State of the Release
Just over 24 hours since the release, and this has been an extremely exciting time for all of us. We simply can’t tell you how much we appreciate the outpouring of positive feedback on the release. Over Twitter, Facebook, email, and in the forums, the number of positive comments were astounding to us, and definitely made all the hard work worthwhile. We all want to say, collectively: Thank You.
A few salient things about the release:
- The demand on our server was completely unprecedented. The OS load went over 30 for long periods of time, and there were HTTP and database issues. Isaac jumped in and quickly and skillfully spread our services out over a few spare slices and was able to return things to normal. Isaac, you rock.
- Our mirrors (a big thanks to them!) were hammered badly as tens of thousands of downloaders tried to get the latest release, so in the morning we moved the main download site to S3 to ease of the pressure on the mirrors and get the app into people’s hands faster.
- At this point, all services should be performing well, and we’re continuing to monitor and make adjustments as needed.
We are also tracking at this point a number of issues with the release (nobody’s perfect, right?), and we wanted to give you a quick summary of the more common issues, along with workarounds or resolutions whenever possible. Note that these are not the only issues, just the ones at the top of the list at the moment:
- CRASHES ON STARTUP: We’re tracking these here. The most common reason (fixed in the next release), is if your computer doesn’t have a name. You can easily workaround this by going to System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name and put in a clever, well thought out name like “Macadamia”. There’s also a crash we’re seeing on Leopard, which will also be fixed in the next release. Please post your crash reports in that thread.
- SCANNERS: First and foremost, we’d like to help you get all your media into the library. There were issues with M4V files stopping a scan, an issue parsing date-base episodes, and an issue with .AppleDouble folder which we weren’t ignoring. We’ve pushed bug-fixes for these issues, and your Plex Media Server should update automatically the scanners within the hour. The good news is that you simply have to do another scan (assuming you don’t already have it set to automatically scan). You might be asleep at this point, and you might wake up with a bunch of missing episodes tucked comfortable into your library, and that, my friends, is magic. MAGIC! (If you’d like to track the progress on the scanners, you can follow our Github repository here.)
- TV SHOW METADATA: Slightly less about magic, and more about laws of large numbers, I’m sorry to report that we, um, melted down TheTVDB today. My sincere apologies to them, and my apologies to you all, as we’ll be without metadata from them until we figure out how to reduce the load. We are working with them as we speak, and hopefully will be able to bring that back online shortly. The good news is that the Alexandria library system has been architected for this exact scenario, and you’ll still be able to scan your episodes into the library, and play them, there just won’t be show and season posters or summary data (until the next time you’re sleeping, when we’ll silently push another update and you’ll wake up with lots of posters). We really like magic, have I mentioned that?
- LOCAL MEDIA AGENT: This is the one that picks up existing thumbs and fanart and such. There were a few bugs in it, and we think we’ve fixed them, but we need to test more. If you’d like to take the new agent for a spin and know what you’re doing, feel free to check it out here. (Note that you’ll need to remove and add the section to get the new art to “stick”, expect improvements here.)
- AFP SHARE ISSUE: There seems to be an issue adding folders which live on a remote NAS. A bit baffling, but we’re looking into it.
There are of course other issues, but these are the ones we’d like to get resolved as soon as possible. So, how can you help? Why, I’m glad you asked. If you’re having trouble getting your media into the library, please post in the forum with your exact directory and file layout (screenshot or ls -lR from the terminal).
A few other tips:
- If you’re seeing pausing when playing video in the iOS app, there are a few simple things you can do. Don’t select “auto” quality setting, and make sure you select a quality that’s appropriate to your network speed. Also, make sure you’re not trying to play 720p content (highest quality) to an iPad/iPhone4 if you have a slow server (less than 2.2GHz). Use this as an excuse to upgrade (“Honey, but don’t you want to watch So You Think You Can Dance without a pause ever time she does a pirouette?”). And finally, if you take the wireless router and tape it to your chest while using the iOS app, this improves reception.
- If you have a huge library, you might want to let the Media Server take a bit of “alone time” while scanning for the first time. I mean, come on, it’s walking through all your files, computing hashes, extracting thumbnails, generating automatic fanart, analyzing the media, getting it all into the database, talking to the Internet for metadata, downloading that metadata and getting it associated with your media. Multiple agents are working together to contribute data. There are hamsters running around everywhere. So just sit back, work on your golf swing or water the garden or something. Lotus position and staring at the Plex Media Manager works well.
- A positive review on the App Store directly contributes to Barkley’s diet. Like every time we get a five star review, I walk into the kitchen, get him a delicious venison jerky treat and feed it to him. Literally. Just remember, only YOU can make Barkley gain 10 pounds.
And now, I really need some sleep.
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Thanks for the update elan. I’m enjoying all the work!
This release sucks – you removed rar archive playback support. This makes plex totally inusable.
Great release, guys!
My only question: I’m not very network savvy, so Air Video offers the option to automatically configure port forwarding for viewing over 3G. Is this a possible option for you guys in a future release?
I think I love you.
Now I have to get an iPad, so I can fatten up Barkley. There must be a cheaper way…
Any plans for an Android app?
(Can I get any more cheeky at this point? You must still be sleeping!)
I used duck-tape to tape the router to my chest, you’re right, works muchhhhh better!!!
Thanks guys for all the great work,you’re the best!
@Martin: I was just heading to bed when I saw your comment. One thing I will say: Hyperbole is not helping your case. “Totally unusable”? I guess by that metric, one terminal command later, and Plex would be “Totally Usable” and presumably off solving world hunger, the deficit, and global warming.
