Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bob]

This is a latest version of MC24 for Linux.  Please post bugs here.  Please start a new thread for anything requiring discussion.  Non-bug posts will be deleted.

Download:
i386         https://files.jriver.com/mediacenter/channels/v24/latest/MediaCenter-24.0.69.deb
amd64      https://files.jriver.com/mediacenter/channels/v24/latest/MediaCenter-24.0.69-amd64.deb
armhf      https://files.jriver.com/mediacenter/channels/v24/latest/MediaCenter-24.0.69-armhf.deb

Also in the Latest and Beta repos.

24.0.69 (12/14/2018)

1. Fixed: Some PLS streams would not play properly.
2. Changed: Updated Italian translation (thanks matteo e massimo).
3. Changed: Large change to threading priorities should result in smoother operation. To implement will require adding the user or group to limits.conf.
4. Changed: The MCWS function File/Delete takes an optional 'Mode' parameter to delete the file from disk or recycle the file.
5. Changed: Building missing thumbnails runs multipe threads at once instead of only running a single thread at a time (the number of threads depends on the setting for thumbnailing).
6. Changed: Updated Greek translation (thanks Panagiotis).
7. Changed: Made Radio Paradise start faster.

24.0.68 (12/7/2018)

1. Changed: Added extra ALSA debug logging.
2. Changed: DLNA: explicitly supply the library server (Panel) port with the presentation page URL for our DLNA renderers and servers.
3. Fixed: DLNA when authentication was enabled, the DeviceDescription.xml for Library Server couldn't be loaded on a remote MC. This means that if the server wasn't manually setup on the remote for authentication it might not show up in the server list.
4. Changed: Added support for reading/writing tag data in floating point format to Apple's Quicktime extensible format tag locations.
5. Fixed: "Rating" tag was not written to Apple's Quicktime Extensible tagging location.
6. Changed: Updated to Monkey's Audio 4.41.
7. Fixed: Playback of some m4a/mp4 files was broken in recent builds.
8. Fixed: Media Center could erroneously restore itself from being minimized on ZoneSwitch or playback stop (ie. when using Theater View to launch an external application with the WDM audio driver).
9. Fixed: DLNA: Not all SSDP broadcasts were being sent from the SSDP server.
10. Fixed: Tags were not properly saved to Apple's extensible metadata tagging format.
11. Changed: The http server returns 404 instead of 501 when a resource can't be found.

24.0.67 (12/4/2018)

1. Changed: Streamlined the code that finds network interfaces so that they are only used once upon start of the program instead of every time a socket is created.
2. Fixed: Some mp4 or m4a audio with AAC encoding could not be played with JRiver mp4 plug-in.
3. NEW: Tag-writing for MP4/m4a audio files will use Apple's extensible tagging format if the files already contain such tags.
4. Fixed: Locking and unlocking split views didn't properly save the lock between restarts of the program.
5. Changed: Disabled VA-API hardware decoding until dependency issues can be resolved.
6. Changed: DLNA: explicitly supply the library server (Panel) port with the presentation page URL for our DLNA renderers and servers.
7. Fixed: DLNA when authentication was enabled, the DeviceDescription.xml for Library Server couldn't be loaded on a remote MC. This means that if the server wasn't manually setup on the remote for authentication it might not show up in the server list.

24.0.66 (11/30/2018)

1. NEW: Added the option to suppress the duplicate track warning in a playlist (Options > General > Advanced > Show duplicate file warnings for playlists).
2. Fixed: The seed parameter of the play doctor MCWS command would not load properly.
3. Changed: Made wait messages a little wider so they hold more text.
4. Fixed: Properly read the ALBUMARTIST tag from APEv2 tags in MPC files.
5. Changed: Made the MCWS call Library/List return the default library index.
6. Fixed: Playing certain WMA Lossless files could result in excessively slow buffering.

24.0.65 (11/27/2018)

1. Changed: Updated FFmpeg to version 4.1, used for file analysis, transcoding and video playback.
2. NEW: Support for hardware accelerated video decoding on x86/amd64 on NVIDIA GPUs using NVDEC (MPEG2, VC-1, H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP8/9), and on Intel/AMD using VA-API (MPEG2, VC1, H.264 only).
3. Changed: Internal change to the way files are moved.
4. Changed: plughw: and dmix: audio devices are now allowed to change the audio output at the ALSA level. If you use those devices we assume you know what you are doing.
5. Fixed: Editing Custom Website Entries in the Streaming section did not work.
6. NEW: Media Center can now read video tags written in Apple Quicktime's extensible tagging format.
7. Changed: Adjusted the quality score of MetaCritic movie information lookup to reflect its cover art and information quality.
8. Changed: Made the MCC_PLAY_PLAYLIST command reset the search cache so running it on a random smartlist will get new information each instance.
9. NEW: Added a toolbar button to add selected files to Playing Now.
10. Fixed: Radio Paradise could play duplicates in some cases.
11. Changed: Made the Playing Now Overview lists no longer ignore the selection.  Instead the selection will be used to populate the Tag Action Window and the like.
12. NEW: Added the option to suppress the duplicate track warning in a playlist (Options > General > Advanced > Show duplicate file warnings for playlists).
13. Fixed: The seed parameter of the play doctor MCWS command would not load properly.

