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AfterDawn > Software downloads > Audio & Video > Media center > Plex Media Server (Mac OS X) > Version history

Version history for Plex Media Server (Mac OS X)

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Changes for v1.19.3.2852 - v1.19.4.2935

NEW:
(DVR) XMLTV users can now specify categories for Kids content. (#11267)
(DVR) XMLTV users can specify a custom guide refresh rate. (#10787)
(Debian) Add host information to bottom of installer log for diagnosing problems.
FIXES:
(Butler) Periodic music refreshes didn’t refresh albums and tracks (#11475)
(DVR) Episodes may end up with 1900-01-01 dates with certain XMLTV EPG files that provide date instead of original-air-date. (#10973)
(DVR) Server could crash while updating its DVR lineup data.
(DVR) Server would not invoke “Plex Commercial Skipper” under certain circumstances.
(DVR) Unable to record a new release of a movie if an older release is in the library. (#11504)
(Debian) SYSV override variables not being evaluated and used correctly during PMS startup.
(Background transcodes) Intro detection / Video preview generation / Optimizer tasks were excessively throttled when “Disable video stream transcoding” was selected
(Intro Detection) Reduce size of temporaries
(Intro Detection) Store temporary files in the transcode temp directory
(Intro Detection) Clean up old files on SHIELD (and use cache storage by default)
(Jobs) Generation of video preview thumbnails would continue even after disabling the global preference.
(Music) Items added from TIDAL have duplicate source filters (#11439)
(Redhat) PMS would not restart automatically after package upgrade.
(Remote Access) Status may initially show as unavailable on server settings web page. (#5114)
(Synology) Plex share permissions not correct after upgrading, re-installating, or attempting repair.
(Transcoder) Very low-bitrate music transcodes could fail (#11481)

Changes for v1.19.3.2831 - v1.19.3.2852

NEW:
Intro Detection
(Web) Updated to 4.30.2
FIXES:
(DVR) Server would not invoke Plex Commercial Skipper under certain cases.
(DVR) Server would sometimes fail to consume EPG data from certain XMLTV data files. (#11368)
(First Run) Music libraries added during setup wizard could fail to be created (#11432)
(IntroDetector) Crash on Windows when using older CPUs
(Library) Video preview thumbnail generation could fail
(Playlists) Adding an item to a playlist from a remote server didn’t work (#11305)
(PostPlay) Post play could show the item that was just played (#11374)

Changes for v1.19.2.2737 - v1.19.3.2764

NEW:
(Web) Updated to 4.30.2
FIXES:
(DVR) Postprocessing scripts must now be located inside APPDATA/Scripts. Old scripts will continue to work
(DVR) Server would sometimes fail to consume EPG data from certain XMLTV data files. (#11368)
(First Run) Music libraries added during setup wizard could fail to be created (#11432)
(Playlists) Adding an item to a playlist from a remote server didn’t work (#11305)
(Security) Remove the Windows AppData path preference from the web app (#11355)

Changes for v1.19.1.2701 - v1.19.2.2737

FIXES:
(Remote Access) Online status in the web client could erroneously show it as offline

Changes for v1.18.7.2438 - v1.18.7.2457

FIXES:
(Stability) PMS could hang when using iTunes plugins (#11187)

Changes for v1.18.5.2309 - v1.18.6.2368

(Ubuntu/Debian) The service may not have automatically started after upgrading an existing install.
The server could become unresponsive after navigating many preplay screens.

Changes for v1.18.4.2171 - v1.18.5.2309

(Ubuntu/Debian) Improve Docker / Container detection
(Ubuntu/Debian) Use host’s IPA services if available (e.g. LDAP)
(Ubuntu/Debian) Reduce fatal ERROR to non-fatal WARNING if the Plex user does not own the Application Support directory at installation time.
There still exists an issue with non-standard / specialized containers. These will be resolved in the upcoming release(s).

Changes for v1.18.2.2041 - v1.18.2.2058

NEW:
(DVR) Ability to browse upcoming airings in a library style view (#10556)
(DVR) Added explanation for partial recording (#10167).
(DVR) Added smarter logic for detecting existing recordings (#9669).
(Dashboard) FreeBSD CPU and memory graphs (#10611)
FIXES:
(Agents) Make the Framework use modern HTTP libs, fixes certain TheTVDB requests failing among others.
(Butler) Some butler tasks would not run.
(Camera Upload) Don’t allow shared users to enable Camera Upload if they don’t have access to any photo libraries. (#8787)
(DVR) Preserve EPG metadata when assimilating Sports and News recordings. (#10544)
(Library) Add album critic rating as a field.
(Library) Add track mood back as filter/field.
(Library) Allow sorting on user ratings of artists, there are no artist critic ratings.
(Library) Plex Music libraries have critic ratings, allow sorting on them.
(Music) Related TIDAL hubs could sometimes stop showing (#10738)
(Music) Shared users using artist shuffles could get unavailable items in the play queue (#9827)
(Playlists) Recently added playlists were not sorted correctly
(Startup) The server would hang when the application support directory was not writable. (#7492)
Improve movie and TV show matching in some cases (#10641)

