+ Top FAQs with Plex - for more help please check the WIKI.
- How do I add internet video such as TED, YouTube, CNET etc?
- Internet sources are added using the App Store found in the Applications menu. See the following screencast for more info. vimeo.com/3315184
- One of the plug-ins has stopped working.
- If a plug-in stops working, it’s likely that the structure of the site changed. This doesn’t happen very frequently with most sites, but it’s a definite possibility. When this occurs, an entity we call the “Campfire Robot” springs into action automatically and tracks us down to let us know, and shortly thereafter we can push an update. As such, if a site stops working, the best thing to do is to check the App Store for updates. If you have automatic updates turned on, check your install history to see if an update got installed while you were getting coffee.
- I don’t see the Applications Menu Item.
- If you previously used v5 of Plex we suggest deleting the folder called Plex found in ~/Library/Application Support/. Many things have changed and a fresh install will ensure the best performance with Plex.
- How do I make Movies and TV Shows show up in their respective areas with poster art, plot info, etc?
- View this screencast for more info vimeo.com/2758185
Release 0.7.15: Improved Music Experience
We’re coming to the end of the Plex/Seven series, so we’re primarily focused on bug-fixes, but we did find the time to add a few new things for your enjoyment. Many, many thanks to all the people who helped out with this release. In the next few days, we’re going to release a few new plug-ins (and updates to existing ones) that make use of new features/bugfixes in this release, so be sure to update as soon as you can! The release can be downloaded here.
- NEW: One of the complaints we’ve heard is that the visualizers available with Plex, while cool, sometimes cause seizures in kids and household pets. Others say that it leads them to look forward to 4:20 PM. In any case, James and Mike B (of MediaStream fame) teamed up to bring you a sexy new option: The Now Playing visualizer. Select it just as you would any other visualizer, and take it for a spin.
- NEW: We’ve added support for ratings in Plex Media Server content. So in the next revision of the Netflix plug-in, for example, you’ll now see star ratings, as you will in another new plug-in that will be released shortly.
- NEW: Do you ever find yourself struggling to shuffle a playlist, or play an album straight through, by displaying the playlist, toggling settings, and then switching back, having forgotten what you were doing in the first place? James added a convenient Shuffle item on the context menu to make that struggle a thing of the past. Together with the new Now Playing visualizer, we’re hoping you find music playing just a little bit easier this release.
- NEW: New iLife art (thanks to the talented tassitassi). You see some of it peeking out from the screenshot above. (Note: you’ll have to whack your existing cached art at ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/Thumbnails/Programs/Fanart/)
- NEW: Our friend Kent has been hard at work on analyzing our user data. Among other things, he’s discovered that our Swedish users rock! There are more Plex users per capita in Sweden than any other country. He compiled this data by looking at the Sparkle update requests. To make his job a bit easier, we’ve added a token to each update request that’s unique for each computer. We’re sending a one-way hash of the computer’s MAC address, which when broken down into plain English means that (a) we’ll be able to figure how many total computers are running Plex and (b) we can’t use the data to obtain any information about your computer.
We’ve also fixed a number of bugs in this release:
- FIX: The context menu was broken for the Favorites section.
- FIX: We weren’t saving the ’show extensions’ setting correctly in advanced settings.
- FIX: James fixed a long-standing (since Plex/Five) scraper hang with tvshow.nfo.
- FIX: We got a patch from rgrove (thanks!) that ensures that LAN cache settings are used for SMB shares.
- FIX: Caching was disabled, which caused no end of trouble playing back Internet content.
- FIX: We added Lanczos back to the OSD upscaling menu.
- FIX: We increased the size of the default fonts. I have to personally apologize for that, apparently I ate too many carrots as a baby.
- FIX: Crash/hang when exiting after playing a video.
- FIX: Also a longstanding bug, the occasional lack of GUI sounds after playing videos (thanks to Kent for helping me track this down).
- FIX: The Plex Media Server is a Universal Binary again.
- FIX: Ryan helped me fix a DTS->AC3 transcoding channel mapping bug.
