SageTV V6.5.14 Beta Is Here!

[Narflex]

Howdy all!

Time for another beta update.

We finished up CC support for ATSC/QAM in the LAN placeshifter and also on the Mac client now. Also added in subtitle adjustments for delay and other things. And there's finally preloading for the next page of thumbnails in pretty much the entire UI.

And the references to Placeshifter autologin you see in the release notes below are only in the SageTV core right now; but you'll see them in a usable way in the next version.

Highlighted changes are in Bold in the release notes below.

Submit any bugs you find to here please: http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

Here's the links:

SageTV for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_5_14Setup.exe

SageTVClient for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVClient_V6_5_14Setup.exe

SageTVPlaceshifter for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVPlaces..._5_14Setup.exe

SageTV for Windows Home Server
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_5_14Setup-WHS.msi

SageTV Media Center for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMac_V6_5_14.dmg

SageTV Client for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMacClient_V6_5_14.dmg

SageTV Placeshifter for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMacPla...er_V6_5_14.dmg

SageTV Media Center for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/server_6.5.14.tar.gz

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/mi..._6.5.14.tar.gz

SageTV Media Center for Linux - Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa....5.14_i386.deb

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux - Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa....5.14_i386.deb

And here's the detailed release notes for you all:

SageTV V6.5.14 Beta 4/23/2009

Core Updates
1. Fixed bug where padding was removed from a Favorite if it was back-to-back with a manual recording even if remove back-to-back padding on favorites was disabled.
2. Optimized removal of back-to-back paddding on Favorites so that only padding that must be removed to prevent overlap is removed. (i.e. if you had a show that ends at 5pm that you had padded to end 5 minutes early; and then the the show starting at 5pm was padded to start 5 minutes early; previously this would cause the change to occur at 5pm if back-to-back removal was enabled; now it will cause the change to occur at 4:55pm; but if only the one starting at 5pm had start padding and the other had no padding, it woudl change at 5pm instead)
3. Fixed bug where if you're watching a Favorite while its recording; and you have negative stop padding on it; when it gets into the stop padding region it would just keep stopping/starting the recording until the show was actually over.
4. Fixed synchronization bug where in very rare instances selecting a show to watch that was currently recording would give the user control of the wrong tuner
5. Enable Unicode glyphs by default in SageTV. The performance impact is very minor due to way glyph calculations are optimized now. The property "ui/load_complete_glyph_maps" still has an effect; it can be used if character widths are not being determined properly due to how an optimization for glyph loading works; but it should not be needed in most cases (and is definitely not needed for Latin text); and enabling it has a negative performance impact (it always did have that impact though).
6. Updated subtitle file charset detection so that it'll use the platform default if UTF8/16 detection fails (previously it was using Cp1252 as the fallback if UTF failed)
7. Fixed bug in UTF charset detection where we would sometimes indicate UTF8 files were NOT actually UTF8 (affects subtitle importing)
8. Fixed bug where we wouldn't use the delayed thumbnail loader if the thumbnail file was one that we previously generated ourselves that had already been loaded before in the current application instance.
9. Fixed bug where failure to detect the primary audio stream initially wouldn't redo the detection; it would just suspend playback with 'no signal'
10. Added new property 'use_nio_transfers' which defaults to false. If it is set to true, then NIO channel transfers (which are generally faster) will be used for sending MPEG data to extenders and for serving files to SageTVClient (in prior versions it was used only for serving files to SageTVClient, however significant performance issues were discovered if the source file was a network share/mapped drive on Windows; so this is now disabled by default; and other platforms have issues due to a JVM bug related to files larger than 2GB and NIO which is why they're disabled as well)
11. Fixed old bug where timeouts were not obeyed in the MediaServer connections (in rare instances this could cause SageTV to retain file handles)
12. Optimized M3U playlist importing so it will now autodetect UTF charset encoding
13. Added core support for handling subtitle delay settings (can only be used with external subtitle files)
14. Fixed bug where picture files would sometimes lose their relative path information (due to having negative timestamps)
15. Fixed significant performance bug related to focus change re-evaluations. This can be over a 2x improvement in speed in many areas that involved just moving around the cursor.
16. Fixed bug where some metadata properties that had Unicode characters weren't always parsed properly using the external format detector
17. Fixed bug where disabling/enabling the media server caused an extra UI server thread to be spawned which would just loop in an error state
18. Fixed bug where files that had external and internal subtitles didn't render subtitles (they do now; but they will only use the external subs; external subtitles have priority over internal)