Changes for v1.18.2.2029 - v1.18.2.2041

NEW:
(DVR) Ability to browse upcoming airings in a library style view (#10556)
(DVR) Added explanation for partial recording (#10167).
(DVR) Added smarter logic for detecting existing recordings (#9669).
(Dashboard) FreeBSD CPU and memory graphs (#10611)
FIXES:
(Butler) Some butler tasks would not run.
(Camera Upload) Don’t allow shared users to enable Camera Upload if they don’t have access to any photo libraries. (#8787)
(DVR) Preserve EPG metadata when assimilating Sports and News recordings. (#10544)
(Library) Add album critic rating as a field.
(Library) Add track mood back as filter/field.
(Library) Allow sorting on user ratings of artists, there are no artist critic ratings.
(Library) Plex Music libraries have critic ratings, allow sorting on them.
(Music) Related TIDAL hubs could sometimes stop showing (#10738)
(Music) Shared users using artist shuffles could get unavailable items in the play queue (#9827)
(Playlists) Recently added playlists were not sorted correctly
(Startup) The server would hang when the application support directory was not writable. (#7492)
Improve movie and TV show matching in some cases (#10641)

Changes for v1.18.1.1973 - v1.18.1.2019

FIXES:
• (LiveTV) Hubs and Grid may not load for shared users (or may take a long time to do so)

Changes for v1.18.0.1913 - v1.18.0.1944

(LiveTV) A regression in 1.18.0 could cause pixellation / stuttering in LiveTV/DVR playback

Changes for v1.17.0.1841 - v1.18.0.1913

FIXES:
• (Library) Music could fail to scan when added to a new or upgraded music library on Nvidia SHIELD devices.
• (NAS) Permissions issues resulting in a failures to start

Changes for v1.17.0.1709 - v1.17.0.1841

FIXES:
(EPG) On Windows, XMLTV guide would fail to refresh (#10624)

Changes for v1.16.5.1554 - v1.17.0.1709

NEW:
(Transcoder) Update to current upstream ffmpeg
(Transcoder) Support for hardware transcoding on Linux with Intel 9th-gen processors
(Transcoder) Support for VC-1 hardware decoding on supported platforms
(Transcoder) Support for hardware decoding on Linux with Nvidia GPUs
(Transcoder) Support for zero-copy hardware transcoding on Linux with Nvidia GPUs
(Transcoder) Support for zero-copy hardware transcoding of interlaced media
FIXES:
(DVR) Comskip was not available in recording options on FreeBSD.
(DVR) Enhanced Plex Media Server’s performance by skipping reads of previously processed XMLTV guide data. (#9846)
(Transcoder) The server could become unresponsive after certain precisely-timed client interactions.
Corrects Live TV playback error when tuning to channel that contains space(s) in it.
(Transcoder) The server could use large amounts of CPU time when converting subtitles (#10478)

Changes for v1.16.5.1488 - v1.16.5.1554

NEW:
(Web) Updated to 3.108.2
FIXES:
(DVR) Re-enable signal strength updates for all tuners except Hauppauge. (#10352)
(Library) The Track Last Skipped filter could return the incorrect results (#10309)
(Live) In some circumstances, new recordings could use an additional tuner, rather than sharing one already tuning the same channel. This could manifest as a missing “watch from start” option (#9736)
Watching a trailer could mark the corresponding movie watched in some cases (#9481)
(DVR) Live session buffer data could be pruned prematurely, resulting in live TV being unable to seek back as far as expected (#10430)
(Playback) Certain clients could receive corrupted data in media requests, leading to corruption during playback (#10436)

Changes for v1.16.2.1297 - v1.16.3.1402

NEW:
(Web) Updated to 3.104.1
Add translations for Afrikaans, Finnish and Polish and update existing ones.
FIXES:
(Library) Filtering shows by audio or subtitle language would fail (#10189)
(Metadata) Posters could fail to load on Nvidia Shield servers (#10036)
Collection hubs would only display a maximum of six items.
Fix Hungarian translations.
In single-core systems, loudness analysis might not occur on audio files (10049)
Published addresses could fail to update after network interface state changed on macOS (#10192)

Changes for v1.15.4.994 hotfix - v1.15.6.1079

SHIELD - This is the first 1.15.x series release on Nvidia SHIELD.
Please Note: The creation of new “Premium Music” libraries is currently unsupported and all existing Premium Music libraries will gracefully fall back to using standard library matching. Improvements are actively being worked on and are Coming Soon (within the next few months, latest)!
NEW:
(DVR) Add Resolution, Replace lower resolution items, and Allow partial airings at DVR level with option to override at recording level.
FIXES:
(Analysis) Corrected chapters not being imported again
(DVR) Prefer HD airings when both HD and SD are available. (#9641)
Docker host addresses were published unnecessarily (#9576)
IP addresses from interfacing starting with a “v” weren’t published (#9576)
Sync or Optimize could fail to fallback to software transcoding if hardware transcoding failed (#9455)

Changes for v1.15.4.993 - v1.15.4.994 hotfix

NEW:
Allow all users with linked TIDAL accounts to access Add to Library features.

