Release: Plex/Seven 0.7.1 - Onwards and upwards
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it! What’s better than a free-range organic turkey? A new Plex/Seven release!
We really appreciate all the feedback on the first in the Plex/Seven series. We have new features in the works, new ideas, and a great deal of enthusiasm and energy for this new series. So much so, in fact, that we’ve postponed the Plex/Six stable series release briefly to bring new a new installment in the Plex/Seven series. The good news is that hopefully we’ve fixed many of the issues keeping people away from Plex/Seven.
The release can be downloaded via Sparkle, HTTP, or torrent, or built from source.
- NEW: Aperture support. James and I had a bet on who could finish first, I took Lightroom and he took Aperture. I’m sure you can guess who won. Same killer features as iPhoto and iTunes, including automatic reloading of databases, and access across the network.
- NEW: Ryan greatly enhanced the CoreAudio driver, cutting out lots of old crufty code in the process. Not only does this fix the problem with fuzzy audio at low volumes and incorrect playback speed, but it also add some features that audiophiles will appreciate. The legacy XBMC code was performing a bunch of useless format conversions, whereas his new code converts from source format directly to 32 floating point, which is the CoreAudio native format. This means you can now play back 24-bit 96KHz media, at full fidelity. Ryan explains more in his blog post.
- NEW: James enhanced the Programs area of Plex. Workflows can be added to the root-level menu, folders can be added as sources, workflows can be selected by navigating into folders. (Plex quits when starting workflows, releasing control of the Apple remote). Additionally, you can run Applescript scripts from the Scripts menu, or by mapping them directly to keys in the keymap files. This opens up lots of possibilities!
- NEW: The Plex Media Server generates thumbs for artists, per request (picks an album thumb).
- FIX: Lots of people had been asking for volume control via Apple Remote. While there’s nothing we can do about encoded digital audio volume (AC3/DTS) there are plenty of people who listen to music and videos in stereo. Hence, we’ve remapped some of the keys in an attempt to improve matters (and fixed a related bug in the process). The new mapping is as follows: up and down control volume in full-screen. Since the buttons are quite limited on the Apple Remote, we removed FF and REW and replaced them with big skip forward and back when holding left/right keys. This makes some logical sense, as hitting right takes a small skip forward, while *holding* right takes a larger step (and similar with the left button). Try it out, let us know what you think.
- FIX: Really slow stream buffering of some Shoutcast streams.
- FIX: Lots of Plex Media Server bugs fixed, including crash on Apple Lossless files, glitchy sound on start of track, incorrect play speed, crash at end of video podcast, and crash with no iPhoto libraries.
- FIX: We now disable UPnP client by default, because it causes crashes (e.g. when waking from sleep). You can also now go into network settings and disable it.
- FIX: Disable PlexHelper when launching EyeTV client (James).
- FIX: Crash when in TV shows and theme music enabled (James).
- FIX: Playing DRM tracks from Plex library now works (James).
- FIX: Crash when skipping to the next track when playing a DRM music track with an iTunes visualizer enabled.
- FIX: James fixed setting a source to be the default. For example, you can set the iTunes Plex Media Server source to be the default, and you’ll go directly there from the main menu.
- FIX: Volume no longer affects visualizations.
- FIX: A ton of iTunes visualizers fixes, including not showing new track information, crash when scanning for visualizers, support for new Disco iTunes visualizer, and iTunes visualizers not being offset/sized correctly for calibrated screens.
- FIX: Some fixes for keyboard layout switching (thanks to Roman) and updates to KinoPoisk.Ru scraper.
The latest scrapers and some XBMC fixes have also been included.
Here’s Barkley doing his “kangaroo” trick.
38 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Nice that the TV Show crash got fixed, now just fix the system volume thingy and im forever in love with this application.
Plex Media Server/last.fm
The songs I play via Plex Media Server does not show up on my last.fm-profile. Only me, or something I have to wait for?
leet! Seeding! (Wondering if now that there’s an autoupdater you guys might want to have it autoupdate using bittorrent so as to distribute bw usage).
@Alexander Nilsson: I assume you mean having the volume control tied to system volume? We’ve been talking about that, and since QuickTime and VLC and such don’t do it, we’re a bit hesitant. However, if there are a lot of people who really want it, we might make it an option (i.e. use system volume/use plex volume).
@Dex: Hmm, never tried it myself, likely a bug. Please discuss on forums and file a bug if appropriate. Thanks
@grey: Excellent point, but Sparkle doesn’t support downloading via torrent (at least not yet).
Haha!
I just installed Plex a couple of hours ago after having been running v0.5.0.something for a long time. And I had some problems navigating with the Apple remote(menu didn’t work properly for going back or OSD). But just as I was off to bed, it informed me of a new version. And it seemed to fix my going back navigation problem.