Poor Barkley! In a week or so he won’t be able to move!
Love the new release, really looking forward to see what you guys can build from this base, lots of great possibilities.
Martin: “This release sucks – you removed rar archive playback support. This makes plex totally inusable.”
You sir, are an ass.
Instead of duct-taping the router to your chest – turn off Bluetooth in iOS – with bluetooth active, the app crashes and hops off wifi, the remote sends signals to plex every five seconds and thumbs pop up after several minutes. With bluetooth off – everything “just works”. Impressive, that apple even in their fourth generation iPhone still can’t have wifi and bluetooth active simultaneously! No bluetooth stereo headsets and wifi streaming for you!
But as for plex – AMAZING release! Loving it! (even though fan-art doesn’t quite pop up for every movie, and when customizing in the media library, the poster flips around with a gray plex-arrow – but hey, it’ll get fixed eventually!
)
Oh – and 720p streaming works flawlessly from my 2.0 ghz mini, even with eyetv running in front…
@Martin – is there a polite way to say “Go F*** yourself?”
Its free. It should cost minimum $100. Minimum. You don’t have to use it. Say “thank you” and move on. As Ed says, you’re an ass.
Fantastic!! Thanks for the big push this week. We’ll all work through the issues with you guys to make something you can all be really proud of.
Get some rest!
I’m disgusted by some of the comments people are making on the blog and forums.
It shows that a lot of time and hard work has gone into making Plex 9. It’s clear over time the rough edge will be smoothed out as the project progresses. I can only imagine some of the things that will now be achievable with plug-ins and the ios apps.
I’d like to congratulate the entire dev team on a job well done.
To all the naysayers. I’d like you to think long and hard about how you’d feel if you had spent 6+ months of your free time working on a project for others, to then receive lowlife comments like “This release sucks”.
Elan,the torrent is not working.If you could repair it, i’m quite sure all the people here with dedi servers and seedboxes would be happy to help ya. In fact,me and my friend are ready to seed it on 100mbs/s boxes
It will be cool if you keep ONLY torrent download by default and hide http download somewhere, just to not load the server too much.
And btw, i would like to translate plex into some languages, can you link me to the appropriate forum thread ?
“Honey, but don’t you want to watch So You Think You Can Dance without a pause ever time she does a pirouette?”
I’m gonna use that, perfect excuse
Just to say I think v9 is excellent!… learning to use it now. many many thanks
hi there…
yeah.. just a GREAT release!
Plex8 was the Reason that i switched from Windows to Mac and bought me MacMini as Media Center.. weeks later i bought me another MacMini for my bedroom and an imac for work..
but im still using and loving my android nexus one and i dont want to switch to the iphone.. mabye u’r planning a Android Version? Maybe if enough Android-Guys donate some money, we can create a Plex Android App
and another great thing would be a “server app” for windows.. so i can install the plex server on my little xp server with tons of movies on.. the server is running 24×7 and updating directory’s and library.. and this server will stream the movies to all my 4 Plex Clients at home.. cause now every client connect via SMB to the WindowsBox and update every Library for its own..
cheers
dr limbo
i’ve been using the release for a day now and i’m it! i just miss rar support so that I can play downloaded media without moving/uncompressing/adding extra scripts.
Is there a list of compatible files? I seem to be having problems adding one series to the media manager (everything else works like a charm!)
it was supposed to say: I’m loving it!
Even if I wasn’t a Plex geek, I’d still follow this blog for the writing alone.
You guys are amazing. Love plex 9 so far and the iOS version is incredible.
Hopeful that the TVDB issues will be resolved shortly.
@Kim did you try to stream a 1080p file encoded to 720p on the iPad?
Doesn’t work from a 2GHz Mini.
@Kim WTF you’re right, iOS app works flawlessly with bluetooth switched off, it wasn’t even finding the media servers locally 9 times out of 10 with it switched on
Also, great job elan and the entire team. After trying out on my MBP I’ve decided to work around the RAR issues to use Plex/9 even if that means doubling up on data for a week or so
I love this app! Thanks for your hard work guys!
Any word or workaround for us folks who have been banned by IMDB? I’ve written them a nice email, but methinks that isnt going to do anything…
I also really miss rar support. For me, it was the most important feature distinguishing Plex over other Mac media players
Here, .srt subtitles aren’t working but I’ve seens reports that it should:
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?/topic/15755-plex-9-subtitles/
Not sure why they don’t work on my Mac…
Ed: an ass? Just because I have different opinion than you? Perhaps North Korea is the country for you.
It’s just not nice to your users to remove an important feature without telling in advance.
The release looks great, thanks for all the hard work.
Men, Plexapp.com got slower!
I guess it is the price of becoming popular
I’ve got 2 questions for you:
-How can we use the nice new skin shown on your post (August 27th) ?
-Can we use the Local Media assets for TV Shows ? Or is it only for Movies ?
Thank you guys, and 5 stars to the iPhone app
@Elan – if it helps I couldn’t add my AFP MyBook which is shared through my airport extreme on Leopard. The share just didn’t appear anywhere in the side menu or the navigation window when I tried to add it. Dragging it into the directory list didn’t work either, it just wouldn’t stick. But I was finally able to add it by going into Finder preferences, Sidebar tab and selecting “Computer” under DEVICES. It happy appears under the name of my computer and I was able to navigate to it and its directories and add them.
Men, Plexapp.com got slower!
I guess it is the price to pay
I’ve got 2 questions for you:
-How can we use the nice new skin shown on your post (August 27th) ?
-Can we use the Local Media assets for TV Shows ? Or is it only for Movies ?
