Fixing Firefly Media Server on Windows Server 2012 R2

I can’t live without music, so I keep headphones on at work all day. Problem is my laptop’s drive is too small for a 500 GB library, so the only option was to set up a DAAP server on my desktop. No DLNA because it handles FLAC badly, and my entire collection is FLAC.

Unlike the Firefly setup I messed with on FreeNAS at home, Windows Server 2012 R2 gave me trouble. I couldn’t find a fix anywhere I searched, so I’m writing it up in case it helps someone else.

The problem is simple: FLAC files won’t play through Firefly Media Server on Windows Server 2012 R2. MP3 and other formats are fine.

Specifically, when you try to play a FLAC file remotely, the server-side service just dies and has to be restarted.

First I checked the log, and the song titles showed up as mojibake. My initial guess was a filename issue, so I specifically found an English-titled song and tried that. Still no dice.

Next I looked through the relevant threads on the Roku forums and found Western users hitting the same thing, blamed on tags and cover art. Downloaded MP3tag, stripped the tag info from one song, tried playing it. Nope.

Turned on Firefly’s debug mode and dug through the more verbose logs looking for clues. Nothing useful in there — it just dies right at the stream step.

Being slow on the uptake, I only then noticed Windows itself was throwing an error, so I took a look. The file named in the error was avcodec.dll. That’s some kind of codec library, but the creation date was 2008, the version was ancient, and it was 32-bit.

Could that be related?

So I downloaded the K-Lite Codec Pack Full and found a 64-bit avcodec.dll inside. It isn’t named that originally, but whatever — swapped it in and saw what happened.

Played it again. Fixed.

P.S.

If you’re like me and can’t bring yourself to delete the instrumentals and web radio rips you’ve collected, you can just make a playlist on the Firefly server side to filter them out.

Like this.

Maybe I’ll build my own radio next time I get the chance.

Also:

1. The Firefly project seems dead, and the latest Windows server build takes some effort to find.
2. Even though this is DAAP, the latest iTunes no longer supports this old version, so I recommend installing Banshee instead.