Plex Media Center for OS X Leopard

We’re really happy to see that people seem to be enjoying the store. We’ve had tens of thousands of plug-ins downloaded already, and we have a bunch of new ones in the works! In the meantime, we’ve cooked up another quick release to try to fix the most egregious issues with the last one.

• FIX: Fixed permissions on the Plex binary to allow non-administrative users to run.
• FIX: Tweaks to the skin for upcoming Plug-ins.
• FIX: Some crashes and leaks in the Media Server.
• FIX: Fixed the scrapers/NFO issue, this time for real (many thanks to Isaac for all the hard work on this one!). We also include the TMDB scraper again.
• FIX: A regression where only the first iPhoto album showed up.
• FIX: Improved compatibility with Flash sites for the Media Server.

The release can be downloaded here or via Sparkle as usual.

Here’s another photo of Barkley playing on a beach in San Francisco.

I could present the usual release notes, talk about the CoreAudio crash on startup that’s been fixed, the Mira/Sofacontrol changes (thanks marklight!), mention the TV/Movies keymap issue that was fixed, explain that the region link to weather settings is now fixed, and that NFO files no longer cause scraping issues. But honestly, I’d rather talk about something else.

This release, one innocent little point difference from the last, has the biggest new Plex feature ever. I’m not just gushing hyperbole here when I say you will never use Plex the same way again.

I’d like to introduce you to the new Plex Media Server:

As much as we try to ensure the quality of every release, there can always be some gremlins that sneak in, which is why it’s important to make it extremely easy to make new releases. After all, there’s a lot of stuff happening between writing a line of code and getting that code into your living rooms.

Luckily, we have a few scripts written, and there are really only a few simple steps: The first script builds a release, tags it, and packages it up into a DMG. The second one uploads it to our server, distributes it to a set of initial mirrors, and uploads metadata about the new release. The third “throws the switch” on the new release.

Here are the changes in this new release, which can be downloaded here (source here):

• FIX: iPhoto events sort by date, not by name.
• FIX: Slow access to media, marking unwatched/watched, etc.
• FIX: The HTTP receive timeout was increased to 15 seconds, to hopefully allow TVDB time to respond. Thanks to Todd L on the forums for suggesting this fix.
• FIX: IFO files weren’t showing up in DVD video directories.
• FIX: The MediaStream “Info List” view mode was tweaked to make the list the same size and positioning vertically as the regular list view.

Enjoy! This is Barkley relaxing in his favorite spot of grass on the island, in the remote town of Hana.

I can’t believe it’s already February! It’s been a rainy month out here, so for the most part there was nothing better to do than hunker down and write code and hope the electricity didn’t go out.

We have a brand new release for you with lots of good stuff. The exciting part, though, is that we spent as much time on the release as we did on some great new features coming up shortly. These new features are going to change the way you use Plex, and are going to open up some very interesting possibilities. We’ll be making a preview release shortly.

The release can be downloaded from here, and the source is available here.

Without further ado, here are the changes for this release:

• FIX: Ryan coaxed DTSWAV files into playing. It turns out to be impossible to play 44.1KHz DTS files on OS X, as it assumes encoded audio is 48KHz. For now, we’re mixing down the files, and shortly we’ll move to transcoding them to 48KHz AC3 files. Not optimal, but better than nothing given the limitations of the platform. (I’m looking forward to this personally, because I want to have the first 1080p Wizard of Oz + 5.1 Dark Side of the Moon party.)
• FIX: The highly annoying bug which caused TV shows to lose audio randomly with TV theme music enabled.
• FIX: Certain dialogs in the update code didn’t support UTF8 strings (James).
• FIX: There is now an option you can disable to prevent Plex linking the system audio output device with the device selected in Plex (System > Audio > Link System Output).
• FIX: The audio device settings didn’t appear to be remembered in the settings (they actually were saved, just not displayed correctly).
• FIX: We’ve disallowed deleting files from inside Plex by default. Much safer! This is a change to the settings, so you’d need to delete your guisettings.xml file to get the new value.
• FIX: We fixed a bug that prevented actions from being sent to Plex via event clients (used by Remote buddy).
• FIX: Ryan fixed a crash when attempting to transcode a corrupt DTS stream into AC3.
• FIX: Background music tracks are now played completely randomly.
• FIX: Isaac fixed some issues in the harmony and keyboard maps, and also added Hold Up/Hold Down to control volume in Full Screen Video and Visusalization for Mira users (and likely Sofa Control users as well). He also went through and “humanized” some of the error messages that Plex spits out to be more intelligible.
• FIX: Tweaked permissions on a MediaStream file.
• FIX: Mikey gave us some fixes to French strings (thanks!)
• FIX: Stillness sent some fixes for the KinoPoisk scraper (thanks!)
• FIX: A crash in Weather for some regions.
• FIX: Maddox suggested some excellent changes in the scraper defaults which result in better movie covers by default.

