out of order (e.g. it plays disk 1 track 1, then disk 2 track 1, then disk 1 tack 2 etc). If I click the trans code folder, it shows the discs correctly sorted (disk 1 track 1, disk 1 track 2 .... disk 2 track 1 etc) however because the trans code folder is a trans code folder, clicking a song does not play it, it takes you to a list of trans code options and then plays all the trans code options for a single song. There is never a real situation where you would want trans code options for a single song in an album, you'd only ever want it for the album as a whole.

Case: I'm using an older device because VLC keeps crashing on my new iPad, so I use an old iPad.
* Issue #1: UMS has client profiles, such as VLC and VLC for pre-phone 5. However there does not seem to be a reliable detection method or a way to easily pick what a client is using in the UMS clients list. The "Settings" option is grey for every client, it simply tells me the config its using, and has no way to pick a new config for that IP/Client. The only way I found to get configs for older VLC clients to work, was to open the configs folder, copy the settings out of the Pre iPhone 5 VLC config, and paste them into the regular VLC config.

++++++

I've tried searching this forum and the knowledge base for info, but I've not found anything really related to my issues, and every time I try and do a new search I get hit with a "You must wait 20 seconds before you do a another search", so searching is not helpful. I'm aware I'm just being grumpy here and clearly what Im trying to do must not be what UMS is designed to do, however I'd still appreciate any help or suggestions from people running into these issues.

Added EDIT: I keep trying to make corrections on this post and the CleanTalk anti-spam keeps blocking me. Editing my own post should not be flagged as spam this is totally overkill and its making the forum really unpleasant to use.

To help with your issues I will need to see your logs so I know what is happening. (see the link in my sig)
It is likely some mis-configuration or maybe the network speed to your ipad was measured low so the quality is reduced.

It is probably better to use VLC instead of the web browser as that should be able to play everything natively (depending on the hardware specs), and if that is not working properly then UMS may be transcoding for some reason.
When playing in the web browser everything has to be transcoded to that one specific format that it can play so it can depend on several factors if this is not working well.

The audio player in the web browser is very basic as the focus has been on video, but there are better dedicated apps for this.
I don't use UMS to listen to music so don't know of any decent apps to use for it at least on iOS.

BubbleUPnP for Android can although not a dedicated music app.
I know several audio systems have their own app that act as a control point for playing though UMS. I think Cambridge Audio devices have this.
Look for DLNA compatible players.

There is NextCP that is also a control point for other devices but has recently added the ability to play in the browser interface and more suited for music.
The Dev for that also contributes to UMS.

If the audio tracks are out of order it may be that your device has order them alphabetically, my old Samsung TV did this. There is an option "PrependTrackNumbers = " that can be added to your renderer conf to add the track number to the filename. I don't know if this takes into account disc number.

One problem with identifying VLC is there is very little to match too in its headers, usually just a version number, so that does not give any information on the abilities of the device running it.

I'm sorry the antispam is giving problems. TBH I often find it allows the spam but blocks legitimate posts.
I don't know if it has changed recently but I don't know what CleanTalk is. Usually is something is flagged as spam I get a notification before it can be made public.

I have some logs for you, it took a while to produce the issue so they ended up being 75mb, I can send you a link, but I'd prefer to send it as a pm in case there is any personal info in there, however I cant see a way to send a pm to you. (Oh its your forum restrictions again, I'm just not allowed send PMs)

I left it playing media until eventually it crashed, then locked up and would not play anything anymore. The counter would go up in VLC and the log reported playing, but nothing played.

I tried a few music apps recommended by google's chat bot (mconnect, nexTrack - mconnect seems the best but neither are perfect) and they all suffered the same ordering issue and/or say nothing about sort order, all mixing discs. VLC also has the ordering issue on music, though VLC is a very bad music player on iOS. I also pulled the UPnP settings out of foobar pasted below - I also noticed the track position slider is missing on modern ios foobar, it shows in other apps and older versions of foobar on my older phone:

You should be able to send a PM after 1 more post. I have no say on how the forum is set up so this might have been a default setting.

Looking at the conf file for foobar in UMS it is sent to only stream mp3s. Any other format will be transcoded.
It does not specify a transcoding format so would use the default LPCM (wav) so I would it expect it to not work if it can only play mp3s

Since that settings you posted mentioned WAV and FLAC these should be added to the foobar2000-mobile.conf so these do not get transcoded.
That is assuming that conf is being used but will need to see logs to confirm.

I don't know if you need any setting in Foobar though as I am not familiar with it, but the defaults should be fine.


Is the filesize for the logs the full zip file it creates?
I think the limit for the forum is 20-25mb which is not usually a problem if an error can be replicated quickly.

Making a new post to see if it unlocks PMs (whoever runs this forum should know this is an awful design, I've run forums too and have not needed to do this nonsense to keep spam out!)

It wont be in the trace log but there was a new issue today. Its trying to trans code my m4a files to WAV by default, but today it started failing to do that transcode for some reason. On foobar it was returning "Unsupported file type", and on mconnect it would play the first 10-ish seconds of the song, then skip to the next song. If I had to guess I'd say the transcode was going really slow and the players were getting confused when the transcode stream ran out while the file was playing.

Most of the time music plays fine, and I assume its always doing this WAV transcode based on what you say mike, so this is another issue - and possibly related to the video playback issue causing VLC to crash, although that happens without a transcode.

Another issue to report!

If I pause any movie, then close my ipad and come back to watch the movie a few hours later. It will play for about 2 mins, then freeze up totally and refuse to play that movie any more. The only way to get it to play that file again is to totally restart UMS and VLC (it will have no record of any resume state)

The post restriction is to stop new accounts sending spam via PMs and is standard for most forums. This has happened a few times on here from old hacked accounts.
Attachment upload is not restricted for logs so it is rare to get PMs.

The count has been set to a minimum for a new user to be moved to a regular user as this helps me identify new accounts.

I don't see any errors in the logs that would stop UMS from working.
There were some exceptions with Illegal character in filenames for Ulysses videos but I don't see what it could be. (maybe the double extension .xvid.[merchant].avi ) At worst you would not be able to play these but probably would work but have no metadata.

I see that quite a lot of audio files would be transcoded, this may be what is causing some of the problems.
I have altered the confs for both VLC and Foobar to add these filetypes as supported.
Save these to /Users/daniel/Library/Application Support/UMS/renderers/ (you might have to make the renderers folder) and restart UMS.

If you want a better way to play audio from the web browser then check out NextCP
Since it is web based it will work fine on old phones and is a better experience than the very basic options in UMS.

The resume problem you mentioned is to do with the resume option in UMS.
It is there to add that function for devices that could not do it (like PS3) by creating a virtual file by transcoding starting at the last viewed point and send that to the device instead.
Most devices these days can remember themselves so UMS does not need to handle resuming so this option should be turned off.
I do not see the option in your settings so it is on by default. I have suggested to the devs it should be off by default but I think it is like that for legacy reasons.

Another thing that could cause unwanted transcoding is network speed.
There is a few speed tests in the logs and the results vary from 10mb/s to 33mb/s These should be just fine for audio but can be a problem for video as if it is lower than the bitrate of the video then UMS will transcode to lower the quality so it can be played.
With Wifi there are many things that can affect the speed, direct line of sight to the router is best.

For older devices they might not be able to play newer formats like h265 so that VLC conf would not be suitable for them. You might have to force transcode by using the #--TRANSCODE--# folder to play them from.
I'm not sure there is a way to differentiate specific iPhone versions to make a separate conf for older models.
The current one just allows everything as VLC can normally play them, at least for more modern hardware, but older processors would struggle.