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where sometimes the audio & subtitle selections in the Windows DVD player did not appear

Placeshifter Updates
1. Added support for CC in ATSC/QAM files when used on a LAN

Mac Updates
1. Fixed regression bug where we didn't select the proper audio stream with MPEG files on the Mac client
2. Added support for CC in ATSC/QAM files

Media Extender Updates
1. Added support for using larger buffer sizes for high bandwidth transfers when the client supports it (HD extenders will on next firmware)
2. Fixed bug where reverse play with BluRay content caused the wrong time to be displayed on the timeline
3. Fixed bugs in BluRay playback on HD200
4. Fixed bug where having multiple emedded subtitle tracks of different formats didn't work properly
5. Added support for MP4/VosbSub subtitles (Nero subtitles) on the HD200
6. Added support for VobSub subtitles embedded in Matroska (MKV) files (HD extender firmware update needed)
7. Fixed bug where we didn't strip HTML tags from embedded SRT subtitles.

Studio Updates
1. Added ability to use dynamic expressions for enumerated properties for Widgets (i.e. table wrapping, dimensions, etc.) in the Studio
2. Fixed bug where the LoadImage API call used on the result of GetThumbnail(MediaFile) wouldn't always ensure that it was actually loaded if the thumbnail had not been generated yet, or was in the process of being generated.
3. Fixed bug where using LoadImage on a MetaImage from a URL wouldn't force the image load due to the asynchronous loading feature
4. Added Global API call RefreshAreaForVariable(Name, Value) which will Refresh any areas on screen who have a variable matching the specified value
5. Added MediaFile API call: SetMediaFileMetadata(MediaFile, Name, Value) which sets the corresponding metadata property in the MediaFile's format. These are set in the database and are also exported to the corresponding .properties file for that MediaFile. When it exports it will append these updates to the .properties file. It will also update the property "custom_metadata_properties" (which is a semicolon/comma delimited list) which tracks the extra metadata properties that should be retained. Names used must not match standard attributes that SageTV imports (i.e. title, description, actor, etc.)
6. Added MediaPlayer API calls: GetSubtitleDelay(), SetSubtitleDelay(long), CanAdjustSubtitleTiming() and ApplyRelativeSubtitleAdjustment(int) which can be used to modify the delay for displaying subtitles from external files
NOTE: Placeshifter login caching will be in the NEXT beta although the API calls are already in the core
7. Added Configuration API calls: SetAllowPlaceshifterLoginCaching(Boolean) and IsPlaceshifterLoginCachingAllowed() which are used on the server side to control if placeshifter clients are allowed to cache authentication information

STV Updates
1. Added thumbnail preloader thread to photo browser, video browser, music browser, online video feed lists, online video results lists, and recordings lists (it preloads thumbnails for the next page before you scroll)
2. Added Caption & Subtitle options to the playback options menu (delay, font size, positioning, etc.)
3. Using Pause or Play commands while a slideshow is active (w/o the overlay menu open) will also pause/play music at the same time.
4. Fixed Online Videos search link on the Search-all menu.
5. Added Detailed Setup -> Advanced option to reload the last-used custom STV.
6. Removed extra non-wrapping tables from recordings & search results menus since table wrapping is dynamic & can now be done with a single table.
7. Changed menus with customizable number of rows, cols, etc. to simply refresh the menu instead of reload it after changing a setting.


