Plex

Plex 0.8.5: Fixes, fixes, fixes

elan — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:24:18 +0000

The Plex/Eight series is supposed to be about stability, and with all the changes we introduced in the 0.8.3 there were a few regressions that slipped in as well. We’re very sorry about that, and we’ve worked extremely hard since it was released to fix the issues introduced as well as new ones that came to light. So what happened to 0.8.4? We were on the verge of releasing it and then found a few more bugs, so we “nuked” the release. Those of you who sniffed it out on the server, you may want to upgrade now to the real thing.

Without further ado, the fixes:

FIX: A bug where Plex and the Plex Media Server could get out of sync and display the wrong contents for a directory.
FIX: An issue when stopping music playback, where the GUI “clicks” don’t restore and the playing track is still selected.
FIX: Photo thumbnails were broken for plug-ins (thanks to orr721 for the report!)
FIX: Hitting the menu button during a blank slideshow causes a crash. (thank to Majkel and other for the report!)
FIX: When a track fails to play, Plex jumps into (blank) Now Playing screen anyway.
FIX: Sometimes the photo screensaver started going “crazy fast”.
FIX: The new remote code logged too much.
FIX: The duration didn’t show up in plug-ins.
FIX: You weren’t returned to the main menu correctly from items added to your Favorites, or direct links to plug-ins in the Music section. Existing favorites will need to be removed and re-added. (James)
FIX: The iTunes plug-in now sorts artists by the “sort artist” field in iTunes. This one is for Scott!
FIX: Crashes with WebKit plug-ins that appear in the Music section.
FIX: PlexHelper occasionally stopped responding (or responded incorrectly) to button presses.
FIX: Sometimes Plex didn’t start after the first run. Believe it or not, this was an OS X bug, now worked around.
FIX: Plex hung when using the mouse wheel to scroll through text (thanks to hqrs for the report!)
FIX: Changed the servers in the TVDB scraper to use the load balanced ones. (many thanks to kruisje for the fix!)
FIX: Fixed a crash loading some RAW files.
FIX: DTS-to-AC3 was broken in the last release. Thanks to our audio doctor Ryan who fixed it and improved the AC3 trancoding in the process.
FIX: When you select “previous track” it now does the right thing with streamed content: moving to the start of the track or the previous track depending on how far along the track is (awesome, James!)

OK, so I said there were just fixes, right? I lied! James, as usual, pulled out a great new feature or two out of his hat, and we hope you enjoy them.

NEW: Plug-in preferences show up on the context menu for the plug-in itself.
NEW: Auto-sourcing of remote Plex Media Server iLife plug-ins. Let’s say you have a laptop with iTunes music, or your wife’s iMac has iPhoto on it. No longer do you have to manually add the sources, or wonder if they’ll work when you click on them. With the new version, sources add and remove themselves auto-magically thanks to Bonjour. Make sure you install the new Plex Media Server on the remote machines.

I’ll leave you with a rare sighting of the Loch Ness Barkley.

Beware the new Flash 10.1 beta

elan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:14:24 +0000

There’s a new beta out of Flash, which adds nice things like hardware H.264 decoding. Unfortunately, it also seems to not play nicely with the Media Server at the moment when using WebKit plug-ins. We’re investigating, but recommend not installing it for the moment. Caveat emptor.

Headweb Plug-in released

elan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:10:31 +0000

If you’re in Sweden, you can’t use Netflix (silly geographic restrictions), but now you can use the most excellent Headweb movie service on Plex. It’s especially exciting because the company approached us and then wrote this awesome plug-in themselves. With the excellent selection of Swedish content available, it’s no wonder that there are more Plex users per capita in Sweden than any other country!

The Headweb plug-in, provided by the Swedish online movie service Headweb.com, allows you to watch and rent films directly from your Plex-equipped living room. All 1800 films are available for rent for 24 hours. The plug-in has support for subtitles, parental filter, trailers, and is localized in Swedish and English. Headweb is currently exclusive for Swedish consumers, although expansion to other nordic countries is coming very soon. They just recently got rated Sweden’s best movie service by “Digitala Hemmet”. If you have any questions, please check out their Plex page.

Headweb plugin från filmtjänsten Headweb.com låter dig se och hyra film från ditt Plex-utrustade vardagsrum. Alla 1800 filmer finns tillgängliga som hyrfilm under 24 timmar. Pluginen har stöd för undertexter, föräldrafilter, trailers m.m. och finns på svenska och engelska. Headweb är för tillfället exklusivt för svenska användare men en utökning till övriga nordiska länder är på gång. Headweb utsågs nyligen till bästa filmtjänsten av “Digitala Hemmet”. För mer information och frågor kolla på http://www.headweb.com/180665/plex-ps3/

You can see a demonstration of the plug-in here.

It looks great!

New Plug-in releases for November 14th

iordonez — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:57:26 +0000

Do you like music videos? Then you’ll love this new plug-in written by Jonny Wray. Yahoo! Music allows you to watch thousands of music videos.

Like to watch South Park and live in Sweden? Ported by Henrik Engman, South Park SE allow you to watch every episode of South Park for free.

Written by Sander Spies is a plug-in for the Netherlands, Bekijk RTL Nieuws, RTL Z en andere RTL programma’s via RTL Gemist.

Does Sander ever sleep? Apparently not, and that’s to the benefit of our Dutch users. Bekijk programma’s van NET5, SBS6 en Veronica via Programma Gemist van SBS.

Meet our survey contest winners!

elan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:05:17 +0000

We want to thank all those who participated in the survey. We appreciate all the valuable input we received, and the time you took to give us your thoughts on Plex’s future. Without further ado, let’s meet the winners!

The winner of the brand new Mac Mini was Ian H. from Bristol in the UK. He’s been using Plex for 3 to 4 months, and he works as a software project manager (looking for the next project). His favorite Plex feature is the Academic Earth plug-in.

The winner of the Harmony One Advanced was Daniel E. from Boston, MA, who is an astrophysicist. He’s a recent convert to Plex, having switched from Boxee because he was fed up with the Hulu/Boxee war and loved “the almost infinite options to customize Plex“. When asked his favorite thing about Plex, he replied: “Several here. First, I love the forum community – it’s great to see such an organic development of the software and plugins for it. Next, the scraping is second-to-none. Finally, I’ve got to give huge props to the PlexAlaska skin, which is truly beautiful.“

The winner of the Harmony 700 was Don W. from Placentia, CA. Don has been a Plex user for about 9 months and says that Plex gave him the solution for “cutting the ‘cable cord’“. He added “Plex handles my media the way I want it, but makes it easy enough for my wife to understand.” Don is a Sales Manager for Swank Audio Visuals, and works designing Audio Visual elements for Fortune 500 meetings and events. His favorite Plex feature is the App Store and Plug-ins: “It has increased my ability to make Plex my only source of media in the house. No Cable or Satellite but I watch more content and have access to more media than ever before.”