- FIX: A Plex Media Server crash (when stopping a WebKit video shortly after starting) was fixed.
- FIX: We’ve made the list view give more room to text. After all, scrolling text is hard to read.
- FIX: Stopping a video with 5.1 audio could be a bit slow.
- FIX: The clock could display letters (e.g. “kk:49″). Thanks to Daniel for helping me track this one down.
- FIX: James made the thumbnail searching code respect the dvdthumbs advanced setting (so you can add support for Front Row style preview.jpg files).
- FIX: Double speed playback of 22KHz audio in videos (e.g. some FLV video).
- FIX: Enhanced the caching of directories to work well with the Plex Media Server (much quicker backing up to parent directories).
- FIX: Isaac fixed a few confusing strings.
- FIX: Improved Russian strings (thanks to friendly).
- FIX: Blurry fanart. Thanks to tassitassi for bringing it to my attention and to jmarshall for the fix).
We also added a few new Media Server plug-in features and fixed some bugs:
- NEW: Support for typing a string in the site config (requested by Rick, useful for authenticating into Flash sites).
- NEW: We allow specifying a dead zone in the seek bar site config, which can help make a tooltip disappear after a seek.
- FIX: Preferences weren’t being correctly escaped, which could lead to problems logging into Netflix, for example.
Here’s Barkley on Makena beach, gutting a beached whale.
36 Comments so far
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Thanks for the new release and all the hard work you guys put into it. Feels good to live in the land with most Plex users per capita!
Thanks again for this realease!
Keep up the good work, Barkley rocksssss!
<3 dogs
Unfortunately this version is virtually unusable on my system. All the text content is rendered outside my viewport (to the left of it actually). :-0
Any ideas what’s going wrong here and how I can fix that myself?
Very nice new now playing option!
And finally no more extensions shown
I’ll be testing and using this soon again since I’m in the middle of moving!
Another great update! Thanks for all your hard work!
Must say that you guys are doing an awesome job! Can´t believe how far a head of other media players/extenders you are. My Tvix using friends are quite jealous
The only thing that I´m missing now is the ability to shut down Plex and at the same time shut down the OS. I know there are ways to get it done, but if it would be possible to add that feature as an option when you exit Plex I would be very grateful.
Just wanted to say “thanks” to all you guys working on plex, really an amazing version. Finally a visualizer how it should be, I never liked that other stuff
Just downloaded, can’t get to the app store. It takes me to my Applications instead of the App Store. (?)
Wow, as usual, great release. Thanks to the Plex Team and all the others who chipped in. Looking forward to future improvements/features.
Thank you so much Elan, James and Mike B! Finally Plex has exceeded Front Row in the music department. Now Plex is a proper alternative to Apple’s own software and arguably a better one.
Some beer coming your way soonish.
Yay! The now playing screen is awesome and should be set by default. Although I would prefer the background darker so it would fit better with the Mediastream theme. Fast forward when holding right/left would be nice too!
Anyways, great update! Sweden rocks! =)
Thank you so much! Plex is by far the best media center software, and it’s free!! You deserve the Nobel Peace Prize
Keep up the good work!
Joachim
Thanks for the great effort, yet again.
Awesome.
Worth it for the Music improvements alone!
Looking forward to the new/upgraded plugins.
The new release is awesome! This program just keeps getting better and better. My home theater setup has never looked so good! Thanks for all the hard work.
@Rez: Whoops! Unselect “Hide Thumbs in List View” in the skin options.
text content is way to the left side even with “Hide thumbs in List View” deselected
Just to let anybody to know that new “now playing” isnt using standard “visualisation” keymaps. So if you have ( like me ) apple scripts assigned to VolumeUp and/or VolumeDown you need to change “now playing” section on the bottom of the Apple remote.xml file.
Thanks for the update!
I was wondering when we might see a fix for video playback for stuttering / shuttering – or is that entirely up to ffmpeg?
All my video_ts folders playback horribly in Plex but without an issue in FrontRow.
