Creative uses

[drax]

I thought it might be an idea if we shared some of the ways we're using BTSync. Apart from giving ideas to fellow users it'll also give the devs some idea of how BTSync is actually being used IRL, which might help prioritise feature requests and bug fixes.

I'm using it to send torrents to my server at home. The server runs uTorrent which is set to monitor a particular directory for .torrent files, when it finds one it imports it, kicks off the download and deletes the .torrent file.

I'm now syncing this folder with my laptop, so no matter where I am, if I come across an interesting torrent, I download it to my copy of that folder. It gets synced across to my home server where uTorrrent does its stuff and deletes it. I can tell it's worked when my laptops copy of the .torrent gets deleted.

No mucking around with opening up ports in firewalls and exposing web interfaces that could get compromised, no relying on Dropbox or GDrive, this is all me and all secure and it works anywhere in the world.

[kos13]

This is very interesting topic for us. It will help us understand use cases and properly prioritize development.

BTW, why you are not using https://remote.bittorrent.com/

[Urist]

I have a media collection which I access through a Raspberry Pi media server (running raspbmc). My family had become accustomed to having this library at their disposal when I was living at home, but now that I don't live at home anymore (thank FSM), that media is lost to them. Here is my solution:

1. Media added to my personal computer

2. Raspberry Pi #1 checks for new files (still working on automating this) and takes any new files and saves it to the external drive connected to Pi #1 and deletes the original.

3. Pi #1 then syncs with Pi #2 (or any other Pis) which is located at my family's house with it's own external drive.

All I need to do is add media to my personal computer, and now my family has access to the same media without doing anything on their end.

I also have a separate partition on both drives that act as a family backup that all computers make nightly backups to, which also get synced.

[drax]

XBMC Thumbnails

I run XBox Media Center (XBMC) with a reasonably large network. There's one server (Win7) hosting 10TB of media and it does all the donkey work. There's six XBMC "clients", 3 laptops running Win7, another running Win8 and two Android devices, all of these clients are on WiFi but the server's on a wired connection. All the machines are running XBMC 12.0 - Frodo

I've set it up so that the "server" is storing the metadata in a locally hosted MySql DB which the other clients access ala this method here, http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Sync_multiple_libraries

That's saved me a ton of work, but each machine still has to download it's own local copy of the thumbnails for the TV shows and movies. (If you know XBMC then you probably also that path substitution is unreliable under Frodo and no longer supported)

And this is where BT sync comes in. I've shared the Thumbnails folder (\XBMC\userdata\Thumbnails) from my server to the clients and it's worked like a charm. Instead of having to download 1.7GB of thumbnails from the internet they sync up across the lan in a matter of minutes. As the server is automatically downloading new shows and movies as they become available (with Sickbeard, CouchPotato and uTorrent) the thumbnails are now automatically repopulated from the server to the clients as well.

Obviously the two Android devices can't join the party yet, heh-ho.

One thing I checked before I started, the filenames for the thumbnails were consistent across the different devices, this was when they were all downloading their own copies from the internet. So I'm guessing this is the same for all clients. Everywhere.

Think about it for a second. This could take a massive load away from the servers of TheTVDB and TMDB (the main providers of metadata for HTPC machines),

If there's any XBMC users here who'd like to test this, ping me and I'll give you the secret to my thumbnails folder.

For the record, and if the devs are interested, we're talking about some 32,000+ files typically about 70KB spread across 18 subfolders, 1.7GB in total, on my setup.

[Automatic Coding]

XBMC Thumbnails

A. Isn't this exactly what plex is built for?

B. Isn't there a XBMC plex plugin?

Seems like pointless effort to me, I use plex for my HTPCs, computers, ipads and android devices and I couldn't be happier.

[coewar]

I plan to use BitTorrent Sync for these purposes:

- Backups of family's documents on multiple computers in the home. All sync with a folder on a main server that then utilizes a different backup solution. And using Dropbox was not so hot as it kind of has folder restrictions that did not work for me.

- Keeping an active backup of some servers in one data center to another and another. Server is holding some bunch of files we use plus also Git repositories.

- Staring changes of software to production servers. We can centralize each server if we wanted to in a "pushing server" which would be the same server that is being backed up in the previous point.

- Keeping active DR backup of another server when there is no current and well defined process yet.

[drax]

A. Isn't this exactly what plex is built for?

B. Isn't there a XBMC plex plugin?

Seems like pointless effort to me, I use plex for my HTPCs, computers, ipads and android devices and I couldn't be happier.

No, plex' main selling point is its client driven ability to transcode. The metadata it presents is pretty much the same as every other HTPC offering, XBMC, Media Browser etc. Although it shares some DNA with XBMC they're so apart now as to be separate products.

XBMC supports live TV, series recording, EPG etc, Plex does none of this

XBMC and all its plugins and skins are 100% free, always have been always will be. The Plex clients for tablets and phones cost money, as does the Plexpass subscription which is the only way to use the Plexsync functionality.

The amount of addons for XBMC is mind boggling, Plex has a couple of hundred, it's like comparing the Android app store to the Blackberry app store.

They are completely different animals. My msg was about using BTSync in conjunction with XBMC, I really couldn't give a toss about Plex.

[Automatic Coding]

No, plex' main selling point is its client driven ability to transcode. The metadata it presents is pretty much the same as every other HTPC offering, XBMC, Media Browser etc. Although it shares some DNA with XBMC they're so apart now as to be separate products.

XBMC supports live TV, series recording, EPG etc, Plex does none of this

XBMC and all its plugins and skins are 100% free, always have been always will be. The Plex clients for tablets and phones cost money, as does the Plexpass subscription which is the only way to use the Plexsync functionality.

The amount of addons for XBMC is mind boggling, Plex has a couple of hundred, it's like comparing the Android app store to the Blackberry app store.

They are completely different animals. My msg was about using BTSync in conjunction with XBMC, I really couldn't give a toss about Plex.

I was more talking about everything being in sync, and, server based. Not the thumbnail thing, although, that falls under the server part.

As for live TV, series recording and EPG, I use none of. I guess each to their own. I much prefer plex as I have one huge computer (With all my shows) and loads of smaller computers around the house, I also prefer being able to install a plugin on one machine (The server) and it being synced to all of them and the fact that I can use the webUI to watch my videos from anywhere.

Oh, and syncing to my device for offline viewing, then, when I get back online, all my online-only plugins (like trakt.t/etc) automatically execute what they would have executed if I were to have watched it online.