• NEW: You can now configure the way the H.264 decoder does deblocking. Some of 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• NEW: We have included the latest MediaStream skin (no doubt out of date by tomorrow), along with the associated code fixes so that you don’t have to hit escape 23 times to return to the main menu from the Movie/TV sections.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.

• NEW: We now turn off the backlight on displays that are blanked, many thanks to James. I hear the sound of happy Mac users rejoicing.
• NEW: The menu button brings up shutdown menu instead of just exiting, as requested, holding play zooms into photos, and holding menu returns to normal zoom. Also, the escape key has been made to act just like the menu button on the remote. Thanks to Isaac for these improvements!
• NEW: Added the ability to cycle through the available displays. This works in windowed or full-screen modes, and you can use the new ⌘-Shift-→ and ⌘-Shift-← keyboard accelerators to do it. Fun! Plus, ever time I connect things in XCode’s Interface Builder, I get little shivers of pleasure.
• FIX: Weather conditions are correctly localized (thanks, Enrique!)
• FIX: James fixed a small bug with the display brightness setting.
• FIX: The audio device is now saved and restored correctly in all cases. Seriously.
• FIX: The problem affecting video with some LOL releases (and others) has been fixed (thanks to elupus for the fix to ffmpeg).
• FIX: A rare bug causing a crash when blanking displays (thanks, Enrique!)
• FIX: Restore screen backlight level on exit.

Since Isaac has made tweaks to the keymap and advanced settings, unless you’re an expert user who has made your own edits, you’ll want to delete advancedsettings.xml and Keymap.xml from ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/ so that the new defaults can be installed.

As usual, we’ve also pulled fixes from the XBMC code, including shoutcast fixes by the ever-productive vulkanr, the latest scrapers, the usual assortment of brilliant stuff by jmarshall, and more (RTMP fixes, etc.). I also pulled r15344 as requested by chitz.

• NEW: Our newest Plexville code master, Jam, added the ability to modify the panel brightness for applicable LCDs (iMacs, laptops) via the settings. Lots of other really cool things coming very shortly from him.
• NEW: Greatly simplified settings. Isaac worked really hard to come up with sane default settings, and also to move lots of the more esoteric settings from the UI into advancedsettings.xml. We’ve found that new users tend to run into the same things (e.g. disabling remote events and thus breaking Apple Remote). Plex now ships with a well commented advancedsettings.xml file which will get installed into your Application Support folder if you don’t already have the file. If you want to change settings that no longer appear in the UI, you can either edit the items in the advanced settings file, or remove from them there to make them appear in the UI again. Isaac did an awesome job at choosing reasonable defaults.
• NEW: Revamped the full-screen toggling (⌘-F) to make things more Mac-like. If you go into full-screen and quit, next time it will start in full screen. Also, if you drag the window over to another screen and hit ⌘-F, it’ll go to full-screen on that display. Quit and restart and it’ll be full-screen on that display. In summary, it should act much more intuitively. Thanks to migueld for pushing me on this one, we had lots of new users (rightly!) confused.
• FIX: Certain MKV files could cause crashes.
• FIX: Multi-channel AAC files could cause crashes (with AC3 transcoding). Ryan nailed this one.
• FIX: A regression displaying non-US charsets (e.g. French). Thanks to Soner and others who helped bring the problem to my attention.
• FIX: A regression scanning/refreshing movies in VIDEO_TS folders.
• FIX: Improvements to the German translation of MediaStream (thanks, Spacemessage!)

The new MediaStream 0.91 is included also, with lots of good stuff. There is a newer version out there, but we haven’t gotten though testing it yet with Plex.
We’ve also pulled the usual updates from XBMC: New scrapers, bug-fixes, better mouse hiding/displaying code from jmarshall, dropped frame code from elupus (look how few frames are actually dropped now!) and of course d4rk’s new plug-ins for iPhoto/iTunes (nice job!).

My sincere apologies for a bug that crept in with the DTS to AC3 transcoding feature which prevented DTS from down-mixing correctly. If you use usually connect Plex to a surround receiver supporting DTS you would not have been affected.

• FIX: A silly and evil regression that prevented DVDs and other MPEG2 content from playing correctly, and caused crashes in DVD menus.
• NEW: Ryan added support for transcoding DTS audio to AC3 audio, for those who have slightly older receivers. If you want to enable it, change the audio output mode to be Digital, enable AC3 passthrough, and disable DTS passthrough. We also worked together to fix a bug where audio settings weren’t saved correctly, especially for people with external devices. Ryan rocks. If I post a link to his blog, will that inspire him to make his first post?
• NEW: Included the latest MediaStream skin (lovely work, guys, as always!). Added the Plexalicious Unicode fontset to hopefully help our international users.
• FIX: A potential compatibility problem with Remote Buddy (thanks, Felix!)
• FIX: Removed all the remote event settings from being visible, since people were mostly just using them to hurt themselves by turning off the server (and thus rendering their Apple Remote inoperable).
• FIX: Scott (aka Superpea) made a stunning foray into coding and sent me a fix for a problem where a remote library (FTP/XBMSP) was behaving really badly because it kept trying to create video thumbnails remotely. Bad thumbnailer! No biscuit. Nice work, dude!
• FIX/NEW: Resolution settings work much better with multiple profiles now. When you log into a profile that profile’s resolution kicks in. Create a profile for each of your 7 TV sets, and then log in to the right profile as you carry your laptop around.
• FIX: I pulled all the fanart fixes from XBMC that were required because of the initial fanart server melting down. I’d hate to see that person’s bandwidth bill!
• FIX: Fixed an annoying bug where the last thing you entered into a text box showed up (thanks spiff!)
• FIX: Updated the German translation of some skin entries (thanks, Arthur!)

