Plex Media Server v0.9.6.5
I know what you’re thinking: “How can they keep releasing updates so frequently?” Is it overclocked CPUs? Human cloning? Performance enhancing Kombucha drinks? Well yes, but that’s not the real secret. The real secret is that our team has this incredible passion for creating the best media solution ever, and we are tireless. We’re also spread out around the world, so our company chatroom is always buzzing with excitement and code commit messages around the clock (we love you, Campfire and Github!). This is the most amazing team I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and it feels too fun to call it “work”. Thanks to all of you for your continued support and love, we’re going to keep bringing you updates (the next iOS release is sweet, and about to head to Apple!) and lots of new stuff.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the new release (which we’ve deemed a beta, due to the massive changes, available here or use our BETA AppCasts):
- NEW: Massive performance improvements in scanning engine. We took things apart and put them back together again, and scanning should be much faster. Like much faster. You’ll notice it especially when scanning item-heavy sections like music. Speaking of music, we just pushed an much-improved Last.FM agent as well. Oh, and we also pushed a new Scanner which fixed an issue reading ID3 tags. So lots of love for music this release.
- NEW: Support for Virtual Scanners. Up until now, Plex Scanners have been limited to scanning the files directly, but with Virtual Scanners you can be much more creative. We’ve included an example (the Plex iTunes Scanner) which is a quick and easy way to scan in your iTunes collection much more quickly than using the regular music scanner. In under 50 lines of code, too.
- NEW: Other metadata loading/saving performance speedups.
- NEW: Location header exposed to CORS requests.
- NEW: Added a new advanced preference (TranscoderDefaultDuration) for specifying default duration for Flash/Silverlight videos. Useful for videos that exceed two hours in duration.
- NEW: Added a new advanced preference (TranscoderTempDirectory) for specifying the temporary directory for the transcoder. Useful for all those with SSD drives.
- NEW: (DLNA) Add support for device matching on serial number and manufacturer fields. Really, guys, did you implement the spec in a slightly different way on purpose? Just to mess with us?
- FIX: Music scans refreshed artists/albums for no good reason, again and again. Think of it like a nervous golden retriever which kept poking the dead squirrel. Bad dog. Sit. Stayyyy.
- FIX: Minor fixes and memory leaks in the Quicksilver transcoder.
- FIX: Do scanning depth-first instead of breadth-first. Details matter.
- FIX: Make sure we return not-deleted media items before deleted media, fixes iOS playback failure in some rare cases.
- FIX: Pass back the correct deletedAt time in the metadata item.
- FIX: Be careful not to overwrite good GUIDs, could lead to episodes losing poster/status when replacing SD ones with HD, e.g.
- FIX: A case where certain audio files could fail to analyze, causing repetitive analysis during audio scans. Points for persistence!
- FIX: Fixed a deadlock when calling into the system bundle early in startup.
- FIX: Fixed a hang scanning DVR-MS content. We’ve been doing lots of work lately to get those files to scan in properly, we’ll be pushing new scanner/agents shortly! Thanks, Ian, you know who you are.
- FIX: Pass more hints along to agents, useful for WTV work.
- FIX: Browsing by rating wasn’t exactly right.
- FIX: Failure to log in certain cases on OS X.
- FIX: (DLNA) Getting metadata can result in empty parent ID.
- FIX: (DLNA) Lack of posters on PS3 (really fixed this time, so sorry).
- FIX: (DLNA) Tweak to album art for XBoxes. (XBoxen?)
79 Comments so far
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Why don’t the new versions show up under update in Plex?
@Thomas: these are beta builds, if you follow the link about beta appcasts you will see how you can configure it to show up.
Can not wait for dvr-ms and wtv support. Is there anyway we can supply you with samples in order to help with metadata and/or playback ? (SD mpeg2 recordings play/scan fine in PMS/Plex but HD h.264 do not).
LiveTV in MCE7 rules !
