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[Hendrik]

This is the latest version of Gizmo (JRiver's Android application).  Please post bugs here.  Please start a new thread for anything requiring discussion.  Non-bug posts will be deleted.

Download: http://jriver.com/install_gizmo.html

[Edit by JimH -- The download link will work, but better to install from the Play Store.]

The build will move to the Play Store at a later date, after testing here.

19.0.133 / 88 (May 8, 2014)

NEW: Support for streaming to ChromeCast.
Fixed: Further increased stability when seeking in Videos.
Changed: Increased the size limit of playlists from 100 to 1000 tracks when controlling a remote Media Center server.

19.0.114 / 87 (February 3, 2014)

Fixed: Video could show in the wrong aspect ratio on some Android versions.
Fixed: Seeking in streaming Video could result in playback aborting and returning to the library browser.
Fixed: Seeking to the same position twice (ie. back to start) could fail.

19.0.113 / 86 (January 31, 2014)

NEW: Support for streaming video from Media Center using HTTP Live Streaming (requires MC 19.0.113 or newer, and Android 4.0 or newer).

19.0.110 / 85 (January 28, 2014)

NEW: Ratings are shown and can be changed on the Playing Now screen.
Fixed: Browsing Album folders with extra large thumbnails could result in an out of memory condition causing Gizmo to hang.

19.0.108 / 84 (January 21, 2014)

Changed: The seek bar will only act after releasing the handle, allowing for more precise seek control (especially with video).
Fixed: Trying to seek in a file currently being written to the cache could cause Gizmo to hang.
Fixed: The On-Screen Android Navigation Bar would not hide again during video playback when it was manually shown by interacting with the screen.
Changed: The Playing Now screen will show the title of the file which was last playing when in "Stopped" state, if any.

19.0.107 / 83 (January 15, 2014)

NEW: Gizmo reacts to headset Play/Pause commands from simple one-button cable headset controls (ie. the default headsets from many phones).
NEW: Playback is automatically paused when a headset is disconnected, to avoid potentially unwanted "noisy" playback.
NEW: Optimized Playing Now view in landscape orientation.

19.0.88 / 82 (December 6, 2013)

NEW: Updated Playing Now buttons.
Changed: Added the ability to disable playback caching in Options.

19.0.50 / 81

NEW: Added ability to customize the number of files that get downloaded ahead in a playlist.
Fixed: Cache pruning was not working properly in some cases, causing the download cache to grow too large (should be capped at 512MB).
Changed: When silently reconnecting, Gizmo will issue wake requests (previously it only issued wake requests when connecting manually).

19.0.41 / 80

NEW: Repeat mode is optional (in Menu > Options > Repeat mode).
Fixed: The list of zones would not appear with build 40.

19.0.40 / 79

Changed: Gizmo uses the mime type application/octet-stream for audio file transfers to avoid ISP or carrier blocking (requires MC 19.0.39 or newer).

19.0.39 / 78

NEW: Added lock screen controls while playing on the device.
NEW: Bluetooth track information is provided when playing on the device (using AVRCP).
NEW: Bluetooth controls work while the screen is off.
Fixed: Web radio streams that were stored in the library or playlists were not playable on the device.  
Faster: When clicking the header to switch modes while connected to a dead server, the menu of choices will appear much faster.
Fixed: In some cases 'Error communicating with server' could show incorrectly on the screen.

19.0.38 / 77 (September 12, 2013)

Fixed: The cache downloader could crash in some cases.

19.0.35 / 76 (September 4, 2013)

NEW: Added thumbnail size option (menu button at top right > Options).
NEW: Added a screen lock option to keep the screen on (dim or bright) while Gizmo is showing (useful for tablet installations).
Changed: The volume up and down commands work when playing on the device (for cases when there are no hardware volume buttons).
Changed: Bluetooth play and pause commands will trigger the play/pause button (for devices without a play/pause button).
Changed: Stopping playback stops the read-ahead caching system from working ahead.
Fixed: Playback stats are fired when playback starts instead of when the cache reads-ahead for a file (requires MC 19.0.35 or newer).
Fixed: When playing a video, playback would sit at a black screen instead of return to the browse screen in 19.0.32.