We have also updated the Plex Media Server (included with Plex) with the following changes:

• NEW: James added support for nested iTunes playlist folders and iPhoto folders (a much requested feature).
• NEW: Audiobook support.

• FIX: More tweaks for “album artist” tag.
• FIX: iPhoto sorting of events and albums was broken.

We’ve also pulled the usual bunch of fixes from XBMC, including updated scrapers, updated UPnP code, and some fixes.

Here’s Barkley resting in the yard. He’s still wearing his brace, but his limp is nearly gone, and we’re planning to start the water rehab in our friends’ pool shortly.

Hope you’ve all been having fun holiday celebrations! I’ve been drinking heavily and obsessively fixing bugs in Plex, and finding that the two activities mix well.

• FIX: The audio dropout issue which was introduced in 0.7.2 should now be fixed.
• FIX: The corrupted German MediaStream strings.
• FIX: File size reporting bug in HTTP API has really been fixed this time.
• FIX: Some tweaks to “album artist” tags in Plex Media Server iTunes module. Thanks to zanex for helping explain what was wrong.
• FIX: Certain videos (FLV, YouTube, 22KHz MP3 tracks) played back at double-speed. Thanks to Ryan for explaining how to fix this one.

Release is here, and source is here.

This is Barkley on one of the first days after we moved to Maui.

It turns out there was a nasty regression in 0.7.3 with videos not playing smoothly, so I thought I’d take the time to release an update, especially since otherwise I’d be trapped decorating Christmas trees, carving hams, or wrapping presents. Here are the changes:

• FIX: Regression causing glitchy playback of videos.
• FIX: Fixed a bug present since the start of the Plex/Seven series where music playback was oddly broken, and skipping tracks only worked some of the time (thanks to cheekyboy for the detailed report!).
• FIX: Fixed another regression relating to photo downloading over the network.
• FIX: Minor fix to the way we format file sizes over the HTTP API (thanks to thedroid).

Release is here (or via Sparkle) and source is here.

OK, now can I go drink lots of eggnog and make merry? Oh right, not until I add a photo of Barkley. This is him, as a teenager, back in Fullerton, CA.

[I've released 0.7.3 to fix a small bug with audio in 0.7.2]

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since the last release. I apologize for leaving you guys in the lurch with the CoreAudio hang issue for so long, but hopefully this release is chock full enough of goodies to make up for it.

This is a busy time of year, and many of you are likely traveling to visit family, or simply enjoying the time off at home. We’d like to wish you all a healthy and happy holiday season!

• NEW: Pundy and Frank teamed up to add full support for Logitech’s Harmony remote series. They even worked with Logitech to get the profile included in the Logitech software, so it would work without ANY manual programming. Not only that, but since it uses the codes for multiple Apple Remote devices, every single command will be both instant and not prone to misinterpretation. Brilliant stuff, guys! There is documentation for this feature here, thanks to Pundy!

