Release 0.5.0b6: The “Jeremy” release
OK, lots of good stuff. Nine people have forked the code on GitHub and started playing with it. We have some exciting things on the way. The forums are hopping, over 220 people have registered since they opened, and we just passed the thousand post mark. Enormous thanks to our moderating team, especially bmfrosty, ChoccyHobNob, phunkysai, and our very own iordonez. Really nice work making people feel welcome.
This release (HTTP, torrent, source) is named after jeremymc7 since he gets the honor of having two Trac issues closed out.
- NEW: Support for EAC3 audio. In theory, at least. I have to admit to not having any EAC3 content laying around, but I assume the guy who wrote the code for ffmpeg *did*. Thanks to Martin for pointing me to the patch. Also added .m2t/.m2ts to the list of recognized extensions.
- NEW : Support for Smart Folders. Pretty cool, actually.
- FIX: DVD playing over SMB (and other VFS protocols). I know I’ve lied repeatedly in the past about this working, but this time I’ve made sure of it. I hope. To be completely honest, I only tested VIDEO_TS folders and not .iso files.
- FIX: XBMSP support. I’ve also misled you about this one in the past, but this time I actually verified that it works. This combined with iTunesFS is now officially my favorite way of getting my iTunes libraries playing remotely.
- FIX: User’s skin folder wasn’t being created.
- FIX: Profiles are saved and loaded correctly now, to the Application Support area.
- FIX : Scraper/IMDB/filesystem bugs that prevented files named “Broken (2006/I).mkv” from looking up correctly.
- NEW: I have news for you. Those cache settings that you’ve been tweaking to get just perfect, don’t actually do anything. Pure placebo effect. Well, until today, at least. They’re now hooked up and actually work. Superpea will dig this.
I also updated to the latest linux XBMC and ffmpeg code. Some notable changes there:
- Allow opening .nrg images for DVD [wiso]
- Large 15MB memory leak after every song played [charleydoes]
- Python unicode string handling fixed [vulkanr]
- Some fixes to OpenGL renderer [elupus]
- Fix to framedropping for libmpeg2 [elupus]
- AC3/DTS resync fixes [elupus]
Areas to test:
- Cache settings.
- AC3 passthrough.
- IMDB.
- DVD playing over SMB.
- EAC3.
We have an avocado tree next door, and if Barkley finds a ripe one on the way home from a walk, he carries it over to the yard, and the only thing left within ten minutes is a pile of avocado peel and a happy pup.
36 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Happy Thanksgiving Elan and everyone celebrating it! I make a toast to all the things done..."
You rule guys - this is the best media center on the Mac without a doubt and all the devs work is so very much appreciated.
Donation coming your way!
Great, thanks! Really appreciate this fine project. Thanks so much for your hard work!
I was so happy to see the addition of Smart Folders! It will make my life of managing huge lists of videos a whole lot easier. Unfortunately while this works as advertised for searches containing latin characters, it doesn’t work for non-latin ones (Greek in particular). I can browse through the smart folder, but none of the files appear in it, if they are in Greek. The same thing works fine for latin characters searches!
Hope that’s an easy fix
@Elan
Thank you for the very fast E-AC3 implementation!
I’m gonna test it right away
PS. Thank you for keeping the forum a friendly place to hang out. Many times the mood/tone in these kinds of forums can be very bad/harsh. That’s not the case with the OSXBMC forum, gladly.
Regards
Martin
@everyone
Could someone give an example of how Smart Folders are nice to have?
And maybe a short guide on how to use them?
Thanks
Martin
edit: how = why
To give a visual representation of the smart folders bug here is a screenshot:
http://img411.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1jf0.png
on the left you see the contents of a smart folder as xbmc sees it and on the right as it really is on a finder window. As you can see all the files with greek characters are not displayed, while the ones with latin characters display with no problems.
@Martin Smart Folder or Saved Searches is a great way to have a list of files that dynamically changes based on certain criteria. E.g. you can have a smart folder that displays last weeks video files that are over 500MB and have a tag (spotlight comment): “action”. If you haven’t take advantage of Spotlight and Smart Folders on Mac OSX you are missing A LOT of this great OS functionality!
@Elan
For some reason, the sound on Blu-ray .m2ts files is now laggy/choppy.
I have 300 Blu-ray and Cars Blu-ray.
I remember playing the Cars .m2ts a month ago and the sound was fine.
Ohh .. nice
A new release to play with .. i’m so excited
i’m downloading now .. after i’m done watching a movie, will test it out
Keep up the good work guys
¡Great release!
Thanks for porting/developing the greatest Media Center.