19.0.32 / 75 (August 28, 2013)

NEW: Added the ability to 'Play (with Play Doctor)' from anywhere in the audio browse tree.
NEW: When a server call fails, the program will retry a few times.
NEW: The program will attempt to automatically switch the server IP address as it transitions from wifi to data.
NEW: File playback caching uses ranged requests so an interrupted download is resumed instead of restarted.
Faster: When there is no wifi or ethernet, connecting to a server will skip local addresses.
Changed: Audio playback loops the playlist until stopped (unless the playlist is only one track).
Changed: Added a system so that partial cache entries (from a crash or other problem) will never get used.

19.0.31 / 74

NEW: Improved cache system so that the playback of the first file also plays from cache (but playback still starts immediately).

19.0.30 / 73

NEW: Playback on device uses a caching system that reads-ahead and keeps files between runs, increasing reliability with weak connections.
Faster: Browsing switches screens faster.
Faster: Android 4 devices load thumbnails concurrently for improved performance.
Faster: When connected to MC19, thumbnails load faster.  

18.0.180 / 72

Changed: Errors communicating with the server show an information bubble, but don't cause the program to automatically reconnect to the server.
Changed: When acting as a remote, an error communicating with the server to get information about what's playing will look more transparent.
Changed: When playing on the device, the program will retry for up to 10 minutes to open the URL to better handle sporadic connections.

[Hendrik]

Some notes on the ChromeCast support:

- To play to a ChromeCast device, set Gizmo to play on the device ("Play Here"), and if it detects a Cast device on your network it'll show the cast icon in the header bar, which allows you to select the device to cast to.
- Full Video support requires MC 19.0.133 or newer (older MC versions should play video, but it may not be flawless)
- Audio support is not perfect yet, in some cases it can get stuck at the end of playback and not advance to the next track automatically

For video it works quite decently and is pretty easy to use. Seeking in videos is relatively slow due to the nature of MCs live transcoding (it needs to re-open the video), but in general it works.

[jmone]

Sounds interesting (has not been launched here in Oz yet).  What is the Audio / Video specs on these things (or is it the std Gizmo Low/Med/High)?

[AndrewFG]

Seeking in videos is relatively slow due to the nature of MCs live transcoding (it needs to re-open the video), but in general it works.

Just as a matter of interest how does MC do its transcoding?

In Whitebear I use the following algorithm:

• There is one process (writer thread) that starts to read the source media file from time offset zero, and writes the transcoded result to a cache file.
• There is a separate process (reader thread) that reads from the cache file and streams the data to the renderer.
• The writer thread runs faster than the reader thread, so the cache file size dynamically grows faster than the reader thread's read position.
• If a Seek occurs within the current cache file size, the writer thread continues, and the reader thread just moves to the new Seek position.
• If a Seek occurs beyond the current cache file size, a new writer thread is started beginning at the relevant time offset in the source file, and the reader switches to the new cache file.
• The original time offset zero writer thread continues to run just in case it may be needed later.
• If a subsequent Seek occurs within the time offset zero cache file size, then all other writer threads are stopped, and the reader switches back to the time offset zero cache file.
• If a subsequent Seek occurs beyond the time offset zero cache file size, then all other writer threads are stopped, and new writer thread is started beginning at the new relevant time offset.
• The original time offset zero cache file is kept on disk for a hour, so it is available if somebody wants to replay the same thing again.

[Hendrik]

IIRC, you brought this discussion up already the last time I posted a Gizmo build, and while we may try to improve that in the future, for right now there are no plans to work on seeking.
Your concept wouldn't work because MC does not encode ahead for an unlimited amount, as its designed to limit resource usage as much as possible to support multiple clients at the same time. Watching straight through is a far more common use-case than seeking.