Pulled the usual fixes from XBMC and one nice feature from jmarshall, who added the much-requested enhancement to resuming in videos, and some background processing of downloads of thumbnails and fanart.

• NEW: Ability to configure the number of recent video and audio items returned in library mode.
• NEW: Fatal errors are displayed in a popup dialog box, instead of causing the application to crash.
• NEW: Our newest contributor, Pundy, added the ability to sleep the Mac directly from the shutdown menu. Nice job!
• FIX: Annoying crash reading replaygain tags from MP3 files.
• FIX: Hang exiting the app using the dock menu, or with Applescript.
• FIX: Using “Open With…” to open media files with Plex should work again.
• FIX: Cmd-F works to toggle full-screen mode even if you’ve remapped the backslash key.
• FIX: Starting Plex with the screensaver active will turn it off.
• FIX: Manually browsing for subtitles exits the player.
• FIX: Crashes in ffmpeg playing various files (e.g. MS-DVR samples, King of Queens sample, Odd Couple sample).
• FIX: Locking bug in SMB resulting in crashes (fixed nearly simultaneously by my buddy vulkanr!)
• FIX: Crash on startup if you had multiple RSS feeds (this took about ten frustrating hours to track down).
• FIX: Apple Remote causes Front Row to start/system volume indicator. I believe this one is finally nailed. Thanks to the people who tested it.
• FIX: RAW file threading issues, leading to some loading of RAW files to fail.
• FIX: VIDEO_TS directories stack correctly and allow direct playing, thanks to dtmetz!
• FIX: DTS music files (thanks to spiff) and AC3 music files now play correctly, although only the former in 5.1.
• FIX: We call the Crash Reporter installer as an external entity so as to properly comply with the GPL. Thanks to Enrique for throwing a patch together so quickly. He also fixed a bug relating to installing the Plex helper.
• FIX: The XBox360 controller can now scan through files properly with the left thumbstick and exit with the big “X” button.
• FIX: Apple Movie Trailer plug-ins now install properly.
• FIX: The Apple Remote menu key (and backspace key) were unable to get you out of an empty movie/TV library.

A few things for this release: You’ll probably want to delete your local copy of MediaStream if you have it installed in Application Support/Plex/skin (so as to avoid having two copies). Similarly, you’ll want to move Project Mayhem III into Application Support/Plex/skin (if you want to keep it around). Also, in order to obtain full fanart support (automatically scraped fanart), you’ll want to follow the procedure outlined by Isaac here, or else blow away your library and start over from scratch.

• NEW: Ability to configure the number of recent video and audio items returned in library mode.
• NEW: Fatal errors are displayed in a popup dialog box, instead of causing the application to crash.
• NEW: Our newest contributor, Pundy, added the ability to sleep the Mac directly from the shutdown menu. Nice job!
• FIX: Annoying crash reading replaygain tags from MP3 files.
• FIX: Hang exiting the app using the dock menu, or with Applescript.
• FIX: Using “Open With…” to open media files with Plex should work again.
• FIX: Cmd-F works to toggle full-screen mode even if you’ve remapped the backslash key.
• FIX: Starting Plex with the screensaver active will turn it off.
• FIX: Manually browsing for subtitles exits the player.
• FIX: Crashes in ffmpeg playing various files (e.g. MS-DVR samples, King of Queens sample, Odd Couple sample).
• FIX: Locking bug in SMB resulting in crashes (fixed nearly simultaneously by my buddy vulkanr!)
• FIX: Crash on startup if you had multiple RSS feeds (this took about ten frustrating hours to track down).
• FIX: Apple Remote causes Front Row to start/system volume indicator. I believe this one is finally nailed. Thanks to the people who tested it.
• FIX: RAW file threading issues, leading to some loading of RAW files to fail.
• FIX: VIDEO_TS directories stack correctly and allow direct playing, thanks to dtmetz!
• FIX: DTS music files (thanks to spiff) and AC3 music files now play correctly, although only the former in 5.1.
• FIX: We call the Crash Reporter installer as an external entity so as to properly comply with the GPL. Thanks to Enrique for throwing a patch together so quickly. He also fixed a bug relating to installing the Plex helper.
• FIX: The XBox360 controller can now scan through files properly with the left thumbstick and exit with the big “X” button.
• FIX: Apple Movie Trailer plug-ins now install properly.
• FIX: The Apple Remote menu key (and backspace key) were unable to get you out of an empty movie/TV library.