SageTV V6.5.13 Beta 4/3/2009

Core Updates
1. Added automatic charset detection for subtitle files. It will now try to automatically detect ISO-8859-1/CP1252 vs. UTF8 encoding.
2. Fixed bug where we didn't use the right indicies to select audio tracks for non-MPEG files with SageTVPlayer
3. Added support for IDX/VobSub external subtitle files with SageTVPlayer
4. Don't reinitialize a file based on a timestamp change if we fail to get the new timestamp
5. Fixed bug where we sometimes wouldn't detect the audio stream in HDPVR recordings
6. Fixed bug where the drive detected popup would occur if we got hotplug events from a client even if they didn't support remote filesystems
7. Fixed bug where the current audio and subpicture track would not be returned if there wasn't more than one to choose from
8. When waking up from sleep; don't have apply the driver delay wait for SageTVClient
9. Re-enabled periodic library scanning by default
10. Changed default period for library scanning to be 2 hours; it's controlled by the property: seeker/library_scan_period
11. If changes are made to the library paths during a scan (or a refresh is requested); the scan will now restart immediately instead of waiting to finish before restarting again
12. Fixed bug when you played back a single song in shuffle mode; next/prev track didn't do anything (now they go to a random track in the library)
13. Added support for closed caption rendering in the UI core if the media player sends back the CC raw data (only sent back by the HD200 and SageTVPlayer currently)
14. max_search_results property can now be dynamically changed and the effect is immediate
15. Fixed bug where subtitle text color wasn't used from the properties file (it was always white)
16. Fixed bug with shadow color on the new subtitle feature that was causing a rendering failure if the color was pure black
17. Fixed issue with excessive logging from the EXIF parser in some error cases
18. Fixed bug where TIFF files with 0 rowsPerStrip didn't decode properly (they need to be decoded as a complete image)
19. Fixed bug where we didn't properly parse times in SAMI files that were quoted
20. Fixed bug where we would sometimes drop the last entry in a SAMI file

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where loss of the Direct3D device when using VMR9 or EVR could cause a deadlock in SageTV when trying to restore the device
2. Fixed bug where FLAC files wouldn't playback on Windows sometimes if the DirectShow player was forced
3. Added registry setting HKLM\Software\Frey Technologies\SageTV\DirectX9\EVR0To255Range as a DWORD. Default is zero. If it's set to one then the hint for mapping the 16-235 video range to 0-255 will be set for EVR.

Placeshifter Updates
1. Added support for Closed Caption rendering in the placeshifter when used w/out transcoding (i.e. LAN mode). This only supports NTSC CC currently; but will be extended to ATSC/QAM soon.
2. Fixed bug where seeking with the placeshifter in an MKV file that's being transcoded would stop playback of that file.
3. Fixed bug where the placeshifter would sometimes disconnect right after logging in due to an asynchronicity with the remote FS system and the event encryption toggle

Mac Updates
1. Added support for CC data processing when using SageTVPlayer for playback of MPEG files (only handles NTSC CC so far; ATSC/QAM will be added shortly; and SageTVClient for Mac is the only system that uses SageTVPlayer for MPEG playback currently)

Media Extender Updates
1. Added support for Closed Caption rendering on the HD200 (the source file must have the CC information for it to be displayed; this works for NTSC/DVD/ATSC/QAM closed captions)
2. Reset the DAR after any HDMI state changes on the HD extender
3. Fixed bug where video aspect ratio wasn't always applied properly w/ latest HD200 firmware
4. Fixed bug where a crash when loading the DVD player for the extender would reset the volume to max
5. Added support for selecting the default subtitle track to enable forced BluRay subtitles to function properly
6. Fixed a rare bug that could cause the extender connection to terminate prematurely when stopping playback of an MPEG file
7. Fixed bug where attempting to view a 2048xanything or anythingx2048 PNG or GIF image would crash the HD200
8. Fixed bug where embedded SSA/ASS subtitles weren't detected properly