• NEW: Ryan added volume normalization, to solve the problem of mixed-down audio being too quiet. You can enable it under System > Audio as “Normalize Film Volume”.
• NEW: We now ship with MediaStream v1.0, congratulations to those guys getting it done! I have always believed that it takes a lot of courage and commitment to release a version one-point-oh of anything.
• NEW: The OS X audio output device now tracks with Plex’s setting, so that DRM iTunes tracks and GUI sounds always play to the correct place.
• NEW: Enrique added a feature where the Plex background music fades down a bit when Plex is in Windowed mode and the window is not in focus.
• NEW: Enrique (who’s been extremely busy!) added a new menu toggle called “Float on Top” to make the Plex window hover above all others. The shortcut is ?-T.
• NEW: When playing music, we immediately jump to the visualizer. This should make it easier for people to skip tracks right away. Don’t like the new behavior? Set “visualizeronplay” to false in your advanced settings files. Also, when queuing audio files, we now jump to the visualizer after 10 seconds. Don’t like that value? Set “secondstovisualizer” in your advanced settings file.
• FIX: The evil CoreAudio hang.
• FIX: Enrique fixed some bugs in the Plex energy saver.
• FIX: Faster startup for online video streams.
• FIX: The H.264 speed boost settings wasn’t being displayed correctly, leading people to think it was off when it was actually on.
• FIX: The A/Z key skipping not always working in directories coming from the Plex Media Server.
• FIX: Enrique improved the proxy support quite a bit for those people stuck behind proxy servers.
• PULL: Some video player fixes by elupus.
• PULL: Seeking in audio files by spiff.
• PULL: Latest scrapers, including a Amazon scrapers thanks to jelockwood.
• PULL: Latest UPnP code from c0diq.
• PULL: New Shift+letter jump browsing by jmarshall.

This release also includes a new version of the Plex Media Server, with the following changes:

• NEW: Support for iTunes and custom genre thumbnails. Place your custom JPG thumbnails in the ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/Thumbnails/Genre directory (e.g. ambient.jpg). Thanks to padexx for the idea and spaceman for the useful information.

• NEW: There is now a “Most Played” section (by artist, album, and track.
• NEW: Support for the “album artist” tag.

The release can be downloaded from here, or via Sparkle (source is here).

Poor Barkley has spent the last month recovering from a knee injury. We ended up opting for conservative management of the injury instead of surgery, and purchased him a brace from Wound Wear. He’s in good spirits, although he misses being able to go to the beach.

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 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.

I feel like I cheated you all, because we promised a release today and it’s taken us until now to fix some last minute issues and package everything up. Technically, it’s still Nov 16th, but I do realize that it will be Nov 17th for almost everyone else on the planet! My sincere apologies.
Without further ado, then, we’d like to present to you the first release of the Plex/Seven series. You know what’s in it, come take it for a spin. A few notes:

• Delete or move aside your old Application Support/Plex folder. Too many settings and other things have changed. Yes, you’ll have to rescan everything, but look on the bright side, you’ll get TV Theme music and the latest Fan Art. I recommend renaming the folder so that you can easily jump back to Plex/Five if you need to.
• There are bugs. This is the first release of a new development series. Some things that used to work are quite likely broken. Remember, the Plex/Five series (soon to be bug-fixed into the Plex/Six stable series) underwent 22 releases to reach the level of stability it’s currently at.
• Come join the forums. From the number of hits we’re getting to the Sparkle AppCast, we think we have quite a few users who aren’t forum members. We’d like to invite you to join, either for friendly support or simply for the great Pet Photos.

Last, but not least, I personally want to thank the entire Plex Team and community. The developers (Enrique, Isaac (yes, he’s coding!), James, Ryan and myself) are congealing into a seriously productive tight-knit team; it’s awesome working with you guys. The Plex testers (Miguel, Shaun, Mark M, Phunky, Mark D, Danny, and all the others) have worked hard to get the kinks out, and we really appreciate all the help. Alexis has been improving the Plex icon, tweaking the DMG art, improving the wiki look and feel, designing merchandise, and we’re very lucky to have someone so talented on the team. Jay has been working incredibly hard writing documentation to be ready for the release (an open source project with documentation???). Ben, Scott, Mike B, it’s awesome having you guys always around and willing to lend a hand. The community is brilliant, thank you all for being so friendly and supportive to our new and existing users.

