Media Browser 2.2.5 just out

We just finalized a very minor release of Media Browser.

It includes new usage of the latest TMDb API and a few minor fixes that help out with stability and startup performance.

It should be a fairly safe upgrade, it had its fair share of testing.

If you experienced any crashes on launch or issues with movie metadata, we strongly recommend an upgrade.

Full list of changes is here: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/topics?milestone_id=7

Big thanks to the testers and ebr for making this happen!

Download as usual is available at: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/downloads/list

Posted by sam on June 20, 2010

Media Browser version 2.2.4 just released!

After a slight delay we managed to get Media Browser version 2.2.4 ready and out.

A big thank you goes to all the testers and new contributors to the project, this project is truly driven by the community a big thank you to all.

If you enjoy using Media Browser don’t forget to drop us a bit of praise on the community tracker or a donation.

Highlights:

• The Media type is now retrieved from locally stored metadata.
• Better support for using MyMovies and Media Browser side-by-side. The user can now set the preferred order of local artwork.
• Watched status indicators are working normally again.
• It is now possible to Clear the Cache from the Media Browser Configuration Wizard.
• Various sort-order bugs for Media Collections have been fixed.
• Lots of other bugs have been fixed.
• You can use SQLite and share playstate settings & display settings.
• Better rotating backdrop support. It is now possible to randomize the order in which they appear.
• Using the custom entrypoints no longer results in a full library refresh.
• Improved installer interface that can create optional shortcuts to Media Browser.
• Overall performance increase due to various changes to the cache mechanism.
• Last but not least, Media Browser can now be localized by theme developers and the community.

Complete Changelog:

To see a full list of the tracker topics for these changes, have a look here.

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Important Notes:

• This release will need to re-build your entire item cache as changes were made that are not backward compatible. This may take some time the first time you enter MB with this version so be patient while everything re-builds.
• When using experimental SQLite, the cache.db file will be deleted upon upgrading due to the above mentioned changes.

As usual the download is available at: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/downloads/list

Posted by sam on May 29, 2010

In which sam loses 1600 reputation points

Well I have just implemented a massive change in the reputation system. Read [meta] Do we need a reputation adjustment? for context.

I have been rorting the system, I caught myself out and placed some fixes in place to stop this.

You see, sometimes I post short snippets in the discussion section, people agree with it and vote it up. But the trouble is that one upovote on a short reply agreeing with something is worth the same as an upvote on an answer to a question or steps to repro a bug.

The trouble with long discussion threads is that over time it is impossible to figure out what is going on and you are stuck reading through a very long list. Hence I would like to encourage long discussion threads on the tracker less.

In a series of changes I plan to re-balance the tracker so it encourages activities we really need.

For example with bugs:

• We need bugs reported
• We need clear steps to reproduce bugs
• We need clear steps to work around bugs
• We need to get them fixed
• Discussion helps nail down bugs and provide status but can get long.

So “discussion” upvotes are now worth less, you only get one reputation point per upvote on a discussion type response (this covers discussion on feature request and bugs and discussion on fan art topics). Additionally if your post moves from one place to another, votes are re-applied.

On top of this I temporarily changed it so upvotes on KB articles are only worth one point. Too often we just post placeholders and its the community who make it great. It not fair to get reputation for posting a place holder.

This is not it for the reputation changes, but I think it is a good start and should encourage better types of activity on the tracker.

Posted by sam on March 16, 2010

Announcement: Media Browser Version 2.2.3 (codename: pegasus)

We have just finished up a maintenance release for Media Browser. Nothing too big here just a bunch of performance and stability fixes.

Still looking for sponsors

If you or anyone you know would like a spot on the Media Browser home page and would like to help out the Media Browser project contact me at sam.saffron <at> gmail.com

Special thank you

A special thank you to all the people who donated money to the project, I went ahead and assigned “supporter” badges to them.

Warning to all Sqlite users

If you are using the experimental sqlite data store, you will need to delete it before upgrading. Delete the file C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Cache\cache.db. I made some schema changes that are not backwards compatible.

Whats fixed?