Studio Updates
1. Changed Table properties NumCols, NumRows, Wrapping and Dimensions so that if they change dynamically they'll update on the next UI refresh; the menu no longer needs to be reloaded
2. Added Utility API call: GetTimeSinceLastInput which gets the amount of time in milliseconds since the last user input occurred
3. Fixed issue with text sorting not being case-insensitive when use_collator_sorting was set to false (the default is true)
4. Added Global API call IsDoingLibraryImportScan which returns true if the library scanning process is currently running

STV Updates
1. Added option in Detailed Setup -> Video/Audio to configure the H.264 Video Decoder Filter on Windows
2. Changed Closed Caption option during playback to always be available for DVDs and MPEG videos.
3. Marked the current menu when starting music playback so the playback screen will return to that menu after playback ends.
4. Changed code for online video file updates, STV updates, managed STV, and file unzipping to only use the 'Local' SageTV API variants if IsClient() is true.
5. Added option to control Debug Logging in Detailed Setup -> Advanced.
6. Added option: Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Maximum Results per Search
7. Changed Online Video layout for list of feeds to show thubnail full size & only show feed title as text when needed if thumb isn't clear.
8. Updated some Showtime podcast feeds
9. Enlarged grouped thumbnails to full height and changed transition to Fade.
10. Detailed Setup -> Customize: added option to control whether video playlist items always start from the beginning.
11. Added menu header icon to indicate that a library refresh scan is active. Uses themed image: importing.png
12. Added SystemStatusChanged hook to refresh the screen when needed.
13. When searching for future airings of a show, filter out airings which are on channels that are not visible.
14. Playback Options menu: fixed subtitle on/off toggle for videos. Also added "No Subtitles" to subtitle language selection dialog.
15. Added the "Automatic Library Rescan Frequency" option to Detailed Setup -> General, replacing the on/off option to "Regularly rescan import directories" in Detailed Setup -> Customize.
16. Removed "/" from # songs & albums in music browser; used additional spaces as text separator.
17. Picture viewer: when entering this menu, delay starting next image preloading thread if not in a slideshow so the next image is not almost immediately preloaded.
18. Modified method to check for low download bandwidth causing playback underflow when playing HD YouTube videos.


SageTV V6.5.12 Beta 3/13/2009

Core Updates
1. Added support for external text based subtitle files in all media players with formats SRT, SUB (MicroDVD or SubViewer), SAMI/SMI, SSA/ASS
2. Added support for embedded text based subtitles when played back with the HD200
3. Added support for external IDX/VOB (VobSub) subtitle files when played back with the HD200
4. Added check for external subtitle files whenever a file is played back
5. Added psuedo-outlining to text that is rendered as subtitles (it's not a *real* outline; it's just four text shadows, one done in each corner's direction; much faster than calculating a real outline though and doesn't require additional glyph storage)
6. Added audio & subtitle track selection to SageTVPlayer. Audio tracks should work in all cases; subtitle selection is still limited though (this is in addition to the core support for external text-based subtitle files)
7. Memory allocation optimizations
8. Fixed error message relating to creating a timed recording that conflicted and then cancelling it due to the conflict
9. Changed default value for "delay_to_wait_after_tuning" to be 4000 for the HDPVR on Win/Linux since so many people seem to need this setting to stabilize the HDPVR due to its tendency to lockup during channel changes.
10. Fixed bug where you couldn't cancel recurring time based recordings during the week before the spring DST change
11. Added TIFF picture support
12. Fixed bug where replacing an existing recording with a converted one wouldn't always correct the timestamp on the file
13. Added .tp file extension to default imported video file extensions
14. Performance enhancement to library scanning process
15. Added property videoframe/start_playlist_items_from_beginning which defaults to true; and controls if when playing a playlist; whether or not each item should always be started from the beginning
16. Added support for selecting DVDs for playback from the Media File Browser. Selecting the VIDEO_TS.VOB file will now play the DVD instead of just that one file.
17. Fixed bug where regeneration of non-JPEG thumbnails did not work properly

Placeshifter Updates
1. Increased JVM heap size used by the Placeshifter on Windows

Windows Updates
1. Added registry setting HKLM\Software\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegEnc\TopFieldFirst as a DWORD. It defaults to 1 and controls field ordering when using software encoding.