I only have a request: Is in the way support for Analogic 5.1 Speakers? Mplayer OSX and VLC seems to work nicely with those (though Quicktime doesn’t), so I think the work is already done (and available, as long as these two players are open source). I don’t know deeply the OSXBMC engine, but I think it could take advantage of the OSX Sound Subsystem, that it’s easier and more universal than the Linux Sound Subsytems (Alsa, OSS, ESD, PulseAudio…)
Thanks again for this wonderful Media Center.
Love your product! All that work for total strangers.
Thanks people!!! Love this!
Greetz,
Demesmaeker
Hopefully an avocado pit is left behind as well. I’d hate to have a dog pass something solid that’s the size of a small egg! Though if he’s like my parents’ dogs, everything gets eaten, and if it’s not digestible it just comes back up. Acorns are their recent obsession and about an hour later, their greatest lament.
@sigalakos: Whoops, probably an easy fix.
@Martin: What audio codec, AC3? Please head to the forums, and work on finding out in which version it broke (including verifying that it actually worked)…thanks!!!
@Adam Nelson: Yeah, he leaves the pit behind. What do you think he is, stupid????
Just kidding, he’s eaten plenty of things including an expensive pair of my wife’s shoes. Just not avocado pits.
Great work again Elan! I have participated in a lot of development related groups before (nearly entirely as a beneficiary.) Never, have a seen a developer be so quick to fix problems and keep everyone up to speed. You are the model of open sourcedness! I just tested .ISO support and while I can get video_ts to work just fine .ISO still doesn’t work. :’o(
@maxrogers: Oh my god, it’s a crying smilie. Never have I seen such a thing. I’m kind of tearing up myself just looking at it.
@maxrogers: I just tested an ISO file over a SMB connection and it seemed to work fine. Maybe head to the forums so we can track your issue down?
This is really great work
, thanks for this.
Thanks for this great work - however (could you sense it
) look like this version has introduced major jerkyness/dropped frames on 720p mkvs.
I’ve tested with a known good and frontrow+perian plays it fine. Was working on previous beta..
I’ll start a thread on the forum..
Wonderful. Great to see the progress…
I have frame drops on 720p MKV files too. There’s also a problem with the same files when using up or down key of the Apple Remote. Nothing’s happen, the movie “hang”. And finally since the beta 5, using ASS subtitles make XBMC crash…
@Soner: OK, looks like we have a few regressions
I’ve having a hard time replicating the 720p problems, maybe everyone who is having the problems can head to the forums and we can track it down?
I was not able to verify if DVD over SMB works because I have not been able to add an SMB share as a video source. I have not had any problems like this before this release so I suspect something got broken recently.
@Bark: Very odd, it works for me fine. Make sure you have “Settings -> Network -> SMB Client -> mount SMB shares” DISABLED.
I just deleted my previous library/settings/etc and created a new SMB map. ISO does works just fine! Sorry, for the false alarm Elan! However, it does seem to take a little longer to load them up then before. The way I remember it before it was nearly instant, now it takes about 15 seconds to start playing the ISO… However, that is probably just the video buffering (kinda disconcerting without a buffering visual though.)
Anyways, fabulous work again Elan and others!!!! ;o) <– Happy now!!!
@maxrogers: This could be the new cache settings (which actually work!) Tweak them around and you can probably affect change in your start time.
@Soner: I’m unable to reproduce the SSA subtitles crash either. Please come to the forums and let’s figure out what’s going on.
@sigalakos: Smart folders *should* work with Greek characters next release.
Subtitles embedded in .mkv files seem to be on by default, is there a way to change this so they are off by default?
I get my OWN release. What an honor indeed. Hopefully I’m helping to improve and not bugging you guys all the time.
=)
You’ll be even more honored when we reveal that in the future this application will be called “Jeremy Media Center 7″.
Rooof rooof grrrr woof growl roooooof howl woooof
@Barkley: Bedtime, pup!
@bmfrosty: Of course the other name in the running is “Mr Frosty’s Media Extravaganza”
@jeremymc7: You’re not bugging us at all. Now please go and try out the fixes and see if they work for you.
@astr0b0y: Post on the forums, if there isn’t a global default, it seems like there should be one. Kind of annoys me too.
XBMSP Working, I love you!
Streaming HR content that makes the xbox choke without problems
NEW : Support for Smart Folders. Pretty cool, actually.
So does anybody actually have a description of what this is ? and how to use it or is it just jmarshalls smartplaylist editing stuff in the video library ?
@Jezz_X: This post explains what a smart folder is http://www.iClarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=172. Of course, you’ll need a Mac to follow along.
Hi Elan,
just saw the post…watch out most dogs can get very sick eating avocados…just google it..
thanks for all your nice work btw!
@madmax: Thanks for the heads up, I really appreciate it. I did some research after discovering his affinity for them, and it appears to be a bit of a split consensus. We don’t let him have a lot, and so far he’s had no bad reactions. We figure the Omega-3 will probably do him good.