Awesome! Keep up the good work and please don’t forget about DLNA subtitle support
Great updates and fixes to an already amazing media solution!
Thank you so much for all your hard work. I eat Plex in the morning!!!
Can’t wait to install it when I get home! I want my PS3 posters!
still an issue: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/43267-pms-0964-on-arch-linux-crashes-upon-navigating-to-manage-page/page__view__findpost__p__276515
Thanks you all for your continued hard work. My digital life would be incomplete without Plex!!
Thank you!! Keep up the great work. We really appreciate all your work on Plex.
Great Work! I was just complaining that the Windows PMS get’s different results then the Mac PMS. Did a re-scan and everything looks good! Now if we could get a way to lock the poster / background art for the media items that would be awesome.
Bug Report: Trying to scan in a music section with the itunes scanner results in a crash on windows 7 and is reproducible.
Would love to update to this but not sure if the “no sleep” issue was fixed. That’s pretty much a deal breaker for me.
Love waking up to new Plex updates
Awesome. Are you guys ever going to do a formal update of the Plex Mac client? It was released with that really bad TOSLINK bug back in like October and I know there is a beta build in the forums that addresses it, but it would be nice if you pushed that out to everyone.
Thanks guys.
Will we have support of offli e content in next iOS release?
@Jefferson: This release is here
http://elan.plexapp.com/2012/05/18/plex-media-server-v0-9-6-2-plex-v0-9-5-3/
@Trevor: we’ll look int the crash! Art is locked automatically whenever you select one (because it’s assumed you care enough to choose one).
@Tuyen “Would love to update to this but not sure if the “no sleep” issue was fixed. That’s pretty much a deal breaker for me.” – Same here.
@elan the 9.6.3 sleep fixes just need to be removed I believe – 9.6.2 is handling sleep properly.
In VideoFiles.py, when will we get .tp support? Seems like such an easy fix and it works just fine in Plex. My BeyondTV server records files in this format and I want to integrate them together.
video_exts = ['3gp', 'asf', 'asx', 'avc', 'avi', 'avs', 'bin', 'bivx', 'bup', 'divx', 'dv', 'dvr-ms', 'evo', 'fli', 'flv', 'ifo', 'img',
'iso', 'm2t', 'm2ts', 'm2v', 'm4v', 'mkv', 'mov', 'mp4', 'mpeg', 'mpg', 'mts', 'nrg', 'nsv', 'nuv', 'ogm', 'ogv',
'pva', 'qt', 'rm', 'rmvb', 'sdp', 'svq3', 'strm', 'ts', 'ty', 'vdr', 'viv', 'vob', 'vp3', 'wmv', 'wpl', 'wtv', 'xsp', 'xvid', 'webm']
You are just awsome as always guys!
Keep up the good work
Thanks for everything
Every time there is an update to Plex Media Server I always hope that the Lion / Mountain Lion scrollbar interface bug has been fixed… but alas it still hasn’t.
i can’t find the settings for “TranscoderDefaultDuration”… where is that and what is it good for?
Thanks for another updaye, Plex keeps on getting better!
By any chance have you guys made progress with getting Plex to play nice with AirPlay? Please reference the following thread if unsure about what I mean: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/40893-resume-feature-not-supported-via-airplay-a-bug/
After updating to this version, all of my files freeze every two seconds when airplying to Apple TV
@elan I like that if you choose art it will lock automatically. For future requests it would be nice to have an option to lock in poster / wallpaper maybe if it’s in the edit metadata window or something cause if it’s not locked in I assume the poster may indeed change.
If you need to do any logging or error handling I’m playstation87 in the chat room.
I really hope you can add subtitle support for DLNA any time soon. I understand this will eat a bit more CPU power, but I rather have my CPU usage a few Joule/Second going up then wondering what the hack they’re talking about
@elan – Any chance that DVD Order will come native to the server rather than having to use a plug in?
SC
Would be nice to understand when an updated plex client will be made available or at the very least an indication that there is work underway.