Linux Updates
1. Fixed issue where the activation key could be come invalid due to enumeration order changes in the hardware (if you had this problem; then you should re-activate your key before using this version by running keygen.sh)

Mac Updates
1. Prefs panel allows users to select port speed for DirecTV serial ports
2. Prefs code can allow for selection of DirecTV serial cu/tty devices
3. Fixed DirecTV serial support on the Mac

Media Extender Updates
1. Fixed bug with BluRay BDMV playback on HD200 where we'd lose audio on cell transitions sometimes
2. Fixed bug where we mis-detected the main movie file in BluRay BDMV playback if it had a very long looping playlist (like in a menu background)
3. Fixed bug where MP3 playback no longer worked on the MVP

Studio Updates
1. Added MediaFile API call GetMediaFileMetadata which can be used to retrieve 'extra' metadata properties attached to a MediaFile's format
2. Added property "custom_metadata_properties" which is a comma/semicolon delimited list of 'extra' metadata properties that should be retained in the DB when importing a MediaFile; they can be retrieved using the GetMediaFileMetadata API call
3. Optimized the GroupByMethod API call when used with GetAlbumForFile, GetShowCategory or GetShowYear
4. Optimized the GroupByArrayMethod API call when used with GetPeopleListInShowInRoles
5. Optimized the SortLexical API call when used with GetMediaTitle
6. Updated MediaFile API call GetMediaFileFormatDescription so that if it has an optional second argument which is true, the external subtitle check is re-run before returning the format information

STV Updates
1. Changed default choice after selecting an individual song to Add to Now Playing Queue or Play the Song Now if music isn't already playing instead of View Album/Song Detail.
2. Improved file browser's handling of DVD file objects.
3. Fixed issue where the focused item changes after a media browser updates after a library refresh when using the Folder view.
4. Video playback: Made subtitle on/off toggle dependant on whether any subtitles exist and extended the option to videos instead of only DVDs.

SageTV V6.5.11 Beta 2/25/2009

Core Updates
1. Fixed issue when creating a channel limited Favorite, it wouldn't have the channel limits applied until the Favorite was updated (this was not possible to do in our standard UI since you can't create a Favorite initially with a channel limit, you have to create one and then modify the channel limit)
2. Added support for importing BluRay BDMV folder structures. These are now recognized as a single MediaFile. They currently will appear along with DVDs so STVs won't need modifications yet to show them. The ONLY playback mechanism for these currently is the HD media extender (firmware update required). This only plays the main movie of the BluRay; it does not support any menus or other interactive features currently. It does support multiple audio tracks, chapter selection and all the standard playback controls. Subtitle support is in progress.
3. Fixed issues with downloading files from SageTV servers that had unicode characters in the pathname
4. Added property "include_blurays_as_dvds" which includes BluRays with all API calls that would normally just return DVD objects (this property must be set at startup, and defaults to true)
5. Fixed bug where we would think we ran out of diskspace due to an asyncronicity with the calculation (only affected Mac/Linux)
6. HE-AAC audio should now be properly supported for transcoding
7. Added property "dump_bluray_info" for dumping the info about a BluRay to the log file when its imported into SageTV
8. Add two new frequency entries for "Norway-CanalDigital"
9. Various format detection issues fixed
10. Fixed issues with photos with unicode pathnames not showing up

Placeshifter Updates
1. Disable automatically popping up the 'Add Server' dialog in the Placeshifter since this is confusing to some users and also happens when the discovery process is slow sometimes.