Congratulations to our winners, and thanks again to everyone!

New Plug-in releases for November 1st

iordonez — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:45:26 +0000

Written by Jonny Wray, Earth-Touch is an online window to life in the natural world. Great high definition content!

Written by Sander Spies, Culture Catch is your vid/podcasting on-line smart culture channel for provocative, insightful, entertaining and often-irreverent discussions on trends in 21st century culture with those who are in the know.

Also written by Sander Spies, PokerNews contains video updates, interviews and commentary from the world of poker including the latest from the WSOP.

Love movie trailers? Written by Jonny Wray, Trailer Unleashed provides instant access to a large amount of trailers.

Written by Sander Spies, Bekijk alle Nederland 24 kanalen vanuit Plex. De beschikbare kanalen: 101 TV, Best 24, Consumenten 24, Cultura 24, Familie 24/Z@ppelin, Geschiedenis 24, Holland Doc 24, Humor TV 24, Journaal 24, Politiek 24, Spirit 24, Sterren 24

Happy Halloween from Plex

elan — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:31:25 +0000

To all those in countries which celebrate this holiday, we just wanted to wish you a happy, safe, and fun Halloween! This artfully carved pumpkin comes to you from the skilled hands of our very own Jay. I mean, seriously, he even got the X spot on.

The Survey Prizes

elan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:28:42 +0000

The survey will run until November 1. Also, users outside the US are absolutely eligible for the the prizes. We have always thought of Plex as an international community. If anything, the survey has shown us that most of our users are outside of the US. We intend to always treat all of our users as first class citizens.

Already filled out the survey? We sure appreciate it, and here’s how much: We’re going to be giving away some seriously cool prizes to three respondents! Those who have already taken the survey get a special thank you, as entries taken before the time of this post will get entered into the drawing twice.

Haven’t taken the survey yet? You still have time.

The prizes are:

One brand new Mac Mini (2.0 GHz, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD)
One Harmony One Advanced universal remote.
One Harmony 700 Advanced universal remote.

Not a bad deal for a few minutes of your time, so please, if you haven’t already, head to the survey and give us a piece of your mind!

Plex 0.8.3: Let it Snow (Leopard)!

elan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:19:35 +0000

UPDATE: IOSPIRIT has resolved the issue with the Candelair driver causing issues with Leopard booting. New driver version is up on their site and will be available via built-in update shortly.

We realize it’s been a little while since the last release, but hopefully the wait will have been worth it. We’re thrilled to serve you up a fresh new version of Plex (download here) with lots of bug-fixes and a few little enhancements. First up, the fixes:

[French users, be sure to read through oncleben31's blog post on the new scraper included in this release here.]

FIX: On Snow Leopard, 5.1 audio had issues. We’ve cleaned up the code, fixed the problems, and it now runs great on 10.6. Many thanks to Ryan for all his work on this one.
FIX: We fixed an issue with the new caching system that could cause some MKVs and other files to stutter when played over the network.
FIX: Video playlists work again.
FIX: Multi-part videos display thumbnails again.
FIX: Crash reading GPS EXIF data from photos.
FIX: Fix for crash when displaying subtitles (Thanks, Billy J!)
FIX: A few crashes in the Media Server (custom iTunes genre artwork, and playing Netflix movies).
FIX: First WebKit play on a fresh install didn’t work.
FIX: App Store would sometimes not show up on a fresh install.
FIX: GForce visualizer for iTunes causes Plex to crash.
FIX: TVDB image issue (thanks to Poldi!)
FIX: Posters issue in IMDB scraper (thanks, Jay!) and issue with cast lists (thanks to Todd G!)
FIX: DTS downmixing method reverted to use libdts. People who listen on headphone *may* be happier.
FIX: Make keyboard backlight feature optional (James). You can access this setting in the advanced Cocoa preferences area under the Videos tab.

To summarize, Plex should now work pretty well on Snow Leopard, and hopefully most of the annoyances and issues in the last release have been fixed. Moving right along, what other tasty nuggets await in this new release?

NEW: James revamped the Plex shutdown options, adding a beautiful UI that allows quitting, sleeping, or powering off after a specified time. Check out the screencast below to see it in action. Press ’s’ anywhere in Plex to go directly to the Quit menu. On the Quit menu, press ‘c’ on the keyboard or hold the Play button on the Apple Remote to bring up the quit timer. There are also options to Sleep and Shutdown in the Quit submenu. Press ‘c’ or hold Play on the apple remote with Sleep or Shutdown selected brings up the timers for both of those as well.
NEW: One of the longest-running complaints about Plex has been the low volume when listening to downmixed 5.1 audio. We’ve added three levels of dynamic range compression (in Preferences > System > Audio): Normal, Large, and Huge. These settings apply only to AC3 and DTS downmixed audio, and the Large and Huge settings can introduce (usually subliminal) clipping. This one is for you, Aayush!
NEW: Captions for iPhoto photos, and EXIF comment tag also used for captions.
NEW: We’re using Felix’s new Apple Remote code (thanks to Evan for integrating it!). This provides, as Apple would say “improved compatibility”.
NEW: Toggle full screen option on dock menu (thanks to Billy Joe).

Along this release comes a new improved version of the Plex Media Framework used to write plug-ins, and enhancements to the Plex Media Server itself.

NEW: Support for one-click install of plug-ins. You can now easily install plug-ins off the web without having to copy files all over the place.
NEW: Support for auto-refresh in directories.
NEW: Context menus in plug-ins.
NEW: The ability for the HTTP cache to auto-update itself.
NEW: Rating support for plug-ins, with support for community/system ratings as well as user ratings. This feature was used to great effect by David B in the upcoming update of our Netflix plug-in. Here’s an unrated movie and us rating it via the context menu item.

And here’s the movie with our rating.
NEW: Upgrade Plex WebKit libraries to 4.0.3.
NEW: Allow passing back User Agent (makes Apple Movie Trailers work again).

As has become custom in these parts, Barkley sends his greetings.

Snow Leopard thaws to the Apple Remote, thanks to Remote Buddy Author

elan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:09:30 +0000

One of our biggest disappointments with Snow Leopard was the fact that third party support for the Apple Remote was changed (or broken), and applications like Plex, EyeTV and VLC were on the receiving end. Apart from one person who posted “Plex works perfectly on Snow Leopard for me!” (who either used the keyboard exclusively, or suffered from extreme overoptimism) our forums and twittersphere filled with complaints about the new behavior, which rendered the Apple Remote practically unusable for Plex.