• The image cache subsystem was re-written, now when you launch in to poster view the images show up right away.
• When filtering by genre icons were stretched #1487
• Configurator crashed on startup in Vista #1608 and related
• Stopping a DVD did not return to previous screen on Windows 7 #523
• Online backdrops were taking precedence (and downloading) #1635
• ImagesByName broken with SQLite
• Add "Auto-Enter" option to Configurator
• Highlight Unwatched Items (Checkmarks still showing up)
• Parental Controls: No way to delete folder security rating.
• Latest version of plugin doesn't show on first item in list
• Keep "add plugin" window open until pressing done
• Internet Providers: Local metadata should take precedence
• Crashing During playback
• Configurator doesn't launch after install

Community Tracker Listing

Uprgrading

Upgrading from firestorm should work fine (with the caveat that sqlite users need to dump the cache – don’t worry, if you do not know what sqlite is, you are not using it)

It is also recommended you do a full upgrade of all the plugins you have installed in particular the old MTN High Quality thumbnailer is not compatible with 2.2.3

Download

As usual available here: http://www.mediabrowser.tv/download

Posted by sam on March 10, 2010

Hosting available for fan artwork.

I wanted to extend the offer to this section since it is the place to go for fan artwork. I provide web hosting for many of our community artists that exceed what popular methods such as DropBox can provide at the free level.

Other community members have joined with me to provide a service that is backed by no less than 4 mirrored locations for your files.

If you need hosting, please contact me here or by email (jon at thehtpc.net).

Posted by Jon on March 03, 2010

Media Browser - Thunder Blade 2.2.2.0 Now Released

A call for sponsors!

Media Browser is looking for sponsors, if you or anyone you know would like to sponsor the Media Browser project please contact sam.saffron<at>gmail.com. We would love to have a page on our website dedicated to thanking our sponsors.

We are now taking donations!

The Media Browser project started taking donations, don’t be shy, all the money we raise will go to ensuring the awesome that is Media Browser continues.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to all the developers, testers, and users who posted feedback in both the forum and here on the community tracker, and anyone else whom I've missed that contributed on this release.

As a standalone release this is a significant one for Media Browser. A great deal of work has taken place in refining our backend plug-in architecture and creating standards that benefit not only developers but ultimately you the consumer. Its now easier than ever to create a plugin to Media Browser which should allow for talented developers to really put their own spin on Media Browser.

On a somewhat personal level the ThunderBlade release validates the direction we've done for the past 3 / 4 releases and takes it to another level (I'm a bit excited …). So I've rambled on long enough there is only one thing left to say – enjoy!

Download

http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/downloads/list

Release Notes

To get a full list of changes click here: Changelog: Media Browser 2.2.2 (codename Thunderblade)

We would also like to call out the following changes:

• Much has been said about Media Browsers memory usage, we have taken the plunge and added setting that minimizes memory usage (and in turn take up more CPU) to enable this setting have a look at: Memory usage of MB is really high. In particular there is a new setting in the configuration file that can be set manually: called CacheAllImagesInMemory when set to false, memory usage goes way down.
• Local trailer support is pretty cool very high WAF see: Local trailers support

Posted by soultaker on February 22, 2010

Email flood, well I hope not (and image galleries)

EDIT

Email notification is now off. I feel like I have been bombarded with emails this week. There must be a better way. Its back to the drawing board on this. I will push for RSS support for those wanting up to the second notifications.

END EDIT

I just turned on email notifications on the tracker. It has pretty fine grained configuration on your user page (check the Settings tab)

By default I am fairly aggressive with the notifications, if you find I am being too aggressive let me know.

And did I mention, my first iteration of the fan-art is up and running, I cache thumbs for all the images you post so its nice and fast.

To create your own image gallery, just create an unordered list of images, for example the gallery above was created with:

 - ![Hopefully this will not lead to spam][1]
 - ![Make sure you change your settings][2]
 - ![This should make ebr happy][3]

  [1]: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/uploads/site_1/34/spam_boy.jpg
  [2]: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/uploads/site_1/35/email_settings.png
  [3]: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/uploads/site_1/36/emai2.png

It couldn’t get any easier! Just type – then click this image button and select the url where your image is at.

I created a special category for fan art, feel free to post any cool pictures of your setup, or share any useful graphics with the community!

Note: my background fanart generation task, is still in beta, it may take a while for it to generate your gallery.

Posted by sam on February 08, 2010

Global reputation recalc

Quite a few of you may have logged on today to find out your reputation on community tracker dropped.

It sucks to lose reputation all of the blue. If its any consolation I lost close to 200 points as well.

There was a very good reason for this:

I added a new section to the user page that graphs your reputation changes. When I implemented this feature, certain numbers were not adding up, certain bits of history were missing change dates and so on.

The only way to fix this was a full reputation recalc.

I apologize for taking away some reputation, but hopefully earning reputation will be a bit more fun now that it is a lot more transparent.