Changes for v1.15.3.858 - v1.15.4.993

Web) Updated to 3.95.2

Changes for v1.14.1.5488 - v1.15.1.791

FIXES:
(Analysis) Chapters for multi-part media was not correctly imported (#9554)
(DVR) Don’t schedule in progress airings if sub doesn’t allow partials. (#9688)
(DVR) Fix a long-standing but rare crash when starting a live tune (#7790)
(Dashboard) User counts in Top Played could be inaccurate (#9730)
(Transcoder) A few seconds of audio could be missing after seeking while Direct Streaming both audio and video (#9658)
(Transcoder) Seeking could be unreliable with some DASH clients (#9137)
Plex Media Server 1.15.1.780 is now available to Plex Pass users in the Beta update channel
This build has the following changes on top of the prior 1.15.1 releases.
FIXES:
(HTTP) Server could become unavailable when using the Samsung app (#9784)
(Metadata) Lockouts when scanning / refreshing metadata (#9704)
(Windows) Crashes as a result of database contention (#9663)

Changes for v1.13.5.5291 - v1.13.5.5332

We backported the security fix in 1.13.6.5339 for those who run public builds
FIXES:
(Security) Updated libxml2 to fix CVE-2018-13415 (#8805)

Changes for v1.13.4.5271 - v1.13.5.5291

NEW:
(Streaming Brain) Added preference to treat WAN IP Address as on the LAN for bandwidth Limits (#8037)
(Transcoder) Support 4K hardware decoding on macOS (#8806)
(Web) Updated to 3.57.1
FIXES:
(DVR) Support network tuner icons (#7552)
(DVR) Users that no longer have a Plex Pass should no longer have access to the Recording Schedule and Guide (#8672)
Allow picking a specific network address to bind to (#8492)
Seek thumbnail timestamps could be off by a few seconds (#2569)
Split Live TV quick links into two hubs.
When remote access is disabled, don’t publish non-private addresses (#8751)

Changes for v1.13.2 - v1.13.4.5271

(Synology) prevent 32-bit version from being installed on 64-bit NAS models (#8851)

Changes for v1.12.2 - v1.13.0

(Transcoder) Media with EAC3 audio could fail to transcode in some cases on Windows.

Changes for v1.11.3 - v1.12.0

NEW:
(Analysis) Detect ATSC closed captions in video files (#7110)
(Analysis) Distinguish HEVC codec tags to work around iOS platform limitation (#7882)
(Web) Updated Plex Web to 3.37.2
FIXES:
(Companion) Resolve a rare crash
(Hubs) "On Deck" and "Continue Watching" could appear empty when the "Weeks to Consider for On Deck" preference was set (#7305)
(Photos) Re-scanning a photo section which had a significant amount of files renamed could lead to database lockups (#7653)
(Photos) The folder structure in the photos view could sometimes become flattened (#8206)
(Transcoder) The server could become unresponsive when playing via DASH (#8166)
Avoid generating invalid XML when media contains invalid metadata (#8192).
Certain ID3 tags in audio files resulted in titles with trailing "///" characters (#6577)
Collections could appear in grid even when disabled in library (#8103)
Fix an issue where loudness analysis was performed simultaneously on the same library (#8021)
Fix loudness analysis on libraries taking up large amounts of memory (#8071)

Changes for v1.10.1 - v1.11.3

NEW:
(Photos) Show recently favorited items in discovery hub (#8101)
FIXES:
(DVR) Back-to-back recordings would sometimes lose the second recording (#8168)
(DVR) Cancelling a recording when comskip is enabled shouldn't result in an error (#7926)
(DVR) Episodes of the same show that air on the same day now record correctly (#6668)
(DVR) Parsing of dates in EyeQ data could potentially fail if format changed (#8209)
(Filters) Dates before Jan 1st 1970 would not work properly in some filter fields (#8077)
(LiveTV) Crash when stopping LiveTV (#8169)
(Photos) Autotagging for some items could become stuck in a throttled state (#8068)
(Photos) Changes to EXIF date fields edited in certain applications would not get picked up correctly (#8125)
(Photos) Photo albums in folder view will now show thumbs for Posters and Backgrounds when editing and will correctly retain changes between scans (#7947)
(Photos) Show video items in Recently Added hub for photo sections (#8101)
(Photos) Timeline entries before Jan 1 1970 would not be displayed consistently (#8152)
(Streaming Brain) Could deadlock in certain circumstances when ABR was in use (#8124)
(Transcoder) Playback could fail or behave erratically near the end of videos when Direct Streaming to certain clients (#8042)
(Transcoder) Soft subtitles could sometimes fail to play on iOS/tvOS (#8022)

Changes for v1.9.7.4460 - v1.10.1

(Photos) The timeline view could become inconsistent when dates are altered on items in the section (#7955)
Plex Media Server 1.10.1.4561 is now available to Plex Pass users in the Beta update channel
FIXES:
(Codecs) Previously downloaded codecs were not always automatically downloaded at server upgrade time (#7643)
(DVR) Add some extra safety around loading EPG data to avoid a couple of crashes (#7883)
(DVR) Recordings could hang if the tuner lost its signal lock (#7606)
(Hubs) Starting playback from certain hubs may fail (#7777)
(Photos) Videos added via Camera Upload have the wrong date on iOS (#7517).
(Streaming Brain) Playback involving transcodes of some channel content failed with bandwidth error (#7911)
(Streaming Brain) Subtitles could disappear at the end of the file while transcoding (#7922)
(Transcoder) Subtitles could be unnecessarily transcoded when streaming to Plex Media Player (#7598)
(MediaInspector) Not all date information was getting saved correctly after re-analysis (#7934)

Changes for v1.8.1 - v1.8.4

NEW:
(Web) Updated Plex Web to 3.20.5
FIXES:
(NAS) Asustor ARM builds would fail to start

