The "Advanced" tab in ServeToMe
When this checkbox is checked, ServeToMe will check online once per week when you open the ServeToMe application to see if there are any ServeToMe updates that can be downloaded.
Note that this check is only run when you open the ServeToMe app (the background server will not perform this check).
When this checkbox is disabled, you can still check for updates from the "ServeToMe" menu in the menubar.
When this checkbox is checked, ServeToMe will display an icon in the menubar (even when the ServeToMe app is closed). This icon will let you start and stop the server easily, open the ServeToMe application or check the current local or external addresses.
ServeToMe uses a metadata cache to store thumbnails, album, artist and other information about every file it has loaded at least once.
The display here lets you check how big the metadata cache is, whether additional items are still being processed and clear the metadata cache if you desire.
Clearing the metadata cache may be desirable if thumbnail generation for some of your files failed for a temporary reason and you'd like to force ServeToMe to try again. Old items are automatically removed from the cache after a period of inactivity.
You can force ServeToMe to generate metadata for every file in all of your "Media Sources" by performing a search at the top level. Warning though: this may increase activity on your computer for some time.
This popup menu lets you set an upper limit for live converted video resolution generated by the server. The default value is 720p — which is a good value unless you think your computer is particularly fast or slow.
If your computer is not fast enough to transcode video at the specified resolution, you may see pauses in video streams and changes in picture quality as StreamToMe is forced to switch to lower resolutions after the higher resolution can't be played in realtime.
This setting does not affect "passthrough" video ("passthrough" is used when the video track of a file can be played without conversion on the target device and the network bandwidth is enough to allow it).
If this value is set below the resolution of your files, they can still be live-converted but they will be converted to the specified resolution.
A "port" number is part of an internet address. Where the address specifies the computer, the "port" specifies the service on the computer. You should usually leave this setting at the default.
If you have multiple computers on a local network running ServeToMe that you'd like to access from outside your local network, it is a good idea to make sure each computer uses a different local port (so that they don't conflict when trying to obtain the port number for the common external address). Additionally, since services like UPnP may increment the port by one or two values in some circumstances, it is a good idea when setting different computers to run on different ports to use port numbers that are 10 places or more apart. e.g. 9969 for one server and 9979 for another.
Normally, ServeToMe can be accessed through any of the network interfaces that might be active on your computer.
This setting makes ServeToMe inaccessible to all network interfaces except the one selected.
Warning: the purpose of this setting is to limit access. Most of the time you'll want to leave this setting on "All" to maximize accessibility on the local network. Changing this value may disrupt Bonjour or UPnP/NAT-PMP behaviors.