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    I want to use Live Mesh to facilitate copying recorded TV shows from my home server to my laptop when I am on the road.  Here is what I want to do:

    1. Record a TV show on my PC (I use SageTV on Windows Home Server) - it will generally be recorded in .mpg
    2. Transcode the show to Divx (or other MPEG-4 variant) using a SageTV addin.
    3. Upload the show to my Live Mesh folder.
    4. When I have the opportunity - download this file to my laptop at a hotel.

    To upload the show to Live Mesh can I just use a batch file to copy the file to my Live Mesh folder (which seems to be c:\users\username\desktop\folder) and then it will be automatically uploaded to my online Live Mesh storage space?

    Will the upload run at the full available bandwidth of my home internet connection (which is about 800k)?

    Will the download run at the full bandwidth of my hotel internet connection?

    I believe Live Mesh gives you 5GB of storage - is there any way to get more as this isn't a lot for video files?

    Microsoft Skydrive gives you 25GB - is there any way to easily use a batch file to upload files to Skydrive?

    Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:36 PM

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    Hi,

    Live Mesh will use the available Network Resources - but, I believe, at a lower priority (so if the line is already in heavy use it will use less bandwidth) - this is somewhat conjecture based on observation and based on previous posts by people from the team on these forums.

    There is currently no way to get extra storage space for Live Mesh - although this is only true for the Live Desktop. Depending on the speed of your connections you may be open to syncing Peer-2-Peer which would allow a virtually unlimited amount of space, allowing you to sync directly from your home computer to your laptop when availabe. This can be setup by simply sharing a folder between two machines and specifying that it should not sync with the Live Desktop.

    As for an automated script for skydrive - I'm sure you could find something on the net, but you'd have to ask on the Live Forums.

    Cheers,

    Oren
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:56 PM

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    Hi,

    Live Mesh will use the available Network Resources - but, I believe, at a lower priority (so if the line is already in heavy use it will use less bandwidth) - this is somewhat conjecture based on observation and based on previous posts by people from the team on these forums.

    There is currently no way to get extra storage space for Live Mesh - although this is only true for the Live Desktop. Depending on the speed of your connections you may be open to syncing Peer-2-Peer which would allow a virtually unlimited amount of space, allowing you to sync directly from your home computer to your laptop when availabe. This can be setup by simply sharing a folder between two machines and specifying that it should not sync with the Live Desktop.

    As for an automated script for skydrive - I'm sure you could find something on the net, but you'd have to ask on the Live Forums.

    Cheers,

    Oren
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:56 PM
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    I'll add that there is no way to automate an upload to Skydrive via the "usual" methods since you can't map a drive to Skydrive. It requires you to navigate to an log into the web page for the upload.
    -steve
    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:22 PM
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    wayner9 said:

    I want to use Live Mesh to facilitate copying recorded TV shows from my home server to my laptop when I am on the road.  Here is what I want to do:

    1. Record a TV show on my PC (I use SageTV on Windows Home Server) - it will generally be recorded in .mpg
    2. Transcode the show to Divx (or other MPEG-4 variant) using a SageTV addin.
    3. Upload the show to my Live Mesh folder.
    4. When I have the opportunity - download this file to my laptop at a hotel.

    To upload the show to Live Mesh can I just use a batch file to copy the file to my Live Mesh folder (which seems to be c:\users\username\desktop\folder) and then it will be automatically uploaded to my online Live Mesh storage space?

    Will the upload run at the full available bandwidth of my home internet connection (which is about 800k)?

    Will the download run at the full bandwidth of my hotel internet connection?

    I believe Live Mesh gives you 5GB of storage - is there any way to get more as this isn't a lot for video files?

    Microsoft Skydrive gives you 25GB - is there any way to easily use a batch file to upload files to Skydrive?



    I think you can do what you desire using Live Mesh, but slightly different than you describe above.

    1. Record the TV show and transcode as needed, saving a copy or the actual file to a folder on the PC that is synchronized via Live Mesh.
    2. Set the folder to not sync to the Live Desktop, but only on the PC and laptop.
    3. Assuming that the PC is powered on an connected to the Internet, once the file exists in the local Mesh folder, it will be available to transfer via peer to peer to your laptop when it is also connected.

    Note that the transfer can take a pretty long time as it will not stress the network connection. If you are using the connection for anything else, the sync will stop and start and trickle along.

    Once the sync is complete, the laptop copy of the file will be available for you to play.

    However, I think that a better solution for you is to simply store the file you wish to watch on a Shared folder on your WHS box. Then, connect to the WHS box remotely and *manually* download the file to your laptop. You may also want to look into a streaming solution for playback of media from the WHS box over the Internet using a 3rd party add-in for WHS.

    -steve
    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:29 PM
    Moderator
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    Thanks for the response Steve.  My goal was to automate the update from my home server to a storage location on the net, such as Live Mesh, so that downloading wasn't dependent on a constant conenction from home-net-laptop in hotel.

    I figured that the bottleneck is the upload to the net as my upload speed is 800k.  The download should be much faster - therefore I don't need to have the laptop connected and running for 3 hours, as would be required for a 1GB file as I may need my laptop for other stuff.

    By the way I found out after my initial post that there is a beta product called Gladinet that allows you to mount Skydrive as a local drive on your PC.  The only problem is that Skydrive doesn't let you upload files larger than 50MB so it is useless for video files.
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 6:03 PM
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    That limit of 50 megs would certainly be a limitation. So, until these services merge and perhaps more space is made available for free or a price, you can probably do what you want via Live Mesh, but I suspect that it won't be smooth.
    I wonder if you may want to convert the video into a more portable format for the laptop viewing when on the road so that the process is modified slightly - after recording, convert the video to a highly compressed video for portability and save/copy that file into the Live Mesh folder for upload to the Live Desktop location in the cloud. It will upload more quickly and reliably, plus download faster, too.
    -steve
    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 6:31 PM
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    Skydrive and Live Mesh merging at some time makes sense - that was going to be one of  my next questions.

    My Home Server runs WHS.  How or does Live Mesh work together with WHS?  They seem like natural mates as WHS acts as one's data/media repository on your LAN and Live Mesh can perform a similar role on the internet (or a WAN).
    Wednesday, March 25, 2009 8:38 PM
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    There's no supported client for WHS at this point. It does seem like a natural and has probably been suggested already, but feel free to add your suggestion:
    Sticky: Live Mesh Beta: Suggestions - Go cast your vote!

    -steve
    Microsoft MVP Windows Live / Windows Live OneCare & Live Mesh Forum Moderator
    Thursday, March 26, 2009 4:38 PM
    Moderator