It’s always good to see people working on something with genuine passion.
brilliant! thank you (and to the clones:) and thank you!
has someone checked if the “no sleep” problem is solved with this version?
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/42664-latest-pms-does-not-allow-mac-to-sleep/
Could you please include links to trailers in your next update. This i enjoy with XBMC but i believe Plex has more to offer and would be a valuable addition.
I’m glad you had fun making as much as I have fun using your system. I have one last feature to request though, please help make subtitle available via DLNA. It will make plex perfect for my “home” use; I have no problem watching series and movies in English; however, my little brother needs it. This will definitely creates some quality family time in my family
. Thanks for all the hard work anyway!
Any word on when the web interface will get some love? Like the ability to set local images for cover art or backgrounds?
@Jason: Hopefully we’ll have something to show you before too long. For now, though, you can just put the images alongside the media and it should work fine (e.g. 300.mkv + 300.jpg + 300-fanart.jpg).
@M18 does not appear to be – official word from the chat channel is that the sleep bug cant be replicated. It appears to affect Lion users, and removing the .9.6.3 sleep changes appear to fix it (.9.6.2 works fine)
First, let me say that I am using PlexMediaServer on Linux and it is amazing. My one request is for some kind of playlist support for XBox 360. I know this is an XBox/Microsoft problem, but video playlists are just broken and I don’t see them fixing it. If there were some way to work around it in Plex and define a playlist where Plex would see it and just play all the episodes of a TV series back to back, that would be great. I know it isn’t a Plex problem, but I hold out more hope that they could do something.
Plex Media Center v0.9.5.3 (Windows Client) is able to remotely connect to my Plex Media Server v0.9.6.5.17 on QNAP NAS but cannot retrieve movie and music list. And Plex Media Server v0.9.6.5.17 installed on my QNAP, the administration page always hangs up and requires reboot
Just LOVE Plex! A feature I’d really appreciate is if you could associate extras with a movie. Could be a trailer or DVD extras. I can imagine it could be implemented by having a folder together with the movie file called something specific with the extras in it. Then just as you can see that there are different versions of a movie ( you see a number in a star-like figure on top of the poster), show an icon if extras are available. And then trigger either a mandatory choice between main movie and extras or show a list of extras – probably has to be treated as Personal Media – if you long-click.
Would this be difficult?
@Skaterboy: yesterday i upgraded to current PMS version and sleep bug is still present to me too. Can’t imagine that replication is that difficult. Mac OS Lion + current PMS Version is not an exotic environment. 0.9.5.2 works well and since 0.9.5.3 Mac isn’t going to sleep anymore.
LOVE all the frequent updates to PMS! Much appreciated
Is there a Plex Media Center update coming soon-ish??
Great update! Just updated from .3 to .5, so far so good.
Only 1 issue detected so far. Posters are working fine on PS3 but not on the Xbox.
I havent been able to use Plex for arround 2 years now (no tv, and school etc). But have been watching changelog since then. I have seen countless logs where the scanning is MUCH faster. I really looking forward to test when I get the chance next time!
Good job Plex Team
@M18 i agree, thats what they told me though. Im not running anything exotic, plain Lion install and Plex. Would love if they took out the .9.6.3 changes to sleep.
I get “Architecture is bad” error message when I install PlexMediaServer-0.9.6.5.177-5c3cf40-arm.bin on my Readynas NV+ V2. This didn’t happen with the previous release.
What is the “edit personal DLNA config” supposed to do? My personal config file is empty…. And where on the NAS can I find it?
Tried 9.6.5 beta on ReadyNas … with unsuccessful result. Application seems to hang very often when refreshing collections … music folder got scan much faster but the metadata did not get loaded until manually refreshed. now trying 9.6.4 … I had swicth to a Windows version before but had issue with it as new stuff did not get detected always had to remove and re-add folder. Hoping to get a stable version on ReadyNas. Thks.
using ReadyNas x86 Ultra 6.