Our friend Evan Schoenberg looked into the issue, and ended up filing a bug with Apple, who replied “this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering“. We had high hopes for 10.6.1, but unfortunately it didn’t help. There are rumors that 10.6.2 may contain a fix, but also rumors that the change in behavior was intentional.

Over the months, we’ve also gotten to know Felix Schwarz, the author of Remote Buddy, the popular and powerful remote control solution for the Mac. He has been extremely helpful to us, reviewing our remote code, suggesting improvements, and sending us sample code. He is, without a doubt, the foremost expert on the Apple Remote outside of Apple.

After investigating the problem, he decided a few weeks ago to provide a solution himself, in the form of a free alternative driver for the IR receiver which would provide reliable exclusive access to the Apple Remote across Leopard and Snow Leopard. In addition, he’s made available an Objective-C class which makes adding Apple Remote support to an application trivially simple.

The driver itself comes in the form of a preference pane, easy to install from the web site. Once installed, you’ll be able to use Plex perfectly in Snow Leopard with the Apple Remote, with no annoying loss of exclusive access that you may have observed under Leopard.

I can’t emphasis how great this development is, and how grateful we should all be to Felix. Please consider purchasing Remote Buddy, at around $30 it’s a great deal and an extremely powerful solution for those who like to customize the way the Apple Remote works with their Mac.

We are currently testing the integration of Felix’s code into Plex (many thanks to Evan for working on this!), and this is one of the reasons why 0.8.3 is taking a bit longer than expected.

Getting to know you

elan — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:45:15 +0000

At least once a year, we like to gather data from our community to learn more about you. This is an invaluable tool for helping us prioritize our work on Plex.

If you wouldn’t mind giving a few minutes of your time, we would really, really appreciate it if you could take our latest survey, which can be found here, and let your voice be heard.

Peace out, and many thanks in advance.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:23:21 +0000

We have a few new plug-in releases for you as we finalize the next Plex/Eight release.

Written by Dave Addey, the Home Star Runner allows you to watch such favorites as Strong Bad Email and Teen Girl Squad.

Written by David Bartle, the Barats and Bereta plug-is is pure comedy. Luke Barats and Joe Bereta began collaborating in 2003 at Gonzaga University where they were active in the theater department, broadcasting department, and led the school’s improv comedy troupe. Later that year they began making short videos to amuse their friends which were eventually compiled on a website.

Finally, also written by David Bartle, the Mars Hill Church plug-in allows you to watch sermons from Pastor Mark Driscoll and others from the Mars Hill Church.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:40:52 +0000

We’re hard at work on both Plex/Nine and the next Plex/Eight release, which contains (among other things) a few fixes for Snow Leopard issues (no solution for the Apple Remote issue yet, unfortunately).

In the meantime, our brilliant group of plug-in developers continues to make available more and more content. Here are the latest four (and many thanks to Jay for the artwork, and to Isaac for being the release manager!).

Written by David Bartle, Funny or Die features funny videos with celebrities (including Will Ferrell), comedians, and you. Be sure to watch “The Landlord”, “Prop 8 the Musical” and “Protect Insurance Companies PSA”.

Next up, and written by Billy Joe is The Live Music Archive plug-in. This site is committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in the highest quality format. The Internet Archive has teamed up with etree.org to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future generations to enjoy.

For you Ruby on Rails fans, Railscasts is an very informative plugin written by David Leatherman. Every week Ryan Bates hosts a new Railscasts episode featuring tips and tricks with Ruby on Rails. These screencasts are short and focus on one technique so you can quickly move on to applying it to your own project. The topics target the intermediate Rails developer, but beginners and experts will get something out of it as well.

Lastly is Tête à Claques.TV by oncleben31. This plugin allows to watch videos from TAC.TV (also known as Tête à Claques.TV in French). You can watch videos in French or in English, grouped by vote or by date. For French videos you can browse them by character family too. This plugin is localized in French and English.

Ce plugin permet de lire les vidéos du site Tête à Claques.TV (connus aussi sous le nom de TAC.TV). Vous pourrez ainsi regarder les vidéos en français ou en anglais, classées par vote ou par date. Pour les vidéos en français il est possible de parcourir les vidéos regroupées par famille de personnage.
Le plugin est actuellement localisé en français et en anglais.

Documentation for Plug-in Developers

elan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:14:25 +0000

Since we released the Plex Media Server we’ve received a large number of requests for documentation for the Python Framework used to build plug-ins. That day has finally arrived!

We’d like to introduce you to our new Developer’s site, created by James with design help from the ever-talented Alexis.

We’re still fleshing out many of the areas of the developer’s site, but the development manual is online, the result of hours of work by James (Framework documentation) and David Bartle (site configuration documentation).

So if you’ve been waiting for documentation to tackle that plug-in project, or you simply could use a nice reference, check it out!

(And to all the brave developers who waded in without documentation and created some kick-ass plug-ins anyway: Namaste!)

New Plug-in Release: NME

iordonez — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:50:25 +0000

We have yet another plug-in for your viewing pleasure! We may still be sorting out the Snow Leopard compatibility issues, but that isn’t getting in the way of our plugin developers from making amazing plugins.

Written by Jonny Wray, NME brings you the latest music news and reviews, music videos, and gossip.

Plex on Snow Leopard: Issues and Workarounds

elan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:19:46 +0000

Snow Leopard is out, and we just wanted to take a minute and update you all on how Plex runs on this great new OS. Thanks to reports from our users as well as our own testing, we’ve found that Plex seems to have four serious issues on Snow Leopard:

Apple Remote issue: Plex is not able to gain exclusive access to the device, which causes the system to see the button presses as well. Our friend Evan looked into this and reported it to Apple as an apparent bug. Apple replied “…this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering.” One of our clever users (FortyRock) came up with a workaround, which we recommend only if you’re comfortable editing system files. It should be noted that this apparent bug affected lots of other software, such as VLC, EyeTV, Hulu Desktop, etc.
GMA X3100 issue: There are apparently corruption/color issues on systems with this chipset (more details here). There is no known fix or workaround for this issue as of yet.
Digital audio (AC3/DTS) issue: There is an apparent issue with Core Audio that prevents digital audio from playing more than once successfully. We’re investigating the problem, and there is a workaround by user dannyv45 that has helped some people out.
SMB connection issue: Plex appears to have problems connecting to a Snow Leopard SMB server. We’re investigating the issue.