Thank you guys, and 5 stars to the iPhone app
@martin:
‘totally unusable’? Are you nuts?
Just because of some arcane RAR feature that nobody except you seem to actually use?
The app is top notch! And the few quirks will be ironed out too soon, I’m sure.
This release has actually worked really good for me. In my opinion rar’s are old school and just messing things up. Elan + Team, you guys rock!
Hi,
App Store in Plex won’t show under Application. How do I fix this?
I heard from others that had the problem.
Don’t worry about the whiners, just get some sleep so you can work on an Apple TV-optimized version. Maybe holding off on that Mac Mini wasn’t such a bad idea after all… guess we’ll see in a few hours.
Thanks for the great release. I can’t wait to see how everything evolves as Plex moves forward.
Great Job!
Well, 24 hours later and my media server is still scanning, but so far what it has pulled in, I like. Just can’t wait for the TV show info to get pulled in.
Thanks for releasing such amazing software. I’ve tried Boxee, XBMC, and neither comes even -close- to Plex. Adding information tags really sealed the deal for me as well.
Just wanted to warn you against haphazardly using the word “magic”… just ran across this article and dont want the same to happen to you
http://scoopertino.com/say-the-magic-word-apple-sues-david-copperfield/
“The demand on our server was completely unprecedented”
“we moved the main download site to S3 to ease of the pressure on the mirrors”
Heh, I think I called that.
Good job on fast reactions (I recall seeing the forums and site become responsive like Magic(tm) yesterday). Using S3 for your bulk downloading is one of those Good Things. Hardening your front few pages that downloaders will see (making them low bandwidth, static, or both) is also a Good Thing for when the ravening hordes descend. Imagine what would have happened if Slashdot, Digg, et al had descended at the same time.
Congratulations on having weathered the storm, and I’ll go get Barkley some treats.
YEAH, let’s fatten up that sweet dog!!!
thanks for this great release. a few bugs here and there, so what… You solved that in earlier releases and you will do so with this one… in time.
THANKS for all the work and effort. Already donated and ask all members to donate a bit to elan for his great work. a few bucks for a beer or two should be no probs
Install yesterday went flawless. My library was updated quickly even with the traffic.
Not sure how to totally remove media info or edit it with my own info. E.g. I have the short documentary from the Coheed and Cambria Year of the Black Rainbow album. It detects it as some movie called Black Rainbow, but I didn’t see a way to clear the artwork, have it scan a thumbnail, or edit the title. Didn’t get much of a chance to play with it, so I’ll dig further later.
Very excited to use the iOS app on my iPad for viewing and iPhone for remote. Thanks for the bluetooth tip @kim.
Thoroughly impressed with the release, especially the media server. Having some problems with the “watched” flag constantly resetting on all of my TV shows, though. Is this a known issue?
Guys, I know that you hear a lot from users when things don’t work, but you rarely hear from the users who are satisfied. So I just wanted to say that I am extremely satisfied with Plex 9!
Hi Guys splendid work as ever
the iOS app is an amazing bonus and if the iOS powered apple TV is true then you will have a very popular app.
One fault I have found my server running the media server no longer goes to sleep any ideas on this? (MacPro 2.66 Quad) my electric bill might suffer a bit of a hit here!
Also I haven’t seen on here currently the IMDBTV is missing(and any others). In the UK this has always worked better than TVDB.com is there a way we can add this or is this something you guys are already on the case. (would also help in the short term with the smoking TVDB.com servers well done on that btw)
But for the most part an amazing rewrite and a very sound system.
One thing I was hoping for was multiple iPhoto album support. Even my iPhotoFS setup won’t work since there’s no file browser and no way to add photo sources. For now I’ll have to switch to Boxee for those.
Of course, you’ve spent all your time working on the foundation, which looks awesome, so I’ll just cross my fingers that the good juices keep flowing …
Hands down THE best app I have ever seen!!
Kudos to the whole Plex team.
The worse part is not having been part of the magic that went into this awsome app, it kind of gives a feeling of greed beeing “just” a user and not a developer
Plex 9 looks slick, but has been a relative disaster for me.
I have my tv shows organised in smart folders and none of them show up. The few that are organised in regular folders do show up, though.
The new scraper seems to ignore the folder name when scanning for titles. At least a couple of tv recordings that Plex .8 picked up fine no longer show up. Same goes for some movies that have a file name that’s not the exact movie name (but where the folder is named after “movie name [year]“).
Cutting .rar support is something that I just can’t understand. It was one of the things that made XBMC amazing, and now it’s just gone without warning. Sure, you CAN work around it, but there are so many cases where it’s convenient (NAS-servers, drives in FAT32 format, usenet downloads) that it makes more sense to leave it in than to take it out. It would be so depressing to have to resort to less Mac-like solutions because of the removal of such a small thing with such a massive impact.
Oh, I’m also puzzled that my Mac Mini (1.66 GHz Core Duo) seems unable to stream to my iPhone without lots of pauses in the playback. The same machine has been able to stream using AirVideoServer, PS3 Media Server etc. using much higher quality with no problems. I see that ffmpeg is using some 170% cpu while transcoding, so it ought to work, I think. I tried the different quality settings but all of them ended up stuttering.
Considering that this was what I was mainly upgrading to Plex .9 for, I’m not too happy at the moment. But I guess there are rough edges to any major new release and some things will improve in time (Plex .8 was awesome).
@Elan: de minimis non curat praetor
Hi!
I want to thank you guys. You’ve done a great job. Just one question. I would aprecciate if you can tell me how to assign manually a poster to a movie that IMDB can’t find. I’m not able to do it in the way I used to in previous version.