Changes for v1.4.3 - v1.4.4

NEW:
(Web) Updated Plex Web to 3.1.1.
FIXES:
(DVR) Deadlock scheduling recordings. (#6468)
(DVR) Deadlock recording while scanning photo libraries. (#6405)
(DVR) Deadlock downloading EPG data. (#6504)
(DVR) Issues recording content when remuxing to MKV from DVB-T/T2 sources. (#6498)
(Streaming Brain) Rare deadlock estimating client bandwidth. (#6505)
(DLNA) DLNA Server might start even when the setting was disabled. (#6469)
(On Deck) On Deck episodes weren't showing for managed users with restrictions. (#6387)
(Transcoder) Matroska streams were missing duration metadata (causing playback issues on Chrome and some LG TVs). (#6462)
(Media Analysis) Audio format in MP4/M4V containers was incorrectly detected (causing playback issues on the Roku). (#6439)
(Media Analysis) Excessive logging analyzing certain files. (#6339)
(Media Analysis) Restore detection of header compression in Matroska containers.

Changes for v0.9.15.6 - v1.0.0

Please Note: Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and OS X 10.6/10.7 are no longer supported in PMS
1.0
NEW
Update Plex Web to 2.7.0.
(Chromecast) Use opus instead of mp3 when transcoding music. (#4805)
(Sync) Changed Sync database format. Downgrading to older Plex Media Server builds may cause Sync problems. (#3959)
FIXES:
(Sync) Synced content wouldn't show up on iOS in some rare cases. See https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/175998/planned-features-known-issues/ (#3959)
(Media Analysis) Crashes analyzing certain .wtv files. (#4789)
(Network) Update plex.tv server information when port mapping fails. (#4758)
(Metadata) Speed up album refreshes in some cases when using Last.fm agent.
(Transcoder) Playback failures skipping to near end of video. (#4803)
(Transcoder) Rare crashes with unreliable internet connections. (#4803)

Changes for v0.9.15.3 - v0.9.15.6

Multiple subtitles in a single file could be lost after a metadata update.
Auto-update could require a manual install in some cases.
(Roku) Improve stability resuming video over HLS.
(Windows) Simplify auto-update experience.
(Windows) Never reboot after a media server auto-update.
(Windows) Fix license link in 'about' dialog.

Changes for v0.9.12.4 - v0.9.12.11

Fixes
- Fix the local media agent not starting correctly.
- Fix a possible crash when updating premium music libraries.
- Fix an issue that caused remuxing and audio conversion on some ARMv7 and PPC platforms to fail.

Changes for v0.9.11.7 - v0.9.12.1

New
Enable iTunes importing code for UNIX; set advanced preference with path to library XML.
Support for decade-based filtering for movies and albums.
Add a hidden preference for sorting albums (AlbumSort, with default value "year:desc").
Add a new library preference to tell scanner to respect media tags (for new libraries).
Fixes
A crash shortly after startup.
(Linux) Crash on start.
(Windows) Scanner might not pick up new media, or might stop in the middle.
A few other crashes and minor stability issues.

Changes for v0.9.7.12 - v0.9.8.4

The 0.9.8 series has been brewing for a while now, like any fine brew of malted barley, hops, and media. (Autocorrect took my atrocious late-night typing and suggested “malted barkley, hopes, and media” which I would imagine is a very different drink.)
First released two months ago, it was followed up with 0.9.8.1, 0.9.8.2, 0.9.8.3 and 0.9.8.4. You can click the links for detailed changes, but the summary is:
Multi-user mode. All the users you share media with (inside and outside the house) get their own view of it (e.g. On Deck, view history) , and can select custom audio/subtitles. You can use it with children to restrict their access to certain parts of your library (this is only the first baby step towards parental controls). This feature is PlexPass only.
Now Playing: A “control room” for your server, where you can see what everyone is watching. If you enable media index files, you can even see a super cool animation of fading thumbnails. This feature is also PlexPass only.
Media Index Files: This option indexes your media and allows for graphical seeking. The Roku and Android apps make use of it. Also PlexPass only. Might make lesser computers cry while it’s actually indexing the files.
Screenshot 2013 08 13 08 37 42
HTTPS support: The media server listens on port 32443 for HTTPS connections.
Prettier photo albums: We now auto-select a “cover” photo for your photo albums.
DLNA fixes: There have been a large number of fixes to DLNA. It’s mo betta.
Other random goodness: Tons of fixes. Copious performance improvements.
Drobo 5N support: Got one of these beautiful new devices? Get your Plex on.