And of course a special thanks to Cayce for providing the funding, bandwidth, and server to allow us to host all of the different Plex web locations.

Here it is: HTTP, Source. Enjoy!

This is Barkley at dusk with his friend Manu.

Way back when I was just starting the port to the Mac, and the program was just as likely to crash on you as play a video, I dreamed of a day when it would be stable.

In the last months, we have made 22 releases of the 0.5 series of Plex. We’ve tried to fix all the most serious bugs, and add some OS X flavor to the application in the process (not to mention all the bugs that the XBMC team has fixed). I haven’t had a crash in a long time in my own personal use, and even the bug and crash reports have slowed.

Of course, there are still problems, and still bugs. No software is ever perfect. But we feel like we’ve reached a point where it works “pretty darn well” and we’d like to formalize this by ending the 0.5 development series, and releasing 0.6. Assuming nothing got screwed up in this release, we’ll make a couple of last-minute tweaks and fixes and release as 0.6.0.

Our long-term plan with Plex was always to stabilize, then enhance. First get it working well enough, then make major architectural changes.

At the same time as we’ve been working on the 0.5 series, we’ve also been staying up late at night, working hard on new stuff. Really cool new stuff. In the coming week or so, I’m going to be posting here with details on the *NINE* enhancements to Plex that have been completed. These enhancements will be included in the first release of 0.7 (the next development series). To summarize:

• v0.6.x: This will be the new stable series. If you fear change, and just want to enjoy your media in the safety of a stable release, use these. We’ll make bug-fixes, include the latest MediaStream, but nothing too scary.
• v0.7.x: If you like living on the bleeding edge, skiing down double-black diamonds, and jumping out of planes with parachutes, this is probably the series for you.

Here are the changes in this release (available from the Plex home page, and from Sparkle shortly):

• NEW: You can now configure the way the H.264 decoder does deblocking. Some will you will know this is the “skiploopfilter” setting in ffmpeg. Some will wonder if I’m speaking English. The bottom line is, if you allow the decoder to skip doing deblocking, it’ll be less intensive for the CPU. I’ve found that if you configure it to skip all deblocking, the “killa” bird sample uses about 20% less CPU and plays at a higher frame rate. Bottom line: your mileage may vary, but it may help you with hard-to-play content.

• NEW: Support for the Home and End keys in lists. Also support for using the A/Z keys to skip to the next/previous letter in lists. Jonathan Marshall added support for this last one a while ago, cool dude that he is, so we added a mapping. Also, Isaac added a new mapping for people using Snatch on their iPhone. You’ll have to whack your Keymap.xml file in ~/Application Support/Plex/userdata to get these features.
• NEW: We have included the latest MediaStream skin (no doubt out of date by tomorrow), along with the associated code fixes so that you don’t have to hit escape 23 times to return to the main menu from the Movie/TV sections. You can see some documentation for the new settings in this version of the skin here (many thanks to Jayman978!)
• FIX: We dimmed the wrong screen when you were running with a multi-screen setup and Plex was on the second screen.
• FIX: Some MP3 tags caused a hang. This includes the “Burial” album, so bretonh will be pleased.
• FIX: Refreshing movie info from NFO in VIDEO_TS folders caused a crash.
• FIX: Storing a TV show in multiple places (e.g. some seasons in one place, some seasons in another), whether by multi-path sources or different sources led to duplicates.

We’ve of course included all the latest XBMC fixes as well, including the latest UPnP and MythTV code.

I’ve taken to opening up fresh coconuts in the back yard with a big machete. The coconut water is supposedly really healthy, and if I’m feeling inspired, I make fresh coconut milk from the pulp for a Thai curry. Barkley loves both the milk and the pulp, so mostly I just lop the coconuts in half after drinking the water and give them to him.