[wig]

Some notes on the ChromeCast support:

- To play to a ChromeCast device, set Gizmo to play on the device ("Play Here"), and if it detects a Cast device on your network it'll show the cast icon in the header bar, which allows you to select the device to cast to.
- Full Video support requires MC 19.0.133 or newer (older MC versions should play video, but it may not be flawless)
- Audio support is not perfect yet, in some cases it can get stuck at the end of playback and not advance to the next track automatically

For video it works quite decently and is pretty easy to use. Seeking in videos is relatively slow due to the nature of MCs live transcoding (it needs to re-open the video), but in general it works.

This is great, Hendrik. Here's some feedback from my limited testing. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S5 and Media Center .133 on Windows 7.

• It was easy to set up and start using.
• I started a Movie, it looked and sounded nice. I wasn't able to change the volume. My volume buttons changed the phone ring level instead.
• I listened to some music and was happy with the quality. I didn't like that the Album Art and other info kept bouncing around the screen.
• The music stuck on the end of a track everytime I left Gizmo and went to another app. I would LOVE to see a notification icon for Gizmo. Gizmo always restarts itself when I return from another app, other apps seem to get around this with a notification icon.
  

[AndrewFG]

IIRC, you brought this discussion up already the last time I posted a Gizmo build

Gulp. Sorry for being so repetitive...
It is just that I am so proud because I think this encoding & streaming module is some of the best code I ever wrote...

Your concept wouldn't work because MC does not encode ahead for an unlimited amount, as its designed to limit resource usage as much as possible to support multiple clients at the same time. Watching straight through is a far more common use-case than seeking.

I am not sure that I understand your argument here. As you say watching straight through is the most common use case. So I would expect to encode the whole thing straight through as quick as possible, put that in cache, and then get on with doing something else. (And if fast encoding results in a resource issue, then you can always throttle down the thread priority on the respective encoding thread...)

[Hendrik]

This is great, Hendrik. Here's some feedback from my limited testing. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S5 and Media Center .133 on Windows 7.

• It was easy to set up and start using.
• I started a Movie, it looked and sounded nice. I wasn't able to change the volume. My volume buttons changed the phone ring level instead.
• I listened to some music and was happy with the quality. I didn't like that the Album Art and other info kept bouncing around the screen.
• The music stuck on the end of a track everytime I left Gizmo and went to another app. I would LOVE to see a notification icon for Gizmo. Gizmo always restarts itself when I return from another app, other apps seem to get around this with a notification icon.
  

Thanks for testing!

I'll add volume control for an upcoming build.
The bouncing album art is the default behavior of the ChromeCast itself and not my doing, I assume its done to limit the risk of burn-in. Not sure I can do anything about that, I only tell it which file to play and it does all the rest.

Regarding the stuck audio, I hope to have a fix soon. We'll also add a notification icon at some point, but its not strictly related to the issue at hand.

[astromo]

Updated MC on the server to 19.0.133 and played some audio through to my android device (Samsung SIII LTE) and the artwork didn't match the song in the playlist ... pretty bizzarro ... any ideas?

[Hendrik]

If it happened right after restarting/updating the server, you may have run into an outdated thumbnail cache, which should correct itself within a minute or two.

[astromo]

If it happened right after restarting/updating the server, you may have run into an outdated thumbnail cache, which should correct itself within a minute or two.

Cool. I'll check it out tomorrow and report back if there's anything untoward.

While I'm here, tested video and it streamed fine for me. Cheers ..  

[wig]

Thanks for testing!

I'll add volume control for an upcoming build.
The bouncing album art is the default behavior of the ChromeCast itself and not my doing, I assume its done to limit the risk of burn-in. Not sure I can do anything about that, I only tell it which file to play and it does all the rest.

Is it bouncing due to the size of the output? The aspect ratio, maybe?

Regarding the stuck audio, I hope to have a fix soon. We'll also add a notification icon at some point, but its not strictly related to the issue at hand.

Thanks! I'll play with the current version some more this weekend.

[JimH]

Chromecast support requires MC19.0.134 or above.

[JimH]

I moved a Chromecast post to this thread:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89246.msg612730#msg612730