Changes for v0.9.7.11 - v0.9.7.12

NEW: Greatly improved (Sync and Win8) transcoder subtitle burning: support SSA and SMI, fix crashes, fix subtitle sync when resuming video.
FIX: Scanning TV shows near the root directory of a volume didn’t work reliably.
FIX: Send Accept-Ranges: bytes HTTP header when answering requests for media. Fixes Win8 seeking in media.
FIX: DTS audio inside MP4 container could be incorrectly identified as mp4a during media analysis.
FIX: Transcoding certain media files could be pathologically slow. Thanks to Rodger for helping us diagnose the issue!
FIX: Transcoding video audio from MP3 to AAC would fail in some rare cases.
FIX: A/V sync issues transcoding Smooth Streaming to Windows 8 Store app.
FIX: Actor thumbnails weren’t being offered correctly to sync clients.
FIX: Removed unnecessary logging when running transcoder.
FIX: Add more logging when Win8 app loopback exemption can’t be added.
FIX: When a media asset is uploaded, it becomes the default.
FIX: Sync item status could be prematurely reported as complete.
FIX: Added iPad mini sync profile.
NEW: (API) Allow converting SMI to SRT (format=srt).
FIX: (Windows) Large log files when number of library paths exceeded 64.
FIX: (Sync) A few issues with sync status not being reported correctly.
FIX: (Transcoder) An A/V sync issue affecting Win8 app.
Leveraging the new transcoder, and all these other fixes, is the latest update of Plex for Windows 8. It’s taken us a few releases, but at this point media playback support on the app is really super good, and it’s able to play lots of content with remuxing, which (given our support for throttling on the server side), means awesome quality video with minimal CPU usage. Lots of other new stuff, including more keyboard navigation and a cool media information popup, and many bug-fixes.
Plex/Web also got a massive update. A giant, thundering, epic update, featuring a redesigned home screen, greatly simplified navigation, and lots of other goodies. Look at this beautiful new dashboard!

Changes for v0.9.5.3 - v0.9.5.4

¦If you’ve experienced an issue with TV scans missing posters or other artwork, somewhat randomly, this has been fixed; we’ve been experiencing increasingly heavy traffic with all the new users, so we had to bulk up our infrastructure!
¦Movie matching should be more accurate and much faster; we now have a fully automated system which improves the agent matching over time based on the anonymous data sent back. Pretty cool, right?
¦We’ve pushed quite a few updates to the agents to fix non-ASCII poster/subtitle filename issues on Linux, metadata for personal show scanning, and a number of other issues.
¦We released a new version of Plex for Android, with fixes and a few new features. The update for Google TV is coming shortly!
We’re in the process of pushing a new release of Plex for iOS today to Apple, should be available in a week or so. Fixes and goodies abound, and to be nice, here’s a full list of changes you have to look forward to:
¦NEW: Home screen sections can be re-ordered or hidden. Yay!
¦NEW: Background art while browsing. Pretty!
¦NEW: Easier to read list view when browsing by folder. Useful!
¦FIX: High bitrate content will correctly transcode instead of attempting Direct Play (thanks, majortom!)
¦FIX: Media deletion & progress reporting works when using myPlex without publishing servers.
¦FIX: Network addresses are resolved earlier to make playing media on remote clients more reliable.
¦FIX: Easier method for adding friends.
¦FIX: Crash when attempting to set a user rating for an item with no community rating.
¦FIX: Crash marking a show (un)watched.
¦FIX: A few layout & graphical issues.
We also have a new Plex Media Server release for you, with a number of improvements, which can be downloaded from the usual place (and shortly from auto-update):
¦NEW: Added (advanced) preference for specifying location of Aperture/iPhone XML paths. The preference is ApertureLibraryXmlPath for Aperture and iPhotoLibraryXmlPath for iPhoto. Yes, we’re going to have an easy way to get at these advanced preferences soon.
¦NEW: (Linux) Allow syslog logging via environment variable PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USE_SYSLOG. This has been requested for ages.
¦NEW: (API) Massive performance improvement for players that ask for paged data (e.g. for Roku). If you have large library sections, you’ll notice a big change; with 1000 items, the page requests are 6 times faster.
¦NEW: (API) Added /library/sections/X/{sorts|filters} endpoints for advanced filtering.
¦FIX: Sidecar (e.g. SRT) subtitle files work again. Sorry, that was a bad regression.
¦FIX: (Windows) Upload speeds from the server were artificially slow in some cases. We’d gotten sporadic reports over the months that upload speeds seemed limited, and we finally managed to track down the issue. The upload speed will now max out your connection, and will take much less CPU as well.
¦FIX: A crash when scanning for plug-ins when permissions are wrong.
¦FIX: (Mac) Fix some Aperture photos not displaying properly.
¦FIX: Library timeline could generate blank items occasionally.
¦FIX: Web interface didn’t show added and deleted items properly when scanning.
¦FIX: Don’t pass back bogus blank content ratings.
¦FIX: (Linux) DLNA icon and server name were missing on some platforms.
¦FIX: When overwriting plug-ins, files that don’t exist anymore are deleted.
¦FIX: Handle 302 as well as 301 redirects in the image transcoder.
¦FIX: When scanning files that had already been scanned, they didn’t end up with thumbnails.
¦FIX: Certain image formats (TIFF, BMP, PCX) didn’t get thumb nailed.
¦FIX: Fixed sleep prevention, OS X (and possibly Linux) should sleep now.
¦FIX: (Windows) Fixed a crash on start.
¦FIX: (Synology) DLNA to PS3 wasn’t working.
¦FIX: (DLNA) Memory leak in DLNA server process.
¦FIX: (DLNA) Fixed PS3 audio dropouts by transcoding to stereo for now in the profile.
¦FIX: (DLNA) Fixed evaluation of limitations.
¦FIX: (DLNA) Fixed AAC audio not playing to PS3.
¦FIX: (DLNA) Build-in profile now supports Samsung SmartTVs (thanks, holzi!)
We also have some fixes in a new release of the Plex Laika desktop client:
¦FIX: Update RTMP to 2.4
¦FIX: Fix for connectivity issues when PMS isn’t running locally (thanks to elwertk).
¦FIX: Playback of interlaced H.264 content (MBAFF) was broken (thanks to elwertk).
¦FIX: Use the same user agent as earlier in Plex/Nine.
¦FIX: Add the Plex language and version headers.
¦FIX: When forced transcode was enabled, playback could fail for local files.
¦FIX: Support for chained indirects in channels.