24.0.64-3 (11/20/2018)

1. Fixed: Two of the plugin libraries were being registered to the wrong directory.

24.0.64-2 (11/20/2018)

1. Fixed: Build number was wrong.
2. Fixed: Editing Custom Website Entries in the Streaming section did not work.

24.0.64 (11/19/2018)

1. Changed: Updated package dependencies.
2. NEW: Support for FLAC-in-Ogg files and streams.
3. Changed: Room Correction DSP allows setting a distance of up to 100 ft instead of 50 ft (or meters if you're metric).
4. Fixed: Made Rotten Tomatoes movie lookup work for a few more titles.
5. Changed: Updated to Monkey's Audio 4.40.
6. Fixed: Removing a column from the sorting in a list with no sorting (or external sorting) would crash.
7. NEW: Radio Paradise toolbar channel buttons added.
8. Fixed: A occasional mismatch with Radio Parasdise metadata for the current playing track.
9. NEW: Added the MCC MCC_LIST_SEND_TO_PLAYING_NOW (26031) to add selected files to Playing Now using any of the modes available (play shuffled, add albums to end, etc.).
10. Fixed: The option to advance to the next track didn't work nicely when also picking stop after each item when it played the second to last track in the playlist.
11. Fixed: Playing Ogg Vorbis Internet Radio streams did not work.
12. NEW: Added the website MetaCritic to the online movie information lookup (http://www.metacritic.com).
13. Changed: Brought Rotten Tomatoes back to the online movie lookup.
14. Fixed: Theater View Background color did not work properly since 24.0.59.
15. Changed: The memory playback model "Load decoded file into memory" no longer engages when playing a URL.
16. Fixed: The option to "Advance to the next track when stopping after the current track" could loop to the second file in the playlist instead of the first after the last track.
17. NEW: There's a "Web Media" playlist that shows under the "Streaming" tree item and files from the Open URL dialog get added to it when added to the library.
18. Changed: German translation updated (thanks ByteStar).
19. Fixed: Open Weather Map configuration for Theater View was not working.
20. NEW: Pressing Ctrl+Q+Enter in a search box adds the files to Playing Now (Ctrl+Enter plays).

24.0.61 (11/2/2018)

1. Fixed: MC could deadlock when loading a large DLNA server library.
2. NEW: Non-standard file associations for various DSD mimetypes added so that we can see those files from DLNA server libraries that are using those mimetypes.
3. Changed: Some DLNA servers (like on the QNAP) don't properly provide the total number of files matches in a search which limited us to seeing the first 1000 files in a library.
4. Changed: All other multi-platform applicable changes from the windows build.

[Awesome Donkey]

The arm build link gives off a NoSuchKey error.

[Hendrik]

Works for me, you were probably just a bit fast.

[Awesome Donkey]

Yep, now it works.

[Sammy]

For 24.0.69 it says that changes must be made to limits.conf to get new thread priorities.  What changes are need that are different from previous versions.  This is what I am seeing....

 ps -T -eo pid,tid,class,rtprio,ni,pri,comm | grep mediacenter24
  775   775 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   786 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   919 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   921 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   923 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   929 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775   967 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1292 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1293 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1313 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775  1314 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775  1315 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1318 RR       1   -  41 mediacenter24
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Is that what it should be?

[bob]

For 24.0.69 it says that changes must be made to limits.conf to get new thread priorities.  What changes are need that are different from previous versions.  This is what I am seeing....

 ps -T -eo pid,tid,class,rtprio,ni,pri,comm | grep mediacenter24
  775   775 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   786 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   919 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   921 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   923 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775   929 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775   967 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1292 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1293 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1313 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775  1314 TS       -   0  19 mediacenter24
  775  1315 TS       -  10   9 mediacenter24
  775  1318 RR       1   -  41 mediacenter24
pi@raspberrypi:~ $

Is that what it should be?

Thanks for asking, I hadn't got to posting that yet.
As you can see from above, the MC thread scheduler has changed to only use real-time priority for the playback output device thread.
More fine tuning is done within the SCHED_OTHER (TS) priorities.

To get real-time you added:
@audio - rtprio 100
to the /etc/security/limits.conf. In addition add
@audio - nice -20
to the /etc/security/limits.conf to get control of elevating TS priorities (the default only lets a user to reduce the TS priority).

You can replace audio with any other group or just your user with the username (no @).

Logout and back in for the change to take effect.