Thanks again.
Kim,
Thank you thank you for this bluetooth tip!!! I was going crazy not understanding why everyone else thought it worked so well and it worked like crap for me. With bluetooth turned on my iphone4 the app is totally unusable. The remote has like a 5 second lag, and streaming movies only goes for about 20 seconds and then pauses. BUt once I turned bluetooth off everything is perfect. Plex needs to make sure they either fix this or at least let people know this is the fix.
All the work is very much appreciated!
Martin – ever hear of rar expander? kind of removes the “in” from your “totally inusable” comments about Plex 9. But maybe the fact that rar expander doesn’t natively play video makes it totally unusable for you anyway.
Elan – Awesome release and worth the wait! It’s great to see the set-up wizards in Plex Media Manager pro-actively asking me questions to help set up my media libraries. This is head and shoulders above the old way of adding sources manually within the Plex player. Much appreciated! Of course the iOS app is just icing on the cake.
I just submitted my 5* rating, Barkley can thank me later!
Great update, love it! .. I was just wondering, is it possible to get the “albums” option in the iTunes plug-in? Now it skips from “Artist” to “playlist”
Wow the automatic update of the scanner is cool (but also bit scary, I like to be in control
)
I really really really really like plex nine !! Good job! tnx for all the efford.
Looks great, well done! Will delete be reenabled soon? I used it all the time in 8.
So much for the dream of one main Plex server and a bunch of apple TVs running iOS with a Plex app. Was a pipe dream, but would’ve been sweet. Anyhow, amazing job. Also, @Kim, great catch on the bluetooth getting in the way, thank you.
Just want to say how much I appreciate the hard work put in by all the developers on this release. I cannot believe an application of this quality and importance could be free. Kudos.
Well, the AppleTV is just a smaller little box…a shadow of what Plex is currently.
Sad it doesnt seem to be an iOS device at all. Otherwise Plex + AppleTV = bliss.
For now, Plex itself is all I want and it delivers.
@elan: thank you again, I’m loving Plex. Once theTVDB is back, I will be the happiest guy
@KIm: I think you just saved my life, seriously! Who would think bluetooth would be the culprit? App works perfectly now! And yes, 720P works flawlessly on my 2.0 Ghz (so far).
To the people with .rar complaints:
I don’t get it.
You mentions Usenet, well just use SABnzbd+, it takes care of all that for you, without worrying about .rar archives ever again (and it’s all automatic).
The same goes for torrent downloads, which can be automatically extracted too.
Why have movies lying around in small .rar files, it’s just a very weird complaint – welcome to the 2000′s (mentioning FAT32, hmmm).
Search and read a little, you can leave .rar’s for good in no time
@PoopDawg
The new AppleTV actually uses an Apple A4 chip inside, so it’s running some kind of iOS.
When (if) someone hacks it (like they did the first AppleTV), it could be possible, maybe, to get the Plex iOS app on there
Now, that would be sweet indeed!
Nice, nice!
But why o why have you removed rar-support? It´s always been xbmc’s(and since the fork plex’s) killer feature… Please add it back again, thanks!
In Plex 8 under Advanced settings (in the Finder menu), there was an option to sort movies with/without “The” (and in my case “La” in french), and this was really convenient.
I dont see this option anymore in the Finder menu/settings and dont find it? Was it thrown away during the 9-ization?
JUST A SUPERB JOB !
I baught the iOs app last night… Still a little bit crashy in my case, but nothing tragic.
And well… It will the first time in my life i finish one of the episode of my Columbo fallin’ asleep in bed with my iPad instead of on the living room’s sofa
Just hope we will soon be able to scan the library in other language than english, as we could automatically do with 0.8 with Ciné Passion… Or maybe there’s already a trick I didn’t discover…
But again, these are unsignificant details.
God bless you guys… Greetings from Switzerland !
Have any of you RAR-hungry folks tried out the rarfs MacFuse module by Erik Larsson? It works on uncompressed rar archives, so it sounds like it might do the trick.
http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/jlrarx.html
Disclaimer: Although I have used MacFuse I have not used rarfs and cannot vouch for its stability or usefulness in respect to this issue.
Swiss September
Turn Bluetooth off
Columbo is the best tv show ever, btw
Great update, but Plex still don’t know what’s the difference of an Movie or a TV Show.
For those who, like me, put TV Shows and Movies in the same folder, it’s a pain in the ass.
Any thoughts on solving this ? Besides “organize your stuff in different folders”, of course.
Sorry for my poor English. Brazilian guy speaking here.
@Elan – I know you said the TV shows M4V scanning update should happen automagically, but mine hasn’t. Do I need to do anything or just have a beer and wait?
It’s no big deal.
THANKS TO YOU (and the team) VERY MUCH. Plex9 is really amazing.
Love what you have done with plex 9! It loaded up and found my library and found all the movies and TV shows and had them tagged very quickly!
SOOOOO much easier then the older version! JUst for that I’m gonna buy the new App!
Barkley is now undoubtedly staring out from the plex logo on tens of thousands of docks!!! It took me till today to realize his eyes where in the logo! But once you see it, you can’t unsee it!
On another note, FANTASTIC job!
I am running a 1.66Ghz dual core mac mini and it is streaming 720p video from my home to my ipad connected to the wifi at work without a single stutter! The 5Mbps upload at home does not hurt, but that is some seriously efficient transcoding for my 5 year old mac mini to be able to accomplish! And I was halfway expecting this to finally be the excuse I needed to buy the new mac mini! Damn you Elan and your efficient code!!! <3
For others trying to do this, make sure you try disabling bluetooth. it helped a lot.
