[ RESOLVED ]
Hi all - thanks for pitching in to help me. For some reason, when I use my Windows 10 machine’s “format” drive feature, it doesn’t necessarily format my USB drive sufficiently to work in my Nebula Capsule Max (NCM). These are old drives - less than 16 gig in size and have been completely stripped of data and files (which I assume is part of the problem)
However, by dumb luck, I had the idea to try my Android mobile phone (Pixel 3a) to format the drives (using a USB-C adapter), It worked! I noticed that when I used my phone to do the formatting, it added a folder and a .DAT file to the drive. So, I suppose these missing files were the issue to begin with and Windows 10 drive formatting doesn’t do anything about that.
My NCM works fine with the old drives now, playing videos in MP4 format using the VLC and Kodi players.
I’m sure many of you are reading and saying “duh” to yourselves. In my defense, it was difficult for me to find a solution by googling and very few discussions around critical files/folders for USB drives to function properly for video storage and playback.