As always if you have any ideas on how to improve stuff on the tracker please post them at http://meta.community-tracker.com

Posted by sam on January 29, 2010

Quickstart Guide: Please review and add comments

I've created a Quickstart Guide. Please review my work and comment. This is an essential article that must be correct in order to get people going with Media Browser in a flash :)

Any feedback is welcome. Please add comments or use the improve link

Media Browser Quickstart Guide

Posted by Birkoff on January 22, 2010

Retiring our old wiki

Our old trusty wiki is being retired.

I am trying to centralize all Media Browser information. I am tired of people having to jump around between 3 sites and the old wiki has gotten out of date.

Instead of it I am in the process of building wiki 2.0. In fact this new wiki is already online, just click that Knowledge Base link.

The rules for the new wiki/faq/knowledge base:

1. Anyone can suggest an improvement for a KB article, this can be a bunch of typo fixes or a way improved article. If your edit gets approved you will get a reputation bonus proportional to the size of the edit.
2. Devs and a selected few users (Birkoff, Big ArickSon and Zillion) are able to post new kb articles.
3. There is only commenting enabled on kb articles, if comments get too noisy I will blow the offending ones away.
4. I have also awarded Jon and Zillion the Champion badge, Jon gets it for his hard work promoting Media Browser and Zillion gets it for building our previous wiki and providing us with great documentation.

We are all tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Hopefully the new knowledge base will contain all the information a person new to Media Browser needs to get going.

I am not done with the implementation, there are a few planned changes:

1. Show tags and links in KB articles
2. Whenever anybody searches, KB articles will show up first.
3. Whenever a new topic is created, I will search through the KB to see if an article already exists and show the link prior to the person submitting the new topic.

Thank you all for your help, let me know what you think!

Posted by sam on January 08, 2010

Media Browser 2.2.1 Released (Firestorm)

A few days late, but here you have it, time to push Firestorm out the door. Special thanks to ebr and all the testers for giving this release a huge amount of testing.

An annoucement

Media Browser, as is, will remain free. We are still looking for ways to monetize, be it bundling of a plugin, an app store, affiliates or a value added product. But, the plain old Media Browser you are using today is remaining free. I will shortly be adding a donation page if anyone feels like helping out the project with a few dollars.

We need your help

Recently I posted about a bit of free advertising we got. If you are a designer and can design a better ad (targeted at developers) PLEASE post a pic, if you are a developer follow the links.

This release is huge

This release contains a massive amount of bug fixes and completed feature request, I would like to highlight a few:

• Performance: Firestorm is faster, much faster. Startup is faster, navigating around the home screen is faster, threading is much more constrained and we even ship with experimental sqlite support which is really fast.
• Stability: Firestorm is generally more stable, we fixed issues around video playback in windows 7 and quite a few other areas. We also made it much easier to set up security for extenders.
• Extensibility: With the Firestorm release, thanks to ebrs hard work, we now support UI plugins. This means themes can ship as plugins, in fact Vanilla is no longer shipped with the base Media Browser installer, instead you download it from throgs site. This allow UI plugin developers to ship upgrades to their plugins without having to update the core media browser product. We also support extensible “Item Actions” which means a developer can add additional behavior that can be applied to items in the collection. An example is ebrs find similar movies plugin.

A short list of the changes with more than 1 wish

• Fixed external playback.
• Fixed playback for ripped tv episodes in ISO or VOB format.
• New Images By Name supports common sub folders
• Fixed Error message – “We can not maximise the window for some reason! object…”
• Fixed Extensible Config Page doesn’t work
• New Extensible Item Menu
• Fixed Media Browser Hangs in Full Screen when the clock is enabled
• New display media info icon for 4:3 movies
• Fixed View by Year – Years are not in correct order

What you need to know

• In order to speed up the startup process I rewrote the way we handle configuration files, your current config files for MB are no longer valid, after the upgrade it will be backed up and a fresh one will pop up.
• All the plugins you have need to be upgraded, go to the configuration tool and click the upgrade button.
• Vanilla new home is http://www.throgsoft.com/, there are detailed installation instructions there.
• The images by name folder has been split in to something more rational. To migrate your old images use our migration tool. Or just use this as an excuse to update your images by name files http://www.thehtpc.net/archives/1345

A full list of fixed items in firestorm is available here: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/topics?tag=firestorm

As always a copy of the binary is available at: http://code.google.com/p/videobrowser/downloads/list?saved=1&ts=1261603233

Posted by sam on December 23, 2009

Experimental SQLite support!