As everyone has mentioned this is quite an amazing product and an impressive release. But I also wanted to say I really appreciate the effort to pull this blog post together. I know how easy it is to get consumed by the fire fighting that inevitably follows a big release and how easy it is to forget the communications. You just saved me a lot of time digging through the forums.
Thank again, you are really great. My very favourite app!
@Martin
Its not a question of whether you have the right to be displeased, its a question of having some tact.
1. A lot of people have worked hard on getting this release out, and there is no questioning that improvements have been made
2. To make a comment so broad as ‘unusable’ when clearly hundreds if not thousands are using it is just in bad taste.
3. Its a free app and instead of making any attempt at a ‘thanks for the effort but’ you basically insult them
If you had said something like, ‘thanks for all the effort, but i really miss rar support…’ you’d likely be spending more time out with friends on the weekend rather than sitting home alone playing with your virtual girlfriend on your iphone while cheese doodles get caught in your ridiculously long and disgusting body hair. Get my drift?
How do I make my client (Macbook Pro) connect to my media server at home? I have opened port 32400 on the home router but I don’t see where you tell the client to connect over the web to my home machine.
Thanks
Just had to give my thanks to Elan and teams! I have been struggling with winxp, vista, 7 MCE, mythTV, XBMC and most recently Boxee for almost 8 years now. i have spent so much time doing hacks, customs scripts/configs, difficult to install plugins, proprietary hardware, hacking metadata, renaming files, etc. I have been awaiting the day that we would reach digital content on a seamless and simple interface like Plex.
There simply is NOT a better Media interface on the planet!
@Iggy_12: Video Plug-ins, context menu (‘c’), Add source, http://x.x.x.x:32400/library/sections gives you access to the library!
@elan: did you leave anything for the 1.0 release?! wow, configuring port forwarding now for the remote library access. i can’t wait to try streaming my music and tv shows to my iPhone tomorrow at the office!
OK guys. If something is free you are NOT allowed to complaine about it!
I am just blown away by this update. Talk about people listening to your customers. So many little improvements I am discovering the more I play.
I will deal with waiting a few days for my TV library to update. 9.0 reminds me of when I played with the iPhone the first time and the current state of my iPad. It ain’t perfect, but it is clean, it has lots of fun things to play with, and the potential for what this thing will do is amazing.
When payday comes, I will be donating in thanks for all your hard work. Can’t thank you enough for making my life easier.
I bought the app, but the streaming to iPhone / iPad is not close to the quality of the Air Video app. In the meantime, I’ll use the app for the IMDB integration and switch to Air Video to watch on an iOS device.
Elan,
Good work on the new release! My music imported about 20 times faster than the previous version! (files scanned in under a week, which is way more than I could say for 0.7/0.8)
I’m not really a big fan of all of the filtering options shown first thing when you select a library. I seem to prefer browsing through my stuff for something to watch, ie the “View All” interface better. Any chance you’d consider doing “View All” by default but making the top item called “Filter List” or something like that which would show you all of the filtering options?
-Aaron
@Aaron, thanks for the kind words! We’ll definitely consider it, we’re getting a lot of feedback about it so we’re in “listen and learn” mode at the moment
@Gary: Can you elaborate at all? We’re all using ffmpeg, so the quality should be near identical. What quality settings are you using, and what issues are you having? Also, have you tried with Bluetooth disabled?
@elan
Great job, love the improvements and wanted to say a huge thanx on what is at the very top of my list for ‘best software release 2010!!!’
I too have downloaded the iOS app, and put it on both my iPhone and iPad. Everything works ok, except I have to manually enter the ip address for the Mac Mini that Plex is running on. I then connect, select one of my folders (TV, Movies, Music) on the iPhone/Pad, it comes up with ‘loading’ and then ‘loading’ disappears and nothing has happened.
I followed a comment from one of the devs about deleting the Media Manager folder and restarting Plex so as to recreate all my folders. Yet this has resulted in the same situation. Any ideas?
Congras! Lots of potential here, so please this up.
Congras! Lots of potential here, so please keep it up!
Fantastic work guys! kudos, kudos. Sent more beer money, and treats for Barkley(iPad app – works great too – wow). Stellar work going on, looking forward to fully taking advantage of /9 and all the new features. Keep it up!
I have to agree with Aaron, I don’t like the filtering options shown first as you enter a library. It ruins the nice graphical presentation of your movies. The /8 way was best on entry. “Enter” goes to Media Preview, and right arrow brings up filter options. Or with those cool new filters (like actor head shots! neat!) have some way of bypassing the filters.
Amazing work, looking forward to the /9 series coming of age.
OK, quick follow up on the iOS app issue described above…
If I turn my wireless off, and connect via 3G it works flawlessly (apart from the fact our wireless speeds in Australia are pretty crappy).
What could the reason be that the media is not available on my wireless connection? I can see the categories, but can;t click in to them as described above? The remote functions perfectly though?!?!
@Paul, thanks for the kind words. I can’t think of a reason why that would happen offhand. If you contact me via IM i’d be happy to try to work through it with you (leafmunchersrule on AIM). If you can’t see servers automatically, that usually indicates a networking issue.
Hi elan,
unfortunately there is no context menu available in Video Plug-Ins – tested it on two different Macs (one with Media server running, one without).
@Michael – make sure you have at least ONE plug-in in there. For some reason it seems not to show context menu unless there’s at least one.
After turning off bluetooth streaming worked great for me as well. Excellent.