So the bottom line is that if you have a system that you’re using exclusively for Plex, you’re probably better off staying with Leopard, as the new OS doesn’t bring anything in the way of advantages for Plex, and it brings a good handful of serious issues.

The one question we keep getting asked is “When will a Snow Leopard compatible Plex be released?”. Unfortunately – especially given the nature of some of the issues – it’s hard to predict. In the meantime, work continues on Plex/Nine and the next maintenance release of Plex/Eight…

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:48:24 +0000

We hope everyone has in the US has enjoyed the long weekend with the appropriate mix of alcohol and family. This week brings us three new plugins:

First up, written by Sander Spies, is an AVForums.com plug-in. AVForums is a totally free, UK based, independently run resource for people interested in home consumer electronics. AVForums covers all areas of electronic home entertainment including home cinema, DVD, digital photography, camcorders, video gaming, computer hardware and mobile phones. This plugin gives you easy access to AVForums TV (shows, features, etc.) and podcasts.

Also written by Sander Spies is South Park NL, Bekijk volledige afleveringen van South Park.

Written by Jappen, Viasat Play erbjuder gratis streamning från fyra av Sveriges största TV-kanaler, TV3, TV6, TV8 och Viasat Sport. Se alla dina favoritavsnitt precis när du vill eller följ sportevenemang live. Enkelt och bekvämt levererat genom Plex.

We hope you enjoy the new plug-ins!

New Plug-in Release: That Guy with the Glasses

iordonez — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:14:48 +0000

We have another plug-in for your viewing pleasure, while we sort out the Snow Leopard compatibility issues.

Written by Gordon Johnston, That Guy with the Glasses is your one stop site for 5 Second Movies, Bum Reviews, Nostalgia Critic, and Ask That Guy.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:33:23 +0000

A couple more plug-ins for your viewing pleasure:

First up, written by Jonny Wray, Subpop records allows you to listen to music and watch music videos by one of Seattle’s most prolific record labels.

Also written by Jonny Wray, iMovies plugin allow you to stream hundreds of free public domain movies, films and cartoons.

Written by Sander Spies, Zie.nl is een Nederlandse videosharing-site waar je eenvoudig video’s kunt bekijken, uploaden en uitzenden op je eigen persoonlijke kanaal. Met deze plugin kun je de leukste en populairste video’s zien. Je kunt browsen op categorie, kanalen van gebruikers bekijken of zoeken op steekwoorden (tags).

PBS and SVT Play

elan — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:20:45 +0000

Thanks to new features in Plex v0.8.2, we’re happy to announce a little bit of plug-in news.

We’ve had thousands of downloads of the SVT Play plug-in, and we just pushed an update. The plug-in, among other things, now has support for full and instant seeking within the videos. Daniel Eriksson, Mattias Norlander, Ivar Åsell, and Andreas (tassitassi) worked hard updating the plug-in.

PBS has been a popular request for quite some time now, and a feature added in the latest Plex finally made this possible. So now you can enjoy all 27 programs offered from the PBS website, browse by topic or by collection, see what the most popular shows are, or search for videos.

Enjoy the updates!

Plex 0.8.2: Silky Smooth

elan — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:15:20 +0000

It wasn’t until I was over at a friend’s house playing with Plex v0.8.1 that I realized how much better this new version is. We’ve targeted two major causes of user interface delay (beach balling) in this release (starting streams and browsing through directories) and the results should make your experience much better than it used to be. As always, many thanks to the talented group of plug-in developers who keep expanding the content tree, as well as help us track down bugs!

If you’re just joining us, you can find helpful and friendly support on the forums (welcome 10,000th user!), or follow us via Twitter. Heck, you can even follow Barkley on Twitter. Or buy us a beer via the donate link at the right.

NEW: Allow Plex Media Server photo sources to be used for the slideshow screensaver. It’s kind of nice to have a subfolder of Web Gallery of Art as your screensaver, your date will be impressed.

NEW: This has been a popular request for those of you without surround receivers. We’ve added a new setting that links OS X sound volume with Plex sound volume. This means that you can use your Apple Remote for *all* of your volume changes, including all the WebKit plug-ins. (For those of you with surround receivers, you’ll continue to use your receiver’s remote for all of your volume changes.)

NEW: This is one that’s bothered me for ages. Setting the cache size in Megabytes is really silly, because the amount you want to cache depends on the bandwidth of the content. For example, if you set it high, your Apple Movie Trailers might play without stuttering, but then that low bandwidth FLV would take forever to buffer. With this version, we’re introducing Bandwidth-based Caching®, which dynamically adjusts the size of the cache depending on the needs of the stream. The result: lower bandwidth streams start faster, and higher bandwidth streams play with less stuttering. Also as a consequence, the cache settings now look quite a bit more simple. You simply specify the number of seconds of media that you would like to cache.

NEW: Greatly improved responsiveness when browsing. Things like entering or leaving a big list of items (e.g. iTunes artists list) that could hang the entire interface for 5-15 seconds are now instant.

NEW: Thanks to James, the keyboard backlight turns off during videos playing so you can grope your date more easily.

NEW: Maverick214 on the forums submitted a great patch for displaying the end time for videos. Always nice to know how much longer you’re going to be tortured watching So You Think You Can Dance.

NEW: We’ve added a “Shuffle” context menu item for the photos area.

NEW: Do you like having your cake and eating it too? Do you like the Now Playing screen, but wish you could induce epileptic fits in your pets with the visualizer at the same time? Luckily for you, Scott was stuck on a plane, armed with a laptop and he hacked together this perfect marriage. Not for you? Simply select the “Hide Now Playing in Visualizer” in the Skin settings.

NEW: Improved Snow Leopard support. There are still a few glitches, but Plex now runs quite well on the new kitty.

NEW: James cleaned up the shutdown options for Plex. In the skin settings, you can select which of Quit, Sleep, or Shut Down appears on the main menu. If you want to access the other choices, you simply hit “right” to pick another option. If you have your Harmony remote mapped to something custom, you can use the actions Plex.Quit, Plex.SleepSystem, and Plex.ShutDownSystem.

NEW: We display error messages when an item fails to play (as opposed to silently returning to the menu).

Along with all these additions, we’ve fixed quite a few bugs:

FIX: Manually added PMS sources can be removed via context menu (James).

FIX: The default folder for the slide show was set to “F:/” (#303)

FIX: Fixed an issue when Auto-Subtitles are enabled, we weren’t allowing manual activation of other subtitles if they were automatically disabled.

FIX: Crash in the Media Server in iTunes plug-in.