Of course we’ve also pulled lots of good stuff over from the XBMC tree including some Bluray-related enhancements (find and use DTS-HD streams, by elupus), fanart and skinning enhancements (spiff and others), and fixes including the annoying ff/rew hang bug, fast text scrolling (jmarshall, who also fixed a ton of bugs), and lots of Python stability fixes by vulkanr: you rock, Python (and lots of other things) would not be stable without you!

• FIX: Possible crash when adding or editing source.
• FIX: Crash playing VIDEO_TS files (the biggest one!)
• FIX: Code signing is done correctly, so it will behave with Leopard Firewall.
• FIX: Lots of crashes as a result of some optical drive code still being enabled by default.
• FIX: A ton of hangs doing various things (e.g. adding sources, stopping video). The problem was that the scanner thread (which sometimes starts when the program starts), creates a big-ass database transaction inside which it does tons of time-consuming things like network scraping. This means that (a) no other database operations can run, like saving where you were in a file for resuming when you stop, or setting content on a source and (b) if the scan gets aborted for some reason, you end up with nothing in the database! The transactional design is simply incorrect. For now I’ve simply disabled the transaction, which fixes all the hangs, but it may introduce other issues (but hopefully not). I’ll choose the devil I don’t know on this one.

Should fix the nasty regression with non-primary screens.

• REG: Skip to next video didn’t work, and trying to play a new video while a current one was playing caused the application to hang.
• FIX: Crashes while switching from full-screen to windowed mode (or vice-versa) when running scripts, like Apple Movie Trailers.
• FIX: Don’t hide the menu bar if we’re not displaying on the primary screen.
• FIX: Visualizations were getting the (de)amplified PCM data, which meant that volume affected the visualizations.
• FIX: The default audio latency has been re-calibrated, and should result in more accurate lip-sync.
• FIX: Crash on start on Russian systems (and possibly others).
• FIX: Crash when network goes away or is not enabled.
• FIX: Browsing photos with the Apple Remote didn’t allow for backing up a single level (thanks, Isaac!)
• FIX: Exiting DVD menu with Apple Remote now works (thanks, Isaac!)
• NEW: Remote helper now has Secure Input disabled by default, because it messed with VMware and Adobe Illustrator (among other things). You should still enable this option if (a) you have problems with Front Row starting along with Plex and (b) you don’t run any conflicting software.
• FIX: If you minimized Plex while playing a movie, things got weird when restoring, and lots of frames were dropped.
• FIX: Lots of bugs fixed with text subtitles, including missing or truncated subtitles at the end, errors in parsing that led to lots of jumbled subtitles all being displayed together, and subtitles getting lost after jumping backwards. Also, parsing subtitles use to be an O(n^2) operation, and it’s now an O(n) operation (i.e. much faster!) Thanks to everyone on the forums who helped with reproducing them and uploading subtitle files.
• FIX: DVD playback from optical media has now been disabled by default. Why? It’s too way buggy for us to leave it enabled with a good conscience (especially since it has caused crashes for people not even using the feature). If you really want to use it, you’ll have to add “<enableopticalmedia>true</enableopticalmedia>” into your advanced settings file. It’s on the roadmap, it will be fixed, but for now it’s disabled by default.
• FIX: Ryan fixed a problem with high sample rate AAC files (e.g. 96KHz) causing a crash. Sweet!
• FIX: The infamous “mouse doesn’t reach to the edges of the screen” has been fixed. Yes, in full screen mode the mouse doesn’t quite get to the bottom, but it’s close enough.
• FIX: Enrique fixed the OS X font loading to look in more places (/System/Library/Fonts and /Library/Fonts).
• NEW: Plex now replaces the default NIB shipped with SDL with its own, which means, among other things, all the standard ⌘ accelerators work, like ⌘-Q, ⌘-M, ⌘-H and, yes, even ⌘-F to toggle full-screen mode! It also means we get a new About box. The number in parenthesis is the GIT revision of the release.

• FIX: The frame rate limiter was buggy, which caused the app to use more CPU than it should when idle and hidden. The video frame rate display has also been slightly smoothed.
• FIX: The application is now code-signed, which means those having trouble with the Leopard firewall should see better results now.
• FIX: BMP files (such as those found in the multi-GB backpack torrent for Aeon) didn’t load correctly.
• FIX: Smart Crash Reporter has been updated, and should now install correctly on more (all?) systems.
• FIX: The ‘a’ key now goes to the next audio language track when viewing videos. Thanks, Isaac!
• FIX: A crash setting fan art in Aeon.
• FIX: RAW files (CR2) have been re-enabled, as the bug that made loading them really slow has been fixed. Superpea and other photographers will definitely appreciate this.
• NEW: Two new visualizers have been included, waveform and spectrum.

As usual, we’ve also cherry-picked stuff from the XBMC team, including:

• Lots of fixes by the ever-talented jmarshall, including fixes to background loading in skins, fanart and more.
• Some fixes by d4rk to OpenGL handling around visualizers and an off-by-one error with textures.
• Some scanning/thumbnail fixes by tslayer.
• A fix to prevent the “buffering” dialog from displaying for too long, and a bogus thin line showing up in textures by elupus.
• Other miscellaneous fixes.