Sorry for the downer comment, just seems like a big issue.
Thanks again guys for this new release. I had always thought about this, but thought it would show up eventually, but now that the 7 series are about to end I thought I should say it … But using the remote control to type on the onscreen keyboard is really laborious. It would be helpful if the onscreen keyboard remembered past inputs and did word complete as you typed on it… I’ve added this to the feature request forum as well…
“We increased the size of the default fonts.” THIS! Everything else looks awesome, but lordy, I’m blind as a bat and about went mad trying to read things, so thanks so so so much!
Is there a way to add the 0.7.14 font defaults back as an option? I have no problem with larger fonts, but the new default fonts appear wider and I’m not a fan.
Thanks for all your hard work, what a great app!
Thank you! This is not just regluar thank you!
You cannot imagine joy you give to all of us, when we lay back browse movies (hell i spend more time browsing great looking library than watching the movies 
listen to music etc. It is realy 21st experience .. so thank you, i am thankful every time i grab remote in hands!
“Crash/hang when exiting after playing a video.”
“Also a longstanding bug, the occasional lack of GUI sounds after playing videos”
I started using Plex last week, and these were my two main issues. Glad to see them fixed so quickly.
And thanks to Plex, my Mac mini is now unleashing what I can only describe as “kickass media superpowers”. I even started ripping all my DVDs (300+) to use it as much as possible. Thanks again for this great app!
AWesome! Thanks!
Wonderful work! Hope it can support BD-Ray disk files fully in the future.
Sweden, somehow that is not a surprise at all. You guys have a kick ass country. Well, I’m reporting from the third world (Costa Rica), cause I had to. I mean, this software its a) free b) amazing and c) changed our life. It’s a moral duty to show my appreciation over here. So, there, you guys are m.f. geniuses, and both my wife and myself enjoy your software every single day.
Let me put it this way. Our iMac screen died (a known bug in its generation) and we were desperate with a half screen on black out of warranty piece of nothing. Well, MINIDVI to VGA connection to our Sony HD TV and voilá. Thanks to Plex we have now a kick ass media center out of a ready to be trashed computer.
Keep it up, thanks again.
I agree with Nathan, I LOVED the tight spacing of fonts in 0.7.14, but the fonts in this release look too big and a bit clunky to me. Any way to restore the fonts from the previous release?
It would be good to have options for the new Now Playing visualization to move around or flip (like FrontRow) for all of us Plasma users…
Hello,
there ist a problem in the menu, the menu ist in english and there is no possibility to change the language anymore.
Greetings from Germany
@Arthur: If you really want Plex to be running with different language/units than OS X, you can specify this in advanced settings XML ( tag, e.g. “en” or “it”, and tag, e.g. “metric”). See http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Advanced_Settings for more details.
@elan, hi thanks a lot, this works fine, but ist is a little bit complicate. I think this option is nice to be in the Preferences Menu in skin settings.
Greetings from Germany Arthur
arthur: at least in the advanced settings.
Hi. I’ve downloaded plex at the suggestion of a tech-minded employee of the Apple Store. When I run the application, it disables my mouse and cursor and I’m unable to navigate through the application. The only thing I’m able to do with the program is Force-Quit it and do something else. I would say that a mouse/cursor freeze and an application seizing on startup is a pretty big bug. Any thoughts? Do you have a more stable version than 7.15 anywhere available to try. Sounds like a cool idea…
@David: Sorry about that bad first experience, use the cursor keys, enter, and escape (or the Apple Remote). Cmd-Q does quit it as well.
Great program, thanks for all of the hard work. I have two questions: is there still a bug to be fixed as far as mp4 audio sync issues? I have a bunch of ripped files that work fine in Quicktime, Front Row and VLC, but are completely out of sync in Plex.
Also, any chance of using VIDEO_TS folders for TV shows, instead of having to rip them all? I have a LOT of TV shows on DVD and I’d love to not spend the next couple of months ripping them, if there’s going to be a new VIDEO_TS feature implemented.
Thanks again. keep it up!