Great Work Guys!
The TV-show crash has been driving me nuts since i first downloaded Plex 0.7 a few days ago, and just as i was checking the bug status the new update was released!
Happy Joy
Kudos to a fantastic upgrade! Not only does it fix most every gripe I have with Plex/Seven, but adds my most requested feature too (Aperture support!)
I would also like to see an option to use system volume instead of Plex volume.
Woo! Volume control!
Excellent work… TV Themes working now.. great
Out of interest can we apply themes to movies as well?
Sweet! Will test this baby out after work today! Keep up the good work!
awesome… that’s all.
another handsome picture of barkles!
Cool. Just started Plex and the auto update informed me for the first Time about an new Version. Felt a bit like an historical moment…
Download. Install. Ready.
THAT IS SO COOL!!! Thank you so much, guys!
Does 0.7.1 have PPC support?
Thanks. M.
Haven’t had the time to express my gratitude for all your hard work guys. Plex + Mac mini is definitely the best alternative to the Apple TV. I really appreciate the effort you put in to this app. Keep it up!
@elan
I would be so grateful which way you implement it. I currently run plex from my main iMac to my 40″ 1080p LCD and all my series have variable(?) sound levels, and its not really optimal having to go to the computer and change the volume.
Regarding the VLC/iTunes/QuickTime situation they are all very capable of running “along side” other applications which makes it handy to be able to set the volume individually, however since Plex really isnt made for anything else than “only thing running” tasks I dont see the point of having it change it’s own volume, when all other Media Center applications I know of changes the system volume.
Might just be me wanting this ability and then im afraid I have to go back to Front Row, cause walking up to the computer every 20/40 mins changing the volume is pretty inconvenient.
Wow. This is what I have been waiting for. Thank you! This is what Apple should have done with FrontRow. Pure genius…..
Thank you Ryan! Audiophiles looking forward to bitperfect playback
http://code.google.com/p/cmediadrivers/wiki/Bitperfect
So all XBMC legacy audio issues from the Xbox days should be gone now?
http://xbmc.org/trac/ticket/4731
Wow, so quick. And all my gripes fixed.
Excellent work guys.
Thanks.
great plex now doesn’t crash every other minute
Keep up the great work guys, the only thing that i can think of, that is missing would be a internet video tab with hulu, youtube,… accessible from the main screen. Other than that great work look forward to what’s next.
Awesome! And hugs to Barkley
Thanks for this!
Is there a reason that on the Plex/Seven series on TV shows there is an “* ALL SEASONS” selection at the top of every show selection? I absolutely love Plex but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to turn this off. Thanks for the help and keep up the excellent work!
Wow now that I’ve actually had a chance to use this at home… let’s just say:
1. It was really exciting to get update notification and update within Plex! [I'm sure in a month I'll forget this was even a new feature, but for now, awesome!]
2. The apple remote mappings are great! I love having volume at my fingertips and the ffwd/skip seems to work well too. At first I was kinda bummed about missing the 2x-32x speeds, but then I realized it’s very easy to just hit menu and select those with the onscreen buttons [whereas volume adjustment was pretty cumbersome onscreen before], and seeing how it’s a rarer thing that I want to skim through things at high speeds [e.g. just pr0n basically] I think this is a nice default button arrangement. Of course, in the future being able to let users device remote mappings would probably be swell [as someone else commented maybe they want to tie it to system volume]. One quip as a DJ - it is a bit weird to have 0.0dB be the max, normally you’d want to eq things at a ‘good’ level to be 0dB and then you can go negative or positive for there if you want it quieter or want to add gain. *shrug* Still, super stoked!
3. I haven’t even had a chance to look at all the other goodies with itunes, aperature, iphoto integration yet. Hell I only recently figured out how to get mediastream to do content lookups of my ‘library’ [which is pretty awesome].
Anyway, kudos to you - I am totally in love with plex vs other xbmc ports right now. Keep up the fantastic work!
(side note: I suspect there’s still a weird mediastream bug that I am triggering on some directories I presume when it’s scanning content to generate thumbnails or something, I’ve got maybe 3-4 directories with content that is crashing things but I’ve been too lazy to go about and do isolation… I’ll spend some time and get back to you on that. It seems like some rar/zip support works a bit differently from a stock xbmc as well, but other times is fine, I can’t quite pinpoint the deal with that either but will try to provide some examples in bug reports in the near future).
But again, awesome! You really are doing great work, and I love that unlike boxee I don’t need to have enter in some account info before I can even start the damn thing [though I guess they're grabbing online content which is neat?].
PLEASE, add support to the 5.1 Sound Blaster 24-bit External card.
VLC plays 5.1 audio in movies just flawlessly, but some 1080p movies do not play that good in VLC.