Elan, I haven’t seen any comment about smart folders not working. Is it a known issue/will it be fixes/should I get started on rearranging my folder structure?
@Thomas: I’m happy to hear that! In terms of smart folder, it’s a known issue now
I expect we can add support for it, but with all the serious issues, it’ll probably take a while to trickle up.
Thanks for the update!
First of all – 5 stars from my side as well! I love it – many things I missed in the previous release are now on! Great work…
The only downside I can find here is with the handling of pictures. I am not a big fan of iPhoto and obviously there is no way to display pictures directly (AFP or SMB) to the screen from my NAS?! Is that correct?
Cheers
Markus
Hey, Elan! How about an update on how sales of the iOS app are going? Hopefully they’re looking good!
@elan: 2Mbps, no bluetooth. I was going to record an example, but the app just shows a black screen now?
BTW, I’m probably going to ditch the WD Live and get an MacMini, unless you guys get an Appliance-like box like boxee to run your software!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I’m absolutely loving the new release. Anyone else find the media manager updating oddly soothing to watch?
Does anyone know if there’s a way to check compatibility between skins and plex.9 en-masse? Or do I need to check the forum posts for each skin manually?
Thanks!
Simply amazing. Nothing compares.
@Gary C. This is very odd…my video is crystal clear, and the bluetooth fixed everything for me. Do you have quality set to 480P? If not, give that a shot!
Just to echo someone else’s comment, I wasn’t a big fan of the filters going through to movies either (i.e see recently added, by genre, etc etc) I think it’s potentially useful for people with large libraries, but perhaps an option where you can either show the filters, or show all as a preference would be better.
I was slightly unclear how it should work when I stuck 9 on my iMac, and pointed it at my local directories, and then on my Mac Mini and told it I didn’t have any sources. I went into movies and saw things magically appearing from the server on the iMac – fantastic stuff
thanks for the release. I would like to know one thing before I upgrade: Does this version work with “Remote Buddy”?
Hello.
Thanks for the great release.
Is it advisable to replace /Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins/Scanners.bundle with the version on Git ? Same question for LocalMedia.bundle.
If I do that, will the automatic updates pushed by the developers through MediaServer still work?
FANTASTIC work.
A million thank yous from me!
My two cents:
Work on beefing up the OS X Media Manager!
I know you folks are doing a lot here, and kudos on what you’ve done, but the functionality of the OS X Media Manager is crucial to really making this work. When the automated scrapers fail, there needs to be a way to go in by hand.
Please, please, please fix the music importing bug, I can only import about 18 artists, the others are skipped over.
Plex 9 is already great. Thanks for all the work. Hope all the problems will be solved…then it will be awesome!
Thank you for including media flags. I really like them!
And I second the issue with the filter options. I would love to be able to select “view all” as my default.
Amazig product, Elan! Thank you very much.
Two queries. In plex .8 we had the ability to add a movie to a tv show (say, serenity+firefly). Have you guys removed that feature from .9?
Also, is it possible to view tv shows in their proper viewing order? (as per thetvdb list). Right now when you go to “all seasons” it starts from season 0-season 4 despite the fact that certain episodes from season 0 (commonly known as “Specials” act as fillers in between seasons.)
Thank you again for a great product!
@Richard, see http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Plex_Nine#Skins
Im sorry but I i am still not friend with Nine. It doesnt work as I want at all. I guess I just have to wait for thetvdb to open up, fixes and so on.
The things I need to be fixed before I am completely satisfied is:
* none of my tv-shows get any info at all.
* Need to be able to change language (on scanner) on some swedish TV-shows (that I know exist on thetvdb).
* Using local fanart and poster (doesnt work at all for me).
* Being able to load meta data from within the file. (cant wait til thats works).
* Stacking TV-shows.
Dont get me wrong! You are doing a great job! And I am sure you will get this fixed soon! You will get a donation very soon!
Are you sure this is free – I feel like I’m stealing it’s so good.
Busy renovating a house and Plex will be pride of place on TV’s and computers. I was in the Microsoft boardroom in Edinburgh yesterday (a job thing) and I asked if they were aware of the new release, the chap who had been leading the presentation got a chap through who was the media centre expert and he was well aware and seemed to be a bit of a fan – by the way a few iphones on the table).
Yes there will be a few glitches in the next few months but so what, we can all see where this is going and I’m happy to wait because it will be well worth it.
Huge thanks to all who have given their time and wisdom for nothing more than the love of it, this release is a credit to all of you.
Great release, especially for the IOS application which allowed me to demonstrate at work the playing of an anime episode streaming from my home server to my iPhone 4. Wowed my coworkers.
As noted elsewhere, a file browsing directory accessible from the default menu is needed (which will have sorting options for name/date modified/date/created/etc). It should hopefully show up in the IOS app. the manually added source directories in the video/music plugin directories don’t have all the sorting functionality and don’t show on the iPhone/iPad/iTouch.
@Ryan C: We’ll definitely be making improvements in this area
Is it possible to just start the Media Server and not the client?
Again, great program and thanks for all the hard work
Great work guys….i just works over here….installed it and it found all movies and series. Thanks for all the spare time not having to play around with settings
Hi
Really loving Nine so far! Boy you hues have worked hard and it really shows. It’s looking beautiful and does indeed work like magic.