I just added some experimental SQLite support to trunk, once enabled Media Browser is pretty lightningy

To have a play:

1. Copy System.Data.Sqlite.DLL to C:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser (I checked this in to trunk under the sqlite directory)
2. Edit your configuration file and set EnableExperimentalSqliteSupport to true

That’s it. You are done, go get a beer. Be sure to copy the correct version of the Sqlite dll, x64 machines need the x64 version and x32 use the default version. Both are in source control.

Let me know how you go, keep in mind this is experimental and no shared view state and play state is supported yet.

On top of that, for everyones sake I cut down the startup time by about a second I am noticing almost instant startup on my box.

And lastly, I pushed back the full refresh so it happens 40 seconds after startup and the auto update was pushed back as well. This cuts down on the initial load you experience.

Posted by sam on December 02, 2009

Giving away free wishes!

I just made some changes to the community tracker.

It seems that almost no one was able to reach the threshold for the second wish. I lowered it to 30, now a large amount of users will have a second wish, use it.

Also on the topic of voting, the more voting goes on the easier it will be for the good stuff to surface up. Did you see a helpful question? Vote it up. A helpful response, vote it up! The more you vote the more wishes everyone will get.

I also added a new way to get reputation, at the moment all topics have an “improve” button, you can use it to improve an existing topic or non-discussion response types. If you think a topic can be described better or feel like fixing some typos or formatting, please go ahead.

At the moment I will approve all the pending edits, when I am done building the feature all users will be able to approve edits for their content. This should improve the quality of the community tracker.

Let me know what you think, feel free to submit any bugs you find with community tracker on http://meta.community-tracker.com

Posted by sam on November 30, 2009

Community Tracker has a Community Tracker

I just finished setting up a community tracker for community tracker.

Using it, for me, is a somewhat surreal experience. It feels like Neurath’s boat:

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.

If anything annoys you about this site or you think something can be done better. Please create an account on meta.community-tracker.com and put through your requests and wishes.

I really appreciate any help I can get.

Posted by sam on November 24, 2009

Feature Highlight: Tiered Backdrops

I'm going to highlight an upcoming new feature of Phoenix – tiered backdrops. Tiered backdrops allows users to control exactly which backdrop they wish to display in Media Browser. This feature allows users to do some fancy things that previously weren’t supported. For example you can now have your own custom backdrop available in all views.

Read more about it here: http://blog.manghera.com/2009/10/media-browser-phoenix-feature-highlight.html

Posted by soultaker on October 12, 2009

Music and iTunes plugin

Introduction So for that past couple of months i have been working on the bringing music to MediaBrowser (MB). With this blog i just want to give you guys an idea of how it works and what it supports. I know there are several people (wink wink) that like to tinker with MB and hopefully this will give you an idea of the limits. I will also hint at future developments that i am currently thinking about. Also maybe give you some insight into why i did what i did. I don’t want to make this to long because i know people don’t like to read but rather see results :).

So currently (not released yet) music can come from two sources (this can be simultaneously setup) one is from a normal folder setup another from iTunes' XML library. As for the former you specify the base folder and it displays as is. As for the latter you specify the XML file and it builds a MB compatible library (or cache).

Normal Library I decided to go with a view by folder paradigm because that makes the most sense to me. If i play music i can find it the faster by the folder structure that i setup. Apart from that if i did it another way i would have had to force a specific folder structure and as all of you know reorganizing a lot of music is a cumbersome task.

iTunes Library As for the iTunes setup, the cache is built up just like it is in iTunes with various options to switch off genre and artist, this however is only allowed in a hierarchy fashion. One point on this setup i have to make is i use the xml file because reading it directly from iTunes via their supplied COM interface is really slow. The disadvantage to using the xml file is that the cache has to be rebuilt if any changes occur to the iTunes library. Lastly on this setup, it requires the internet to get the xml definition file. You will get an error if it is not available.

General In general in order for the music plugin not to “break” existing functionality if there is a avi or any video file in the music folder it is seem as a “movie”. Also the plugin will deal with backdrop and folder images as MB does currently. This is both in the normal and iTunes setup. Having said this it wont use the folder image to display as the album cover while playing. For this it uses the image on the ID3 tag. I suggest you use a 3rd party program to save the folder.jpg into the ID3 tag. When it comes to ID3 tags, i did not make use of them because it is also very slow. Maybe in the future i will revisit this.

Ok, so there were various posts asking which media support is required. Currently the plugin will only consider the following as “music”: m4a,mp3,m3u,wma,acc,flac and wpl. Beware of the playlists, they might cause unexpected results especially when it comes to queuing a folder. As part of the options you can enable a playlist folder in the base folder. This is a special folder that media player (MP) saves the playlists that it (you) create. This you will see if you view the queue, there is an option to save the playlist. If you save it and go look in the enabled playlist folder it should be there.