Changes for v0.9.5.2 Beta - v0.9.5.3

NEW: Developer ID-signed for Mountain Lion.
NEW: (OS X) Support for Crystal HD
NEW: Allow forcing transcoding on local networks (good for older clients).
FIX: Fix a crash when playing video over VNC.
FIX: Apple remote keymap was incorrect in Now Playing window.
FIX: (OS X) Many fixes for optical/HDMI audio output.
FIX: (OS X) Transcoding 5.1 AAC and DTS to AC3 works now.
FIX: When selecting multi-item videos, it always played the first item.
FIX: Occasional flicker when starting videos.
FIX: Respect the ?noCache? attribute, fixes some channels not refreshing properly (e.g. Netflix).
FIX: (OS X) RTMP wasn?t enabled properly.
FIX: When playing some WebKit channels, it improperly transcoded, resulting in no audio.
FIX: Saved cookies were making some channels fail to play (e.g. YouTube).
FIX: Skinning issue that could make multiple thumbs appear for some content.
FIX: Only show watched state (and context menu items) for library content.
FIX: Changing display blanking settings required exiting and re-entering full screen to take effect.
FIX: Plex.ToggleDisplayBlanking keymap function restored.
FIX: Plex.RunScript and Plex.RunAppleScript work again (Mac OS only).
FIX: (OS X) Plex.RunScript handles files with the .scpt extension as well as .applescript.

Changes for v0.9.5.1 Beta - v0.9.5.2 Beta

NEW: [Mac] Support for automatic refresh rate switching. And there was much rejoicing.
NEW: Add a way to specify a manual address for a media server, useful for working around network issues.
NEW: When running without a server, search now returns cloud results.
NEW: Add a global audio delay setting.
FIX: CPU usage for software decoding greatly reduced for all codecs, fixing VC-1 ?stutter? issue and playback on older machines.
FIX: Allow selecting interface language in preferences.
FIX: Enable down-mix volume boost preference.
FIX: Enable speaker configuration preference.
FIX: A hang in the home screen.
FIX: Losing a server even though it was running on the same machine.
FIX: Not enough buffering (and therefore playback issues) with remote transcoded media.
FIX: Toggling full screen works on multi-display setups.
FIX: Allow ESC to get out of a playlist.
FIX: Add missing strings for shutdown timer.
FIX: Change the audio settings dialog to show delay in milliseconds, it seemed more human-friendly.
FIX: Crash clicking the ?save as default? button in video settings.
FIX: Make sure we stop remote transcodes when stopping playback.
FIX: Update ffmpeg, fixes some artifacts with VC-1 and several other issues.
FIX: Stop printing myPlex tokens to the logs.
FIX: ?Old-school? sources were disappearing after a restart.
FIX: Posters/art weren?t changing when changed on the media server.
FIX: Don?t play theme music if music is already playing or if video is playing in small window.
FIX: Background music volume is always VERY LOUD (preference works now).
FIX: [Mac] A crash when playing Flash/Silverlight videos followed by non-WebKit video.
FIX: [Mac] Flash/Silverlight video occasionally displayed black & white garbage on the screen.
FIX: Info button on iOS toggles OSD, and back button works as well.
FIX: Multiple crashes when skipping around in videos.
FIX: [Win] Crash on startup.
FIX: [Win] A randomly occurring hang.

Changes for v0.9.3.3 - v0.9.3.4

NEW: We’ve added a preference to disable media file deletion, and we’ve defaulted it to off, for the sake of safety (yes, Bruce, we’re listening). If you want to enable the option, please head to your friendly neighborhood web-based media manager at http://localhost:32400/manage and enable it:
NEW: There is a new API endpoint /library/optimize which, as you might expect, optimizes the library database. Useful in clients or cron jobs.
And the fixes:
FIX: When refreshing a library section because changes to folders were detected, we wait until the changes stop before kicking off the scan, so that we don’t scan partial/locked files.
FIX: Custom artwork with spaces in path was not displaying properly.
FIX: This is an amusing one because it’s been there for a long time and nobody noticed. When doing a new scan, every 16th movie wasn’t displayed in the media manager (it was scanned, it just didn’t show up until you switched sections). Thanks to louisd for noticing it!
FIX: Our friend diamondsw helped us debug an issue where certain MKV files were failing to play on mobile devices.
FIX: Boots has been reporting this one for a while, there was an occasional hang in the media manager when scrolling quickly.
FIX: The was an issue scanning if your username had an apostrophe in it.
FIX: A (rather rare) crash in refreshing/timed updates.
FIX: [Windows] Sign all Python extensions. Apparently some of the AV products are coming up with some false positives on the media server, and the hope is that this might improve things.
FIX: [Windows] When exiting, don’t hang waiting for system bundle.
FIX: [Windows] When OpenSSL DLLs were installed into system, PMS system bundles wouldn’t start. This would cause the “no agents” issue.
FIX: [Linux] You can now use the environment variable PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR to specify where all of the media server’s user files go (library, plug-ins, logs, etc.)
FIX: [WIN32/Linux]: If multiple copies of a piece of media are found, load metadata for all copies.