MC will do fallbacks to get the best possible control of the priorities if the permissions aren't in place in limits.conf but you will get optimal performance by adding those entries.

[Hendrik]

The deb install script runs as root, I don't suppose we can magically set this up as part of the package?

[mwillems]

The deb install script runs as root, I don't suppose we can magically set this up as part of the package?

I think automagically changing system security settings on package install is probably not a good practice (at least without prompting the user during install).  But if you can easily automate it, why not include a script that a user can run to set the settings, and mention it in the advice apt throws out during install ("to improve performance, run...")?  Or if you're feeling fancy, put a button in MC that runs the script and asks polkit for the necessary admin permissions to make it work.

EDIT: It looks like the preferred way for programs to modify limits is through drop in conf files in /etc/limits.d/ , so maybe that's the "right" way to do it during install (assuming it will work).

[Awesome Donkey]

I think automagically changing system security settings on package install is probably not a good practice (at least without prompting the user during install).  But if you can easily automate it, why not include a script that a user can run to set the settings, and mention it in the advice apt throws out during install ("to improve performance, run...")?  Or if you're feeling fancy, put a button in MC that runs the script and asks polkit for the necessary admin permissions to make it work.

I agree with this. In addition, MC would probably have to check and see if the user is in the audio group before proceeding. Or I guess in limits.conf just add the user instead of the audio group if the user isn't in the audio group.

[mwillems]

Or I guess in limits.conf just add the user instead of the audio group if the user isn't in the audio group.

I think adding the user to a drop-in conf file may be a workable answer; I always manually set my users to be members of the audio group, but it's a total crapshoot on any given Linux distro whether a user is in that group by default.

[bob]

Thanks, I'll look at adding that, at the very least with the audio group indicated.

[BryanC]

After connecting to a remote library server, the client begins auto-importing local files. It appears that the auto-import rules are not actually disabled (although Import is grayed out) when connecting to a library server.

[bob]

Thanks, I'll look at adding that, at the very least with the audio group indicated.

It will be in the next build.
Likely out today.

[bob]

After connecting to a remote library server, the client begins auto-importing local files. It appears that the auto-import rules are not actually disabled (although Import is grayed out) when connecting to a library server.

You don't have any directories to import in the auto-import settings on your client and it still starts importing locally when connecting to a library server??

[BryanC]

You don't have any directories to import in the auto-import settings on your client and it still starts importing locally when connecting to a library server??

I do have auto-import enabled for the local library. If I recall correctly, Windows clients disable Auto-Import when connected to a remote library server. Is this no longer the case? I don't ever recall having to disable and re-enable Auto-Import manually based on whether I was using a local or remote library.

[bob]

I do have auto-import enabled for the local library. If I recall correctly, Windows clients disable Auto-Import when connected to a remote library server. Is this no longer the case? I don't ever recall having to disable and re-enable Auto-Import manually based on whether I was using a local or remote library.

I think it automatically runs the auto import on program start and whenever the library switches which it does when you connect to a library server.
When connecting to a library server though it doesn't make any sense for the client to do that since it will be using the files on the remote anyway..
When switching back, it's just like restarting the program and I'd think that it would make sense to do it then.

[mwillems]

I do have auto-import enabled for the local library. If I recall correctly, Windows clients disable Auto-Import when connected to a remote library server. Is this no longer the case? I don't ever recall having to disable and re-enable Auto-Import manually based on whether I was using a local or remote library.

There was (years ago) a bug where this exact thing happened on the Windows build.  The client would (when auto-import was enabled on the client) use its own auto-import rules when connected to the server in addition to the server's auto-import rules which led to unusable library entries.  It only happened when the client had auto-import rules specified and autoimport was enabled on the clients.  I disabled autoimport on all my clients at the time for that reason because my clients never used local libraries.  There were posts about it, but I can't find them now.  It's possible the bug was never squashed and this is just the same bug?

EDIT: Here's the bug report, this is almost certainly the same issue: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,98531.msg681311.html#msg681311

[BryanC]

There was (years ago) a bug where this exact thing happened on the Windows build.  The client would (when auto-import was enabled on the client) use its own auto-import rules when connected to the server in addition to the server's auto-import rules which led to unusable library entries.  It only happened when the client had auto-import rules specified and autoimport was enabled on the clients.  I disabled autoimport on all my clients at the time for that reason because my clients never used local libraries.  There were posts about it, but I can't find them now.  It's possible the bug was never squashed and this is just the same bug?

EDIT: Here's the bug report, this is almost certainly the same issue: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,98531.msg681311.html#msg681311

Yes, that looks like the exact same issue I'm facing. I could have sworn that at one point on my laptop I was able to switch between a local (highly compressed) library and my remote library server (lossless) without triggering auto-import. I was still using Windows at that point so I figured this was a Linux quirk.

[bob]

It appears it was still in the generic code. We've fixed it. Thanks for the report!