With regards to playlist, i have added the ability to queue folders/songs and as per existing functionality you can play the whole folder. Just push play on the folder/song and a menu will appear. This is however only possible with some remotes. Once again this is something within MB that i cannot change, now.

Things to come You will notice that the feeling (without tweaking) within the plugin is very bare in terms of information and different views. This is because MB’s current plugin architecture does not allow custom MCML (or views). So the plugin cannot “inject” its own new view. This will most likely change in future. Having said this there might be a new theme soon that will have support for music (lets see Craigt). With this I will consider using a “series.xml” type metadata storage or alternatively look at the ID3 tag. Using the former would probably require another 3rd party application which is a disadvantage, and a whole lot of work from your point of view, so it will most likely end up looking at the ID3 tag.

Configurator and plugin options You might remember the eye ball twisting xml file used to configure the plugin. Well it is no more. I have added the ability for plugins to have options that you can setup via the Configurator (CFR). With this it builds up a UI using the settings of the plugin. In terms of the music plugin i think the options are quite clear and you can find them in the CFR by selecting the music plugin and clicking on the Configure button.

Besides making use of the current supported views offered by MB you can specify a song icon to use for your sounds, i however don’t find this particularly appealing.

Thanks Well i hope i covered everything, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to PM me or post something. If you don’t get a response to your post, please PM me a link. I hope you enjoy the added music ability to our favourite (SA spelling) media center plugin.

I would also just like to say thanks to everyone for the input and the testing. Some chaps that stand out in this regard is jcalton88, craigt, Sam, a couple of buddies back home and well the whole community.

ENJOY …

Post Phoenix Update Thanks to my brother Craigt, i have a site and managed to setup another place to host the plugin. On that site i am hosting Version 0.5.0.8.

To get it you must go to the configurator –> plugins –> Add –> File –> Sources –> Add and enter this url –> http://www.craigthomas.co.za/plugins/plugin_info.xml

Please delete the old music plugin and config file (/plugins/musicplugin.xml) before you update.

Posted by nephelyn on October 05, 2009

A few small changes on the tracker

Just a quick heads up on a few changes on the tracker this week:

• We now have a name for the next release of Media Browser (Phoenix), you can browser all the items that are assigned to it from the home page.
• If you make a wish and it enters into a final state, it no longer counts in your wish limit count. It was a bit tedious leaving that to the users.
• New global search on the top right
• You can see what developers have in their queue if you look at their user page.
• Auto linking in your posts, so http://community.mediabrowser.tv works without any special work

Thanks again for your help logging all these issues, the next release is looking really good

Posted by sam on September 23, 2009

New PC Functionality on Trunk

Well, I just put the latest incarnation of Parental Control functionality on the main development line and, I think, its better than ever.

It now includes a “Hide Blocked Content” option which is the default way I think Parental Controls should work. Basically, if you turn this on, anything above your rating threshhold will be completely invisible to the end user. You can still turn this option off (through config page or in configurator) and deal with entering PINs for everything, but I suggest you try out the “hide” option.

Also, in the new rev, there is a new little button that indicates that PC is turned on and in what state it is in. Turned on and active:

and turned on, but temporarily unlocked:

You can navigate to this button and click it to reverse the state (lock or unlock the library). Its in the classic, default and Diamond themes right now and will be coming soon to Vanilla. On Diamond, it will be in the popup view menu everywhere except the Enhanced Home Screen.

If Parental Controls are turned off altogether, the button does not appear at all.

Hopefully, everyone will be happy with this implementation. I'm sure there are still a couple gotchas to find, but I think its very close to ready for release.

Posted by ebr on September 11, 2009

Welcome to the Media Browser Blog

It’s been a while since I blogged about Media Browser. The threats to move to a for-pay model scared away some people and some of the hype around Media Browser seems to have subsided. Nonetheless we are close approaching the 40k downloads count for the last version of MB, and I am sure we have plenty of happy users.

The Media Browser team have been very busy fixing up all those annoying glitches and adding some fantastic new features.

• Jas has made the new Diamond theme look really awesome.
• Ebr is almost done implementing parental controls.
• Nephelyn has implemented a new music plugin for Media Browser
• I have been busy fixing up lots of loose ends.

I guess there are two very big questions on the communities mind:

• When will the next public release be?
• Will it be for pay?

We will release the next version of Media Browser before Windows 7 appears on the shelfs at best-buy on the 22nd of October.

I hope to be able to answer the second question soon.

Posted by sam on September 11, 2009