Dropbox mount for 4K streaming and sharing

Hi to everyone and first of all I have to say that I’m totally new to this, so for whoever is willing to help me…please be patient…I’m usually a quick learner, but I need to learn! :slight_smile:

Here’s my point: I have a Windows 10 Pro (April Update) Intel NUC i3, 8GB RAM DDR4, SSD SATA 3, I wish to use as “virtual NAS” to access my unlimited Dropbox account to stream multimedia content without any local syncing (just plain streaming). The contents are mainly Hi-res lossless music, Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray (both in mkv container).

I have a very stable 200 Mbps internet connection and a Gigabit Ethernet local network, so this means that donwload streaming and local sharing (Samba and DLNA) shouldn’t be an issue.

My idea is to mount the Dropbox account (with all the different content folders within) as a local HDD on the SSD and then share the folders to be able to access the contents with a media-player, smart TV, multi-room audio client, ecc…). I don’t need to transcode anything, just keep as it is, because I already have all the supporting devices.

I’ve started to test the rclone mount function and managed to succesfully mount the Dropbox account (just basic mounting, no cache, read-ahead settings applied yet). The problem now is that I can’t manage to share the folders as I would normally do with a USB Drive. When I try I get “access permission” issues. I tried to read this “windows caveats” link I found in the mounting tutorial, but really don’t understand what I need to do…so please help me!

Once I’ve sorted the sharing issue, could someone please suggest me the best mounting settings needed for my streaming? (cache, read-ahead and anything else that is needed to get things working?)

And finally, once everything is up and working, how can I get everything to boot automatically when I start-up the PC?

I’m asking for help with rclone, but if you know of any “out of the box” software that can do what I’m trying to do, it’s ok for me! I already tried NetDrive3 (no problem with the mounting and sharing) but I’m having some annoying stuttering with the 4K streaming (I suppose the caching / read-ahead would need some adjustment because of the high-birate involved with this kind of content).

Sorry for writing so much, but I had to explain my goal :slight_smile: Would anyone be so kind to help me? Thank you!

Here is a good thread about sharing a windows mount: Installing rclone mount on Windows as service?

Note the recommendation for nssm!

Hi Nick!

I’ll read very carefully and give it a try! This would already be a huge step ahead! THX!