FIX: James made some minor tweaks to menu/keyboard handling, so that the ‘Move focus to the menu bar’ command (mapped to ^F2) works, and also ⌘W now closes the About window.

FIX: We now scrobble to Last.fm as “Plex”.

FIX: Thumbnails obtained from the Plex Media Server are all stored in their own directory, and given a limited time to live, so that you shouldn’t need to go manually whack icons or fanart any more. In addition, thumbnails created by the Plex Media Server with Quick Look are also only cached for a limited amount of time.

FIX: Removed the System Info window, which really wasn’t doing much good (thanks to James).

FIX: Disable cross-fading by default (also thanks to James).

FIX: Fixed an error in the keymap (thanks to Mickey for reporting, and James for fixing).

FIX: The Plex Media Server quit confirmation dialog didn’t always appear on top (James).

FIX: Improved A/V sync, those with senses tuned to this sort of stuff should find it better behaved.

FIX: iTunes visualizers didn’t show elapsed time (thanks to Daniel for reporting it).

FIX: Resume point for videos is now saved when quitting.

FIX: Years weren’t showing up in IMDB matches.

FIX: On updates or restarts, PlexHelper (and thus Apple Remote) could stop working.

FIX: If you had the Plex Media Server set to “Always running” it would not start on boot.

FIX: A crash starting a zoomed MKV (with software upscaling enabled).

FIX: A crash on startup with audio device changes.

Also, we’ve worked on the interaction between Plex and the Media Server, as well as the Python Framework. James just pushed the official v1.0 to the store, and he’ll be blogging about all the great changes in the final release. Note that all plug-in caches and data will be reset because of changes to the encoding, which means that you will need to re-enter login data into some plug-ins (we apologize for this).

NEW: We now support redirection from HTTP to RTMP, MMS, and WebKit streams.

NEW: Site configurations can live inside plug-ins.

NEW: We check for other Python files changing besides __init__.py inside of Contents/Code.

NEW: Seek bars are allowed to specify small/large percentages to jump.

NEW: Video items can specify bandwidth if they wish to override the automatically computed bandwidth (also useful for some FLV files where it’s not possible to extract it).

NEW: You can pass back cookies from the Media Server to Plex, which is useful for accessing authenticated content.

FIX: The Preferences item refreshes parent, useful for displaying/hiding sub-menus based on logged in status (James)

FIX: Javascript seek bars didn’t reset properly.

FIX: String keys are now allowed for album media items.

FIX: The Plex Media Server would crash if a site configuration moved to an unknown state.

FIX: Showing a message dialog at the top level of a plug-in didn’t work right.

FIX: The Media Server didn’t forward requests to the right plug-in when they shared a common prefix (James)

I know it’s been quite a while since the last release, and really, that only means one thing. You are owed, collectively, lots and lots of Barkley.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:03:08 +0000

Holy Cow, Batman, we have such a great group of plug-in developers, it’s hard to keep up with them. Here’s a new batch to keep you entertained. The next release of Plex will be out shortly, especially since my little island is about to be ravaged by a tropical storm. Also, many thanks to Jay for providing the artwork for many of these plug-ins!

First up, and written by Gordon Johnston, Gametrailers lets you watch new video game trailers, and read reviews and previews of upcoming video games from GameTrailers.com.

Written by Jonny Wray, Howcast is the best source for fun, free, and useful how-to videos and guides.

Also written by Jonny Wray, the MPORA plug-in provides pictures and videos of Skateboarding, Surfing, Snowboarding, BMX, MTB, Motocross & Extreme Sports.

Written by Sander Spies, Bekijk live TV streams van TMF of blader door de videoclip database en bekijk clips van diverse artiesten.

Also written by Sander Spies, Gamekings bespreekt en beoordeeld wekelijks diverse videogames. Je vindt hier reviews, previews, interviews en trailers. Kortom, alles op het gebied van games!

Also written by Sander Spies, who never seems to rest, Nrc.tv biedt losse en informele televisiek. In nrc nu bespreken NRC-redacteuren, -correspondenten en -columnisten de actualiteit of een belangrijk evenement. In nrc rocks presenteert 3FM-dj Eric Corton per webcam zijn band, artiest of track van de week. In nrc kamatube registreert NRC-cartoonist en tv- en theatermaker Kamagurka elke week met zijn cameraman de absurditeit van het leven. In nrc kookt maakt kookschrijfster Janneke Vreugendhil elke week een recept voor het weekeinde.

Yet another plug-in written by Sander Spies, Radio Books is a plug-in which provides stories by Dutch and Flemish authors written and read aloud on commission to deBuren. They are new stories which have been specially written to be listened to and not to appear in print. Radio Books last between 20 and 30 minutes. The stories are read aloud by the authors in front of an audience once only. In addition, Radio Books are broadcast on the radio and distributed via the internet, where they can be listened to or downloaded free of charge. Radio Books are a nostalgic product of the present age. A new distribution technique via the World Wide Web is linked to one of our oldest traditions: storytelling.

Radioboeken kun je nergens lezen. Het zijn verhalen door Nederlandse en Vlaamse auteurs speciaal geschreven op verzoek van deBuren. Voor het eerst en voor het laatst lazen de auteurs bij deBuren hun verhaal voor.

Available languages: English, Dutch, French and Spanish

Last, but not least, Ryan McNally wrote a plug-in for the HD Trailers site, which was created for the sole purpose of allowing you to easily download HD (High Definition) movie trailers. Great for you trailer junkies out there.

Celebrating our 100th plug-in

iordonez — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:33:56 +0000

While we’re putting the final touches on the next Plex release, we thought we’d release a new batch of plug-ins for your enjoyment, including some for our international users. Major kudos to our prolific team of plug-in developers, we now have over 100 plug-ins in the store, and many more in progress.

Starting the batch, off is a FOX News plug-in written by Sander Spies. Watch breaking news, or your favorite news and commentary shows.

Written by Gordon Johnston, The Guardian plug-in features the latest news, sport, business, commentary, analysis and reviews from the world’s leading liberal voice in news.

Written by Jonny Wray, Bicycling Magazine is the world’s leading road biking, mountain bike, and cycling magazine. Find bike and gear reviews, cycling and mountain biking tips, training articles, expert biking advice, bicycle maintenance know-how, and a dedicated biking community.

Written by Gordon Johnston, Cranky Geeks features content from John C. Dvorak, whose crankiness knows no bounds. Dvorak is a contributing editor of PC Magazine, for which he has been writing two columns, including the popular Inside Track, since 1986.

Written by Gordon Johnston, Pixel Corps features video and audio shows from the from the guild, covering news and technical overviews from the worlds of media, video productions and Apple tech.