Looks like have better stability with 9.6.4 on ReadyNas 4.2.21 Ultra 6. Passed all test on refresh for all my collections.
Hey Elan and company.
There’s been a bug with the Personal Media Shows metadata agent for a number of releases now that is very frustrating. the agent used to bring in embedded metadata from files. I had a bunch of home videos that I embedded the “episode name” into the files. This used to work just fine. For a number of releases now this has been broken. Just wondering if you can take a look at it for a near-future release.
Another fix would be to just import episode name from the file name ex. birthdays – s1990e01 – Blowing out candles.mp4 (episode name = blowing out candles).
here’s the link to the ticket I made a while ago:
https://plexapp.lighthouseapp.com/projects/14382/tickets/1262-embedded-metadata-no-longer-being-imported-by-pms-for-personal-media-shows#ticket-1262-1
@marklight: I commented on the bug.
PMS is working perfectly for me. However I am constantly switching between Plex and XBMC Eden because of many great features Eden gives to me. (AirPlay, way more efficient, working sleep, improved video and audio quality)
Only PMS holds me back.
Will there be an update for PMC in the next days or should I switch?
Still the sleep issue is not fixed with the Mac Mini 2011/HDMI after so many updates, I’m done with Plex!
Switched to XBMC and all works fine, sleeps like a baby.
m2ts files aren’t getting thumbnails I believe. ffmpeg tried and tries, and eventually gives up. It’s gonna take another 20 hours or so for it to complete, so it’s hard to say it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on.
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/42685-avchd-scanning-taking-a-long-time/
Elan, You did a great thing about a month ago updating the agent for personal TV shows to pick up season art (seanon1a, 1b, etc.), but episode names are totally blank. This is the other half of the equation. Where personal TV shows had no artwork and no description it is still incomplete with no description. Makes it real tough to know what to select especially if for whatever reason no episode thumb is created.
It’s dissapointing that the Plex guys don’t provide an indication as to when there will be a plex client update, especially given the teething issues that people are experiencing. It’s a shame as PLEX is a great product and is let down by the lack of information.
@James: I’m sorry we can’t be more precise about when we’re going to release a new client update. We have a tiny team, working on numerous different parts of the system, and all I can say is that there will be more releases of the client, and they’ll address issues with the current release
Can you be a bit more detailed about the “teething issues”?
Elan,
Thanks for the response, appreciated. The teething issues that I refer to are just echoing other users’ experiences that I have seen on the forum, they don’t necessarily hinder my Plex experience. Some of mine are “nice to have’s” (Client sleep functionality, the ability to apply display settings as a default to all Movies such as pixel ratio etc, Launch directly into Movie List). I appreciate that it is a msall team Elan and that ultimatley you are offering it free, hats off to you. I personally would be happy to pay for it. It would just be nice to blog about and provide visibility to us users, things that the team are currently working on and have in the pipeline. Keep up the good work.
Would love to have the sleep issue ironed out – please remove the 9.6.3 sleep changes
- CPU load too high when Plex is inactive
- No sleep on a Mac
To name the worst issues for me. But actually just have a look at the release notes of XBMC Eden. A lot of improvements regarding quality and performance. Some of them I already mentioned. Most issues in the forum have been fixed with Eden.
@Elan: one issue with the client that stands out to me: please please please, bring back the “Link system volume option” that was there in pre-Laika clients! Thanks.
Why does this blog not have an RSS feed? I’d like to keep up to date without having to remember to visit the site.
Great software folks!
I’m sorry for interrupting this forum. I am VERY new to the whole Roku, streaming media stuff. My husband likes the Roku instead of “main stream cable tv”. I’m trying to get on board, but I’m having some issues. I found Plex (advertised on my roku), I clicked on it and from there … GOT LOST. I just want to watch some of my favorite shows again. I want a way to watch TV shows like “The Closer”, and Discovery Health shows, thru my Roku. Is that possible???