Changes for v0.9.2.7 - v0.9.3.3

NEW: Support for deleting files in the library. Lots of people wanted this one.
NEW: Initial support for Photo library sections. This means that the Plex Media Server can serve up your photos without needing to use iPhoto/Aperture, which of course doesn’t exist on Windows or Linux. We’re in the process of adding support to all the clients (e.g. next version of iOS/Android apps will add support, next firmware update for LG TV will add support), but Plex for Mac already supports it in this release. I like this one personally because it means that the Plex Media Server is now complete in the basic types of media it can scan and serve up.
NEW: Automatic audio boost when mixing down multichannel to stereo for mobile devices. No, you’re not hard of hearing.
NEW: If subtitle files are dropped in next to a piece of media, they will be picked up on-the-fly without a need to rerefresh the item or section.
NEW: Support for SUB/IDX subtitles in Plex for Mac. They’re chunky evil bitmaps, but we love them. Sort of.
NEW: Support for DTS > AC3 transcoding in transcoder (useful for LG TV, ATV2 and others).
FIX: Subtitle scaling is now uniform, no more giant subtitles. No, you don’t need a different prescription for your glasses.
FIX: Anamorphic videos were not Direct Streamed.
FIX: More videos in general Direct Stream (level, nitrate, segment size issues).
FIX: Improved selection of subtitles with “shown with foreign audio” setting.
FIX: The SD MKV A/V sync issue.
FIX: A few bugs on Lion, Plex should now be Lion-ready (which answers this question)!
NEW: Automatic audio boost when mixing down multichannel to stereo for mobile devices. No, you’re not hard of hearing.
NEW: If subtitle files are dropped in next to a piece of media, they will be picked up on-the-fly without a need to rerefresh the item or section.
NEW: Support for SUB/IDX subtitles in Plex for Mac. They’re chunky evil bitmaps, but we love them. Sort of.
NEW: Support for DTS > AC3 transcoding in transcoder (useful for LG TV, ATV2 and others).
FIX: Subtitle scaling is now uniform, no more giant subtitles. No, you don’t need a different prescription for your glasses.
FIX: Anamorphic videos were not Direct Streamed.
FIX: More videos in general Direct Stream (level, nitrate, segment size issues).
FIX: Improved selection of subtitles with “shown with foreign audio” setting.
FIX: The SD MKV A/V sync issue.
FIX: A few bugs on Lion, Plex should now be Lion-ready (which answers this question)!
Platform Parity:
Over time, we want to tend towards platform parity, where features are available on all systems, whenever possible. We’ve taken some important steps towards this:
NEW: [Windows] iTunes support! (We’ll also be adding support for Linux, for those who have their iTunes XML stored on their Linux-based NAS devices.)
NEW: [Windows/Linux] Support for timed and automatic library refreshes.
Music:
We’re working hard to improve support for music inside Plex, and have made a number of changes in the core, music scanner, and agents, including:
NEW: Support for “Various Artists” (compilations) in music sections.
NEW: Initial support for multi-disc albums in music sections.
FIX: Much improved matching, far fewer false matches.
Other:
Even just with the above, this would be a pretty awesome release, but hey, there’s actually a lot more.
NEW: Faster transcoder startup.
NEW: Much faster TV and music metadata loading.
NEW: [Windows] Authenticode all binaries (hopefully preventing AV software from freaking out).
NEW: [Windows] Configure firewall on install.
NEW: Listen on new multicast group in GDM to avoid Windows 7 networking bug.
FIX: Issue where Vorbis streams were not transcoded.
FIX: Better logging for Python scanner errors while scanning.
FIX: [OS X] Database migration progress dialog didn’t always work properly.
FIX: Many fixes for GDM networking code.
FIX: [Windows] Scans stopping without completing.
FIX: [Windows] Server could become unresponsive.
FIX: [Windows] Conflicts with user-installed Python.
FIX: In certain cases, iOS app wasn’t showing channel images.
FIX: Unmatched items could become rematched, and items matched to a different agent could go back to the default agent.
FIX: [OS X] Cocoa media manager no longer jumps back to the grid when you are viewing details during a scan.
FIX: Hang when remotely playing one file followed by the next on Plex for Mac.
FIX: [OS X] Directory names are served up in precomposed UTF-8 on OS X (instead of decomposed).
FIX: [Linux] Crashes reading certain JPEG files.
FIX: [Linux] Image quality wasn’t as good for posters.
FIX: [Linux] Advertise on the real IP, not localhost.
FIX: [Linux] Playing files > 2GB failed.
FIX: [Linux] Fanart was scaled too small.
FIX: [Linux] If HOME was set to /, cache path wasn’t computed correctly.
FIX: Disable IPv6 on Linux/Windows by default, seems to cause problems in some cases.
FIX: Extreme memory usage or crashes analyzing ISO files.
FIX: Some crashes on shutdown, and also sped it up.
FIX: Don’t add the “All Episodes” directory if we don’t have any (e.g. in watched tree).
FIX: When refreshing older media libraries, bring remote media (poster/art) references local.
FIX: [OS X] Massive memory leak switching sections in the Cocoa media manager.
FIX: Offer even higher bitrates over 3G.
FIX: Issue with media streams in the database that could cause a transcode to fail on start.
FIX: A handful of other small bugs and crashes.
XML API:
Along with the new core features and fixes, we keep enhancing the Plex Media Server’s API. There are new clients appearing all the time, the most recent of which is for Samsung TVs and Bluray players (I’ve tried it, works great!), and we like to provide a rich HTTP interface for these clients. Full documentation for the API will be available shortly.
NEW: Media XML contains width and height for video and photos.
NEW: New endpoint GET /library/sections/X/allLeaves (returns all tracks, episodes, etc.)
NEW: New endpoint DELETE /library/metadata/X
NEW: Ability to search by filename.
FIX: Clipping bug in the container paging API.
FIX: Files with ‘%’ characters were not encoded correctly in XML.