Trailer Addict, also written by Jonny Wray, features HD movie trailers, teasers, TV spots, clips and featurettes for upcoming, new, and classic films.

ARTE ist ein europäisches Kulturprogramm, das sich an alle weltoffenen und neugierigen Bürger in Europa wendet, insbesondere in Frankreich und Deutschland. Über ARTE+7 stellt ARTE Teile seines Programms der vergangenen sieben Tage online zu Verfügung.

ARTE est une Chaîne culturelle européenne qui s’adresse à tous les téléspectateurs curieux et ouverts sur le monde, partout en Europe et en particulier en France et en Allemagne. ARTE +7 permet de visionner certains programmes d’ARTE pendant les sept jours qui suivent leur première diffusion.

ARTE is written by Christian Sabor.

Written by Gordon Johnston, DL.TV is for tech fans, by tech fans. It features some of the most timely and honest views about what is going on in tech today!

Bandes-annonces, Extraits vidéos, Making-of, Trailer, Haute définition, Teaser, Podcast, Interviews

Allocine.com is written by oncleben31.

One last note: The plug-in authors should check the released versions, as they may include minor changes or fixes.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:56:14 +0000

It’s a Tuesday night, you’re bored, the North Koreans aren’t launching missiles at your state, and you’re media hungry. Well, you’re in luck. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our brilliant team of plug-in developers, we have a few more plug-ins to offer you. (Actually, I think 14 counts as more than a few.) Again, many thanks to Andreas W. for the highly skilled graphic design work.

First up is Picasa Web, written by Ian Gratton. Browse your private online library or your friends’ libraries, or search for photos.

Have you ever wanted to listen to radio stations on Shoutcast with Plex and been frustrated with the poor user interface? Just install the new Shoutcast plug-in, set your preferences (minimum bit-rate, sort order), and browse through thousands of streams.

Next up, written by our own Scott, Miro is a plug-in that taps the Miro Directory, an open content directory which offers over 6,000+ internet TV shows and video podcasts. Organized by genre or language, there is something for everyone in here (including a fair number of sheep, apparently).

Forum user beowulfe was kind enough to write a few plug-ins guaranteed to please your better looking half. Sure, they might complain when you watch 24 or don’t take the garbage out, but sit them in front of these plug-ins and you’ll likely be able to sneak off with your mates for a beer.

First up is HGTV for all your home design, decorating, home improvement or landscaping projects.

Next up is The Food Network, which has lots of content including Ace of Cakes, Good Eats, 30 Minute Meals and Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.

MakingOf.com, written by the prolific Ryan McNally, is a behind-the-scenes Web portal that provides an intimate, fresh look into the process of making a movie by the insiders themselves. Lots of cool content here.

“RTL NOW” ist die Marke für zeitsouveräne TV-Nutzung von RTL-Formaten. Seit Januar 2007 können Sie auf dem Video-Abruf-Portal RTLNOW.de einen großen Teil des RTL-Programms für sieben Tage nach Ausstrahlung kostenlos per Stream ansehen. Highlights lassen sich schon unmittelbar nach der TV-Ausstrahlung abspielen.

Author: Robert Nio

Ask A Ninja is an award-winning series of comedy videos about the image of ninja in popular culture. Watch the latest episode or any past episodes in Plex.

Elk jaar staat Utrecht tien dagen in het teken van de Nederlandse film. Dan vindt het Nederlands Film Festival plaats dat gericht is op de Nederlandse cinema in al zijn facetten. Bekijk hier de vodcast en andere online video’s van het festival (o.a. trailers, interviews en verslagen vanaf het festivalterrein).

Author: Sander Spies

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, also by Ryan McNally, is a webcomic written and drawn by Chris Hastings and inked by Kent Archer. Published three times a week on its own website, it features the fictional adventures of a character named Dr. McNinja, a thirty-five-year-old doctor who also happens to be a ninja.

Am Samstag, dem 20. September 2003, um 13 Uhr ging die wöchentliche Computersendung c’t magazin im hessen fernsehen erstmals auf Sendung. Serviceorientiert und unterhaltsam berichtet c’t magazin jeweils dreißig Minuten lang über die ganz alltäglichen Probleme beim Umgang mit Computern, Handys und dem Internet. Woche für Woche nimmt die von Mathias Münch moderierte Magazinsendung neue Produkte ebenso unter die Lupe wie die Qualität von Dienstleistungen.

Author: Robert Nio

8-Bit Theater, written by Ryan McNally, is a comic based on the video game Final Fantasy I, following the four Light Warriors in their quest to vanquish the King of Demons, Chaos.

Freecaster.tv, written by Jonny Wray, is the premier source of free high quality extreme sports videos. Watch LIVE webcast, streaming, replays and on-demand best sports video.

GameSpy, also by Ryan McNally, is all about video games. You can find walkthroughs and reviews of games for the PC, XBox, and numerous other platforms.

One last note: The plug-in authors should check the released versions, as they may include minor changes or fixes.

New Plug-in Releases

iordonez — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:39:52 +0000

Things have been quiet on the blog recently, but behind the scenes we’re busy working on some exciting new features, and Plex/Nine is beginning to take shape.

In the meantime, our plug-in developer community has been doing some absolutely amazing work. We’ve had such a deluge of new plug-ins that we’ve revamped our workflow and created a Lighthouse project to manage things better. Huge props to Ryan McNally, Gordon, Ian, Robert, Nikolas, Rick, Scott, and all the others that make the plug-in space so rich and exciting.

Isaac has been kind enough to take on the role of release manager and has been working tirelessly, coordinating the efforts of the plug-in developers, framework developers, and designers. Not to mention he’s written some new plug-ins!

Additionally, the very skilled Andreas W. (tassitassi on the forums) has joined us and is contributing a huge amount of artwork and icon design for new plug-ins (and improving existing art). This guy is incredibly talented!

Onto the new plugins; first up is MSNBC, written by Isaac. This is one that can certainly help users in “cutting the cable”. Use it to stay current with daily news updates in health, entertainment, business, science, technology and sports video.

Hot on the heels of MSNBC is an update to our CNN plugin (also by Isaac, who’s rapidly becoming a Python god) that allows you to watch live CNN news streams. While the streams are generally only available Monday-Friday 7AM-8PM PST I think this is going to fill a huge gap currently missing in the content tree. The only thing that would make it better is if we could get James Earl Jones to say “This…is Plex”.

Next up, and written by Gordon Johnston, Pro at Cooking is a comedic cooking show hosted by Dave Lee, also known by his Chinese name Dawei. Each episode features a female assistant, who tends to be a victim of chauvinism (in the name of humor). The series is filmed in Toronto.