Windows Updates
1. New MPEG demux w/ accurate seeking is included again

Mac Updates
1. Fixed A/V sync issues with playback
2. Added Control-Click as right mouse click for Mac OS X
3. Allows the user to disable Apple IR remote in the prefs now
4. Improved HDHomeRun support

Linux Updates
1. Improved HDHomeRun support

Media Extender Updates
1. Added support for BluRary BDMV folder playback on the HD media extender. This only plays the main movie of the BluRay; it does not support any menus or other interactive features currently. It does support multiple audio tracks, chapter selection and all the standard playback controls. Subtitle support is in progress.
2. Fixed bug where we didn't properly detect MPEG1 streams
3. Added support for HDMI hotplug mode changes for HD extenders
4. Updated native resolution switching code so that it'll match on the horizontal dimension or the vertical instead of just the vertical (i.e. things like 1280x600 would play at 720p)
5. HE-AAC audio should now be properly supported (firmware update required)

Studio Updates
1. Added MediaFile API call CreateTempMediaFile which can be used to create a temporary MediaFile object for wrapping around a file/network path (allows updating metadata before playback begins)
2. Added MediaFile API call IsBluRay which returns true for BluRay MediaFile objects
3. BluRays are represented by a new MediaMask which is 'B'. This will automatically be added to any MediaMask with a 'D' if the property "include_blurays_as_dvds" is set (which is the default currently)
4. Updated IsCurrentMediaFileDVD API call to also return true for BluRays if the "include_blurays_as_dvds" property is set (which is the default for now)
5. Updated ShowAPI call GetRoleTypes so that it clones the array before it returns it since that array is used by the core for other purposes

STV Updates
1. Various performance optimizations
2. Updated thumbnail button overlay graphic & title text layout
3. Changed spinning circle wait animation to progress bar, and changed % progress indicators to use the enlarging progress bar.
4. Custom STVs can call the default STV and jump to a menu by specifying the menu widget's symbol ID in the gTargetMenuName variable. If the symbol lookup fails, it searches for the menu widget name, as it did before.

[Opus4]

A downloadable STV update is available -- go to Detailed Setup -> Advanced -> Check for STV Update.

The STV set version 2009042202 will be updated to version 2009042701, updating both the default STV and the Placeshifter login STV, with these changes:

1. Added support for Detailed Setup -> Server -> Allow Placeshifter clients to automatically login.
   
   
2. Hidden: Fixed inability to page up/down to first/last item when malore menu is set to not use wrap-around scrolling.
   
   
3. Hidden: Fixed disk space bar so that the minimum font size doesn't make the text too large for its display area.
   
   
4. Added persistent option "Play slideshow in random order" to the photo browser's dialog shown when starting a slideshow.
   
   
5. Consolidated all the Screen Saver options into a single dialog in Detailed Setup -> General, and added a new option "Random Screen Saver Slideshow Order", which toggles between yes & no; default: yes.

Note: If you are using Vista, the STV update option may not be available. If you are unable to use the downloadable STV update within the SageTV UI, you can manually install the update:

1. Download the update file:
   2009042701.zip
   
   
2. Make backup copies of these 2 files: SageTV3.xml and SecureLogin.xml, found in <SageTV install path>\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3
   
   
3. Unzip the file to you SageTV install directory where SageTV.exe is located, making sure to preserve the zip file's directory structure. This will overwrite SageTV3.xml and SecureLogin.xml in <SageTV install path>\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3. Make sure the updated files do not end up in Vista's VirtualStore.
   
   
4. Restart SageTV or reload the default STV (SageTV3.xml) in the SageTV UI at Detailed Setup -> Advanced.

The STV version will be listed in System Information as v6.5.15.0. Submit any bugs as you would normally for the v6.5.14 beta.

- Andy