I have already bought the ios app and shall be rating it on the UK iTunes store shortly
I will also be donating as soon as I can
Just one question though – I’m having trouble scanning TV Show remakes in the media server. I have episodes of both Battlestar Galactica 2003 and Doctor Who 2005 and no data is being returned. I have tried to manually match via the fix incorrect match button but the list of shows to select from is blank. Is this a known issue or is it related to TheTVDB meltdown? All the other shows have scanned in fine…
Congrats to all the team on this HUGE release! I know it’s got some pretty big issues at the moment but I also know that those will be resolved as quickly as possible. The sheer fact that I can point this at my 10TB library and only have to select correct IMDB matches for 3 movies, and that includes TV Shows (it got them all!), is super super impressive. Excellent work guys.
can I just ask a question to everyone complaining about things that are ‘essential’ and pressuring for fixes…
would you rather they have waited longer before releasing nine?
because it seems to me that the developers are caught in a trap… for months everyone has been pressuring them to release v.9, ‘let us help test it’ we all said. Then they release it and all of a sudden its like ‘why didn’t you improve this before releasing it’.
If you want the stable release stick to v.8, otherwise welcome to the beta program
Congrats on a great release. Quick question
The video plugins available on the iPad seem to be a subset of the ones on the Mac. When will the daily show/comedy central plugins be available on iPad?
Thanks!
@Ali, we’ll make the other ones available as we do more testing. If you want to take your life into your own hands, you can disable capability checking (intended for developers) in the Advanced Settings tab of the Media Server preferences
Hello!
Can someone please tell me how I can browse local directories that I’ve added to the video plugins, via the iPhone client.
Love the update release!
@Alex: only content served up by the Plex Media Server is available on iOS devices.
Thanks for all the work put into making what I perceive as the best media front end application available. The upgrade from plex .8.5 to .9.0 was truly great. I love the new interface, it’s absolutely gorgeous.
I made a series of tests with multiple high bitrate 1080p content at about 19+ MBit/s bitrate with audio and video combined. With hardware acceleration on I got 0 – Zero frame drops. Processor usage was about 70 % average on my 2.0 Ghz C2D Mac Mini.
The new media manager also makes it much more simpler managing my media library through VNC. Much appreciated!
I hope the load issues with The TVDB works out soon
Thanks to everyone who contributed to making this possible!
I’ve been testing the new release for a while and I think that in many ways it is a great improvement over the previous version. The technology that you have developped feels a bit like magic as you said and that is no small achievement! So thanks a lot for your great work guys!
To me, the coolest new thing is the Media Manager, which works particularly well with folders that are well organized.
There are however a few rough edges that show when you point the media manager to a folder that contains both movies and TV shows or that contains files whose file names are not very “clean”. A utorrent “downloads” folder would be a primary example where things do not work very well (both because it is likely to contain many types of media and because you cannot change the filenames while you are seeding).
Also, I find that not all videos fall into the “Movies” and “TV shows” categories. For example I have a great deal of videos of family events (weddings, etc), which I’d like to watch through plex but which are not properly scanned by the media manager. In Plex 8 I would access those through the “Videos” section but this is not possible anymore in Plex 9
Instead you can add a folder as a “Video plugin” but it took me a while to find this out! Also, there is no way to add a plugin to the Home menu as do the Media Manager sections.
So I think that it would be great if there was a way to tell the media manager that a certain folder contains mixed content or that it contains just “videos”.
Again thanks _a lot_ for making Plex so that we can all enjoy our media from our couches!
There is one little thing that has always annoyed me in Plex but which has become a bit worse with this release: When you start Plex and the Home menu appears, the “cursor” is always set on the same Home menu entry (in the case of Plex 9 on the “Plugins” section).
Instead, it would be much better if plex set the focus to the last section that was accessed when Plex was last run. Alternatively there could be a way to select the “default” section.
This is a bit more annoying in Plex 9 than in Plex 8 because now there are more entries on the home menu, since every section that you add to the Media Manager appears in the Home Menu in alphabetical order! The result is that you must navigate the Home menu list until you get to the section you want and this may require a lot of button presses if you added a lot of sections to your Media Manager.
is it possible to change the tv shows, music, and movies background in plex 9?
and is it possible to turn off the submenu with directors, actors, etc?
I CANT FIGURE THIS OUT FOR THE LIFE OF ME!
The magic just ins’t working — at least not for TV shows…!
I know you guys are working on it, together with the TVDB team, and that’s all fine — but it’s been three days now and as much as like Plex and the new version, this is really spoiling the whole user experience for me…!
Script support
Script support
Script support
Please
Please
Please
Otherwise great job guys.
Big fan of the app for number of years now – you guys are great..
Not Sure if its helpful, but as far as scanning times go.. roughly 1600movies (w/.nfo tags) & 400tvshows (no tags) took about 16hours to run through the first time. scans afterwards are smooth and fast. it all runs on a standard mac mini (still able to watch video w/o problems via VLC during scan)
The whole mess with the TVDB debacle had me thinking that this (like so many things in life) could have been avoided by proper communication…!? Did the Plex team get in touch with the guys from TVDB before the release, like “Just a heads up, we’re releasing a major update – so how can we make sure that your servers survive the load?!” or something like that…?
Also I understand that it ,may have been a big hit on the TVDB at first but it’s been 4 days now and there should be some kind of solution by now…!?
Yeah, I know, you guys are doing the best you can — I’m still kinda bummed anyway, sorry…
Elan: why the reason for the crappy streaming over 3G. Is it Apple that restricts apps from streaming at higher bitrate or is it your choice. I have to jailbreak and fool the plex app into thinking its on wifi to get decent picture quality.
Being new to Plex the TVDB problem did take the pizzazz away from an otherwise wonderful product. What surprises me the most is that there is very little communication about the status of the problem. I keep coming back to here to check if there is anything new without success.