What is a Media Server? Are there step by step instructions to follow to get up and running with My plex? If not, is there a way to find a search engine app to play full episodes of “regularly scheduled NORMAL” television shows?
Please shoot me an email and help an olderrrr woman find some peace fo mind. I only took my 1st Computer Science college class last January 2011.
Thank you,
Beth Derby from Northern California
Great Application you have here. I use it on my LG Smart TVs , Android and Iphone and on my PC and Mac, only real complain I have and would love to be worked on is the transcoding, I have been unable to watch any 1080p movies and most 720p movies due to the constant stopping and choppiness. I have a dedicated quad core server with 24GB or Ram and its connected via gigabit lan and even locally even though the server is barely working video comes through choppy.
I have used tversity and if you guys have a way to take a look at the way they do it, its worked flawlessly on all devices even over 3g I been able to watch amazing videos they just lack features and a better UI, and I paid for theirs, this one is free but like many others I wouldnt mind paying especially if the transcoder was much better.
How about users profiles/PIN code? XBMC does this already, it would really help to personalize the shared PMS’s and it could also help provide parental control features
Hi,
Really love plex media server. Use it to stream to my ps3 and seems to the lightest on resources compared to serviio or ps3mediaserver. But really wish the seeking and resume playback issue on the ps3 will be fixed. Issue is mainly with transcoded videos, which makes it almost unusable especially not being to resume playback where you stopped earlier.
Thanks in advance
Not to forget the AirPlay function for audio and video. XBMC supports it out of the box.
Can’t wait to see it in Plex.
Glad to see y’all are working so hard on DLNA. Absolutely awesome feature. Love your work and also am loving the frequent updates. On .9.6.5 all of the cover art is showing on PS3 now and looks a lot better (hooray, abc order on DLNA), except for one little problem: 9.6.3 and up will not play any media with AAC audio codec. I reverted back to 9.6.2 which will play them, as long as I can find them (no abc order
). Basically, it comes up as “Unsupported Data” on PS3 and on XBOX it will say “Content Not Supported” once I click play. I haven’t seen any notice of this issue posted so felt I’d bring it to your attention. Seems it would be an easy fix seeing as they were previously playing fine. Also, would love to see subtitles working on DLNA, that would make it just about perfect. Thanks for all of your hard work!
Transcoding bug (Windows PMS, both latest betas): When playing bilingual movies with both DTS and AC3, the audio will play fine but the video will be a solid grey screen. Had to revert to the latest official to solve this issue.
Any word on a parental controls option??
How can I contribute for subtitles DLNA support ?
Is DLNA subtitles support coming ?
Thanks, for your great work!
Great on PS3, works fine BUT no subtitles (SRT) support
(((((
Is it coming in next update ? In August ?
PS3 Media Server supports subtitles very well… (but I prefer Plex).
Using the latest beta, I am still not able to run the application, lots of
“cannot begin transaction, attempt to write a readonly database”??
Still can login to myPlex via Plex Media Manger (username error etc)on my Synology, yet login works on plex site, PC and Andriod also fine
Why do you hate the Plex Media Center?
Rob
I had this same issue. What network port is your cable plugged into on your synology? Mine was in port 2. I had to swap it to port 1 (and configure the IP) to get past this error. I think if you configure a valid IP on the other port that should work as well.
Let me know if that helps.
i’m still running version 0.9.5.3 on my readynas device , who is currently ‘responsible’ for porting pms to readynas ? Is there a way that I can help to speed up the port to readynas, or can I compile the bin myself on a Linux machine ?
Still no service for Windows Server? Why is this being ignored? We have been asking and begging for Months now…. come on.
please add persian subtitle
please add farsi(فارسی) subtitle
Why is the audio quality terrible when listening to music? I’m using a Lumia 900 phone. Audio quality is bad on wifi or celluar connection. I turned the video quality settings all the way up since I didn’t see any audio streaming settings but that doesn’t seem to help. Any suggestions?