One note: Isaac made the Eggplant Parmesan for his wife and he can’t stop talking about it.

Also written by Gordon Johnston, Interview Project by David Lynch is a neat site which features a road trip where people are interviewed across the country. Really cool idea, and really cool content.

Written by Jdevoo, The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism periods (1100-1850), containing over 21,300 reproductions. Never took art history in college? Crack open a beer and stare at some art. Use it to impress a date.

Next up, written by the prolific Gordon Johnston, the BBC Podcasts plugin allows access to BBC podcasts on a variety of topics, and is accessible outside of the UK.

Last up is an update to The White House plugin which adds support for much more video content and also adds a Photos section with the latest photos from the White House’s flickr feed. Rumor has it that Obama relaxes at the end of the day in front of Plex.

One last note: The plug-in authors should check the released versions, as they may include minor changes or fixes.

Boing Boing Video now available on Plex

elan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:27:05 +0000

We were super excited when Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing contacted us to see if we could provide access through Plex to their excellent video site. An hour and a couple of emails later, we have an easy and fun way to browse Boing Boing Video while sitting on your couch.

For those of you new to Plex, you can download the latest version from here. After you’ve installed, start Plex and head to the App Store:

Since Boing Boing Video is one of our featured plug-ins, you can find it in the Featured Section. Simple select the plug-in to install it.

Once you’ve installed the plug-in, you can find it in the Videos section off the main menu. Sit back, open up a beverage of your choice, and watch some great content.

Release 0.8.1: Crazy Delicious

elan — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:15:51 +0000

Remember how when Windows 3.0 came out, it really sucked, and it wasn’t until 3.1 that Microsoft got things right? Well, I’d like to think of this release (download here) as being the “Windows 3.1″ release of Plex. We’ve fixed a lot of issues, and this version should be much more stable than the previous one. Additionally, the people who were staying with v0.7.13 because of issues with BluRay rips in subsequent versions can now download this version without fear.

FIX: Idle CPU reduced greatly. On an iMac we went from 24% to around 9.8%. On a 1.83GHz Mini we went from 38% to 16%. Al Gore is happy.
FIX: Hang when playing WebKit content after 5.1 content.
FIX: A few issues causing App Store/plug-ins to disappear.
FIX: Hang on exit (when Media Server Scrobbler was enabled).
FIX: Cannot play/browse AC/DC (and other artists with funky names) from the iTunes library. Heavy metal fans rejoice!
FIX: Scrobbling plays of AAC files to the Plex Media Server wasn’t working.
FIX: Crash on start when Plex Media Server was run on a computer without Plex.
FIX: Intermittant lack of audio when starting 5.1 videos when background music/themes was enabled. (We also disabling the fading, which was not helping.)
FIX: VC-1 apparent regression in ffmpeg 0.5 which caused much higher CPU usage and related problems. Ryan and I resolved it by reverting to an earlier version of the codec. Thanks to Peter for bringing the issue to our attention, and to Aaron for help in tracking it down.
FIX: View Slideshow context menu items weren’t enabled for top-level photo plug-ins.
FIX: Jay and Isaac tweaked the default settings for IMDB to make sure the best quality posters are returned.
FIX: James made some tweak to Now Playing. The flip time is now configurable in the Advanced Settings Cocoa UI (Make it flip every 5 seconds! Make your child and/or pets motion sick!) Additionally, the background is more in line with look of MediaStream.
FIX: We’ve defaulted the automatic audio stream selection to false, as we think that default makes more sense (Thanks, Isaac! You can turn it off manually yourself in the video player preferences.) We also fixed an issue with the auto-selection of subtitles if the auto-selection of audio streams was disabled.
FIX: We pulled the latest libdcr code which decodes RAW images (it fixes some pink-hue issues with newer cameras).
FIX: As forum user “someone” reported, the German strings were botched in the previous version.
FIX: Sébastien Vaast kindly send us updates to the French translation.
FIX: We fixed a possible crash with Javascript seek bars in site profiles.
FIX: Relative coordinates on “thumb” seek-bars were broken, many thanks to Robert Nio for reporting the issue and testing the fix.
FIX: We pulled the latest XBMC UPnP code, in hopes this would help with some problems reported on the forums. We also pulled a fix related to the sendkey HTTP-API command, and a few other fixes.

We’ve been taking Barkley more and more to the pool as he continues his recovery from his CCL injury. So far he’s doing great and is really happy to get in the water.

New Plug-in Releases

elan — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:37:00 +0000

As we fix some of the bugs that slipped into the first release of Plex/Eight, we thought we’d offer up some new content for you to enjoy. The very cool thing about this batch of plug-ins is that they have been created almost entirely by the Plex community!

First up is I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER written by Bart Dorsey, a plug-in that we’ve all been loving. It allows you to browse pictures from a huge selection of funny sites like the Fail Blog, Pundit Kitchen, and of course the eponymous site itself.

Next up, great for the kiddies, is Sesame Street. Written by Beowulfe, it gives you access to hundreds of short videos from years of the show.

Written by one of our most prolific plug-in authors, Gordon Johnston, Llewtube provides access to content from Robert Llewellyn’s Car Pool video blog. Robert (of Red Dwarf fame), has taken to driving around with interesting people and filming the whole thing.

Written by Brad Dolman, Tripleman is a photo blog from a Vancouver photographer.

This next plug-in, written by pygmalion (great job!), provides HD content from fxguide, which is a leading site covering visual effects in filmmaking. They’re all streamed at 720p, professionally produced, and have great content; for example, the most recent one features an interview with J.J. Abrams.

This was requested on the forums; the Bill Moyers Journal has lots of great content, including thought-provoking interviews and discussions.

Lastly, I tossed together a quick plug-in for Adam Carolla’s podcast.

Additionally, a few plug-ins were updated. Rick Fletcher finished a brilliant update to his Major League Baseball plug-in which now provides access to MLB.TV. Rick has really pushed the envelope with this plug-in, and we had to add some new Media Server features to make this plug-in work.

I also pushed a minor update to the NPR plug-in which provides much better metadata so that it looks better in the Now Playing window.

There are a lot more plug-ins in the works (some nearly done), so expect a new batch pushed to the App Store in the next few weeks.

One last note: The plug-in authors should check the released versions, as they may include minor changes or fixes.

Plex/Eight Released

elan — Mon, 11 May 2009 03:16:56 +0000

First of all, happy Mother’s day to all the Plex moms out there! (Remember, Plex Dads, a new Plex release is not a substitute for flowers or a nice call.)