@Jeunj: I’ve been tweeting like every hour on the hour about it
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?/topic/16863-tv-shows-dosent-work-here-is-a-temporary-solution/page__gopid__101022&#entry101022
@Mattias: We need to provide 64kbps stream, right now that’s the only one we’re providing over 3G because the video player likes to switch qualities and that can lead to lots of buffering.
@elan indeed you have and thanks for the updates. Reason I was not getting the tweets is because you were responding directly to your mentions and thus not appearing in my feed. Once I searched your tweets I could see you’re not getting much sleep.
@Jeunj: Sorry, I was trying not to pollute the main feed too much
I’ve posted a few updates about statistics we’re seeing on the cache machine. Looking good so far, except for transient errors from TVDB, who are still throttling traffic to the cache.
@elan just implemented your “workaround”. Works like a charm! Thanks mate appreciate the commitment to getting this sorted.
great job guys, great job!
Wow, just got this working on my Mac Mini media center and iphone – brilliant. I could never get the previous version to scan correctly but this one worked brilliantly first time.
I used this:
http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Plex_iOS
to set up port forwarding – and I’m far from technical!! That also worked first time.
Absolutely brilliant work from the team and massively appreciated.
Please add the file browser as in the previous version, and fix some of the too many chrashes!
@Claudio: I’m sorry, the file manager is not coming back (the 90s called, and they asked for Norton Commander). As for the crashes, please help us fix them by submitting good bug and crash reports in the forums.
Hi Elan,
I’m really sorry for the file browser.
I have no way to manage my own files, as for example home made films, that cannot be recognized by the automagical features of Plex, and on the other hand reorganizing the archive is much too complex.
I’ll stay with PLEX 8.
I’m also sorry that by taking the 8, I’ll not be able helping with chrashes (quite many on my iMac 21.5″ and Snow Leopard)
Thanks for the kind answer,
Claudio.
@Claudio: we’ve got many improvements planned for home movies, as well as better hierarchical access to those files. Hopefully you’ll be back to Plex/Nine before too long
Thanks for taking the time to check it out.
Also note that you can add video sources in Plex/Nine by using the context menu (the ‘c’ key) in Video Plug-ins so that you can browse directories and files.
Elan,
Is there a way to get the moviemeter.nl scraper?
Dutch movie info.
Plex 9 is great fantastic job
I have just one wish
Hi elan, I’m a new user of Plex. I love it. looking forward to the tvdb fix. I must have caught it just after you turned it off. will you update us?
@sling A MovieMeter agent has just been released http://bit.ly/a2ebAh
Hi Sander.
Fantastic it works great super!!!
hello..
is it possible to stream to multiple devices at the same time? a tv and an Ipad/Iphone?
@sleepz: Yes, absolutely, that’s one of the cool things about this new architecture.
Hi,
Great work on Plex 9, and especially the deal with LG!. Im amazed that this hasn’t been done earlier!. In regards to cutting down on the number of devices/cables surrounding a TV ..that is all well and good. However, personally I use a mix of file/streaming sources AND physical DVD rentals. This is more essential to me, as I need Norwegian subtitles for certain films. So unless subtitles support is improved, and ideally made as seamless and automatic as possible (and this goes for Netflix etc) – then that expensive Mac Mini with a good old DVD drive still needs to be there, which in turn makes a new plexified LG TV unnecessary. And Im sure, Im not alone in this case. Once Plex/netflix/vudu/hulu gets real time subtitle support “Right”, then you will probably see many people still holding onto their DVD players and secondary media devices around the TV. Another option is to include LG TV´s with inbuilt DVD or Bluray players. Now that would kill many birds with one stone
.
And no, ripping rented DVD´s is not an option. The Law doesnt like it, and my wife has BIG technical issues with it
All the best!
Hello guys,
What happened to my post (a few days ago)? Reported an issue around video files with almost same name.
Thanks
@kramax, sorry, I missed your comment. I’ve noted that in our list of bugs, thanks!
hello,
support for iphoto and itunes are better but :
- on ios app, no photo appear or bad quality
- on plex client, photo quality is worse than on front row
after, this will be great to access to this libraries from anywhere
also, when including plex on appletv ? maybe not possible but this will be so great
greetings!
Brilliant work guys thanks.
The iPad app is a massive plus. We sometimes take the iPad out to the kitchen and watch half an episode of something whilst washing up and then go back to the living room and resume right off where we stopped. Beautiful.
There are valid reason’s for non-scrapeable content and like many I have plenty of home movies and clips that used to be accessed by the “Videos” Section of plex/0.8. It sounds like a hierarchical Home-Movie scanner is in the roadmap and that sounds perfect for the problem I have.
Thanks again!
Elan,
Being the first person to give you a beer donation way back when you first started Plex (well, before it was even called Plex), I have to say I’m really proud and impressed at how far this project has come.
I have to say that I haven’t used past versions too much; I never liked the awkwardness of using the Mac mini. But I’ve been following your developments. What I use now is mainly my PS3 and the PS3 Media Server app on my Mac to stream movies (and the Remote iPhone app to stream music from iTunes). Are there any plans for Plex to support the PS3 for video content?
Congratulations for the amazing work and success you and your team have had! Cheers!
Plex 9 is simply awesome and I feel the money I donated to PLex was totally worth it!
Just wanted to say you guys did a great job and the improvements over 8.xx is just remarkable.
I only wish the iphone app was cheaper..oh well, bye bye Boxee. PLEX rocks!!!!
Cheers
This is so great! Thank you for your hard work. I’d also appreciate a version for Android.
Funniest post I’ve read in a long time. Thanks for the sense of humour and keep up the great work!