VLC uses what’s in the AUDIO MIDI SETUP in Mac OS X.
Plex only plays 2.0 audio even if the movie has 5.1 audio
I can’t see the popcorn feature you mention in the forums; I was really looking forward to that.
I guess I’m going to have to put up with all the other great features the seem to come out too fast for such a small dev team!
Man. I didn’t know about this BETA Release !? I will download it right now !
Any news about that DTS problems in some Movies or music files (.DTS) playing just noise ?
Any horizon to have a way to launch Emulators from plex ? this is the last thing that bonds me to my old Xbox.
I want to Sell it asap to buy a mini exclusively for plex. 
@Zach Sounds like you upgraded to .7 with out throwing away the old plex preferences? Toss out ~/Application Support/Plex/guisettings.xml and let me know if that resets it properly. If it doesn’t please bring this to our forums and we’ll be happy to help you out.
When will we see plex 6? I’m adventurous but my fiancée prefers her fix of J-doramas to be more of a stable experience
How about adding support for showing the iTunes album art when browsing one’s music?
Also, some of my albums are double albums (listed as 1/2 and 2/2 with the same album title). In iTunes the tracks end up in the right order, but in Plex, they get mixed up (probably because theres actually two tracknumber 1,2,3 and so forth). Could there be a feature added where one can choose to let Plex look at the ID3-tag and determine the sorting based on that instead of filename?
Thanks for an awesome program that just keeps getting better and better!
Great Job, I am LOVING the visualizer setup.
I guess ill have to check the bugs but whenever I select a visualizer that has “(iTunes)” on it and I press tab to enter the visualizer the big menu on the left just refuses to show up. It has the artwork, album, and song info on the bottom left hand corner but I can figure out how to make the large menu on the left pop up.
@Eddie G: I would say shortly after the Thanksgiving holidays
@Drama: As long as you’re using the Plex Media Server, all your art should show up perfectly (from iTunes, ID3 tags, and cover art files). If you’re having problems, please post more details to the forums and we’ll look into them. I see 100% album art even over the network with my set up.
@Jakob Metzger: It’s a known issue and has to do with the architecture of the iTunes plugins. They really want their own window to render to, and don’t play well with the layering of the OSD.
ok, yea.
I kinda figured that out. I noticed that it is exactly the same OSD as the regular iTunes windows. If iTunes ever stops being gay, the layover on itunes visualizer would be sick!
Are there any other visualizations that we could use?
Hi,
Thanks for the app. I’ve switched from Sapphire, some things I love some thing I hate. Overall great tool. One thing that won my heart is DTS! More and more movies I download have DTS audio, it it drove me nuts when all I had was just stereo playing through my receiver with 5 speakers.
One thing though, it seems that playing some VIDEO TS folders, DVD folders, crashing Plex. And after it crashes, none other videos are playing, even AVIs and MKVs that played before until I reboot the system. I’ve tested couple of my TS folders, there was one that played, at least two others did not. I’ve tired of rebooting the system.
Any information would be appreciated!
Thanks guys, and keep up the good work!
Bug: When entering a remote itunes library IP the on-screen keyboard is stuck on “5″ and you cant save the changes.
Hi
Excellent, simply the best, no doubt.
Many questions, but only one here:
Is it possible to have as source the Optical Drive, no regard what the disc could be inside. Now if you want to enter in a CD you must add it as source, and then, when you eject it, you must delete that source.
(Another, ……
Why Plex ignores the non-write permission bit in the files when you ask for deleting a file?
Could it the right-button pop-up functions menu be customized? I’ll be enchanted if I could made it easier to delete those already seen films, etc…
Thanks!!!
H264 Speed boost setting changes back to “Disabled” when I leave the menu & come back. The actual value in guisettings.xml works as it should I guess skiploopfilter gets values 0, 1 or 2 (disabled, medium, high).
Just cosmetic issue I guess? Latest OSX, running plex on secondary screen (1920×1080 projector).
Is it true that you can’t run this APP in tiger ?
Tx elan for been there.
Coming from an old xbox (xbmc), the very possibility of having it in the mac was awesome. One day it was able to play fullhd mkvs in the mini awaking my enthusiasm for this piece of art that is the mini and this was the best day in my lately mac live. How in the hell!
The bell and whistles you are adding to Plex make it a serious commercial application.
But, appart from some small problems I found very strange the behaviour it has with files. I use a lot the pull down menu “Delete file” (a bit uncomfortable to use with AppleRemote), but it is driving me crazy. I don’t know how to protect some files from deletion. Plex ignores the UNIX non-writable bit “-r–r–r–” (444) and delete the file without any respect. !!!
With xbmc I used to simply leave the owner of the file different from the user (xbox) that logged in my mac; simply that made the magic.
How could I protect files from been erasable from Plex?
Tx elan