We’re very pleased to announce the first release of our stable Plex/Eight series. It’s been a long road, but we’re quite happy with the stability, especially given the massive amount of new functionality. You can download it here.

We’ve already started work on the Plex/Nine series, and you’ll be seeing lots of change between here and the official “1.0″ release. We know what areas need the most work (the library, usability) and we have a few surprises up our sleeve which we hope you’ll enjoy.

We’d like to give a really, really big shout out to our growing community of plug-in developers. The response to the new Framework has been tremendous, the plug-ins are flowing in, and we’ve gotten great feedback from everyone. Thank you all very much! As promised, James and I are heads down on documentation and will have something for you to look at very shortly. We’re also working on some updates to the App Store to improve the “regionalization” which will make it easier for our users around the world to get to the plug-ins that work for them. A pox on content providers who limit the content to only certain areas of our little blue planet.

This release consists primary of bug-fixes, but we’ve added the usual treats. As Chuck Norris said, “Anything else would be less than civilized”.

NEW: Have you ever been annoyed by a video playing with subtitles even though the audio track is in your native language? Or having to look through all the 24 subtitle tracks in the MKV just to find the one in your language? Annoying, right? Plex/Eight auto-manages subtitles and audio tracks based on your language setting (i.e. the OS X language setting). For example, if your language is set to English, videos with English audio tracks won’t display any subtitles, whereas a foreign film will display English subtitles. If the language is set to Portuguese (Olá amigos!), an English film with lots of subtitles will auto-pick the Portuguese ones.
Likewise, for those of you encoding dual 5.1/stereo tracks in your MP4 files, Plex will pick the AC3 track if the receiver is AC3-capable and the tracks have language tags.

These options are both on by default, and they will not override per-video settings. Also, note that some video files don’t have language information for the audio and subtitle tracks. The code tries to be clever, but it’s not magic.
NEW: James whipped up a cool animation for the Now Playing screen. Those of you with Plasma screens can now rest easy. The animation triggers every two minutes. Drink some nice red wine and stare at the screen.
NEW: There are more and more of you using the Plex Media Server to stream your iTunes libraries to Plex, and a common request was to update the play counts and mark podcasts as viewed. In Plex/Eight, Plex now “scrobbles” plays to the Media Server, which updates the iTunes library (note that since it uses AppleScript, you’ll need to have iTunes running on the machine where the Plex Media Server is, and it will be started by OS X if it’s not). This feature is off by default, and you can enable it in the Media Server section of the preferences.
NEW: Anamorphic zoom mode. Falk Husemann submitted a patch to change the 16×9 zoom mode to work with projectors which have anamorphic lenses attached. You can read more about this sort of set up here. You can enable this new mode by setting true in your advanced settings.

And the fixes:

FIX: Sometimes album art didn’t show up in the Now Playing window.
FIX: Remote fanart (e.g. iTunes) wasn’t showing up.
FIX: Very slow start/skipping tracks for music. We made some improvements to the Media Server, and the ever-skilled jmarshall committed a nice related fix which we pulled. You won’t believe how much faster it is.
FIX: Speaking of performance, a big shout out to Jens Kleemann, who has been working for a while on analyzing and improving the performance of Plex. A few weeks ago, he told me that one of the main sources of the idle CPU usage was in some code that was locking and unlocking a mutex. He even sent over a patch that did less locking, and Plex took less CPU with the fix. Now this didn’t seem right to me, as a thread that is blocked on a mutex doesn’t consume any CPU. One night I looked over the mutex code, and I noticed a line of debug code that got the thread’s Mach port. I’d put this line in when I was trying to track down a threading issue *ages* ago, and it wasn’t used anymore. Except, as it turns out, it was responsible for consuming about a quarter of Plex’s CPU usage when idle. So a big thank you to Jens, and a big apology from me. Just think how many trillion of instructions your computers have executed for no good reason because of me. I might actually be responsible for global warming.
FIX: We’ve changed the thumbnailing code for photos to use a single thumb instead of four, by popular request.
FIX: Nikolas Stephan kindly submitted a patch so that Last.fm scrobbling works with tracks played from the Plex Media Server.
FIX: Nikolas Stephan also submitted a patch which allows selecting folders for the photo screensaver, apparently something which used to work.
FIX: We restart the Plex Media Server when we quit after 5.1 play (or upon restart after a crash). This is needed to work around a CoreAudio/WebKit issue, and you would have seen this issue as WebKit videos playing back without audio.
FIX: We automatically remove empty iLife sources, so if you don’t have Aperture, it won’t show up, for example.
FIX: GlimmerBlocker no longer prevents WebKit plug-ins from working.
FIX: The new wider list view works with the “hide thumbs” option.
FIX: Some SSA subtitles (e.g. Chinese) didn’t render correctly.
FIX: James made some fixes to background music; the volume level of the background music shouldn’t be quieter than regular music, and fixed a couple of problems with it not restarting properly. Also, it’ll fade out when starting a video.
FIX: The fonts have been fixed in the Now Playing window for the Original font set.
FIX: A possible crash in the Plex Media Server.
FIX: Better keyboard mappings for the Now Playing window and Mira (thanks to marklight!)
FIX: We pulled the latest IMDB scraper from XBMC (thanks to aaron and Jay for testing it out!) and this should fix it bringing down incorrect posters when the IMPA awards option is on.
We also pulled a good bunch of code fixes from XBMC. (No Aeon fixes, sorry.)

Next up will be a big release of new and enhanced plug-ins, and then back to work on Plex/Nine.

Today also happens to be Barkley’s forth birthday. We brought him to the beach for the first time since his injury around five months ago. He swam, caught a few waves, and then rolled around in the sand in pure delight.

New Plug-in Releases

elan — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:57:02 +0000

We can’t help it, writing plug-ins is addictive. Here are a bunch of new ones to keep you happy and entertained in front of your TV. A step closer to killing cable?

Charlie Rose has thousands of hours of interviews with highly interesting people. Everyone from J.J. Abrams to Sean Penn to Yo-Yo Ma has been on his show.

The Comedy Central plug-in, written by Scott, provides lots of stand up comedy, roasts, and episodes from shows on that channel.

This next one was requested on the forums, and was quite simple to code. There is a ton of great news content on here for fans of the New York Times.

Written by Gordon Johnston, who’s been kicking some serious ass, the NBC plug-in offers hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of programming, from old-school shows like the A-Team to the latest season of ER.

This last one is my favorite, being that I’m a big fan of indie music. Recommended if you like the Pitchfork Media plug-in, the site has lots of great up and coming artists.