Changes for v0.9.2.6 - v0.9.2.7

Now that the latest iOS version has made it into the store (and thank you so much for your feedback on it, you are all very kind!!), we’ve turned our attention to fixing a few issues with Plex. The new releases are available on the Plex home page, and we will enable auto-update shortly.
NEW: We display the warning icon on shows/seasons/episodes and artist/album/tracks so that you can see more clearly which media is missing. Also note that if you dislike this feature, you can always disable it in the Library preferences by enabling “Empty trash automatically”. We enable it by default because we never want to delete any of your data without you knowing about it first.
FIX: We’ve updated the transcoding engine to fix a number of issues, including 3G video playback being audio only (thanks, Chris!), improvements in threading (1080p content should work more smoothly), and according to one tester, DTS-MA now mixes down correctly. Thanks also to mitch969 and others on the forums for all their help testing!
FIX: A few fixes for for the web-based media manager, including a fix for changes to collections not saving, sections not disappearing from clients when deleted via the web manager, and fixes for the “Match using” and un-match functionality.
FIX: When an episode is renamed, make sure we reload metadata if the episode or season number changed.
FIX: If a slideshow screensaver is active, playing content via the iOS or Android remotes turns the screensaver off (thanks to Man for bring this to our attention).
FIX: A fix for Turbo Scanning where if you edited a library section (to add a new directory, or when moving media, for example), you would need to perform a deep scan to pick up the changes.
We’ve also been hard at work at improving the music functionality. Besides support for FLAC, we’ve also added and fixed lots of other things. The really nice part is that the changes were to the scanner and agents, which means that they could be pushed out automatically in micro-increments. I love the thought of our users waking up to new features and bug-fixes without the need to download a whole new version!
NEW: Support for scanning OGG.
NEW: Improved and enhanced poster gathering from tags in all supported file formats.
NEW: Music lacking tags is scanned in as “unknown” artist/album.
FIX: Tons of fixes and improvements around reading tags.
NEW: Parse track numbers out of filename if they’re not in the tags.
FIX: Folders with more than 50 files are scanned.

Changes for v0.9.2.5 - v0.9.2.6

An important general fix:
FIX: As issue when scanning a lot of new content (especially TV shows), where the Media Server could become unresponsive. We are now downloading media at the time of the scan (to make access faster in clients), and there was a bug that could cause an excessive amount of simultaneous downloads to, um, mess things up.
Some fixes specifically for Windows users:
FIX: [Win] The issue with season/episode posters not appearing has finally been fixed.
FIX: [Win] An issue where Plex Media Server refused to start when the user directory had an apostrophe in it. Many thanks to mrrwbrown and nyez1 on the forums for helping us track it down, we really appreciate it!
And a few subtitle fixes:
FIX: Subtitles weren’t being automatically enabled when there was just one embedded subtitle in a file and the preference was set to subtitles being “always enabled”.
FIX: As if that wasn’t bad enough, if a subtitle wasn’t enabled automatically when a file was played on Plex for Mac, it was disabled rather forcefully, so that it wouldn’t (won’t) appear again even if your preferences changed.
So to summarize, every video you played with the last version which did NOT choose to display subtitles automatically now has them disabled unless you manually enable them. This is likely not a big deal, because if you wanted them enabled you would have likely done so at the time! And the bug is now fixed.
We are going to be making more subtitle improvements, including fixing IDX/SUB subtitles, adding support for MicroDVD (on mobile clients as well!) and making the whole process of adding subtitles to your media easier and quicker. Don’t worry, we’re just getting started!
Next up, a few improvements for music fans:
NEW: Support for scanning FLAC! So I recently upgraded my desk stereo a bit, and as a result, I got into an argument with a friend about MP3 VBR vs FLAC. He insisted that there was a huge difference in imaging and dynamics (words that audiophiles like to throw around, along with “coherence” and “coloration”, as they mark their CDs with green pens and purchase three-hundred dollar HDMI cables in hopes that the zeros and ones are, I don’t know, transmitted in Helvetica?). Anyway, having purchased quite a few CDs in the past, and having ripped them to VBR MP3, I was hoping that he was wrong, because, after all, re-ripping 400+ discs didn’t sound like much fun. To make a long story short, he uploaded three tracks for me in MP3 and FLAC format, and I A/B’d between then (blindly, of course). The result? They both sounded great, and I couldn’t tell the difference to save my life.
NEW: The Local Media agent has been updated to pull album art out of tags for MP3 and FLAC files. And there was much rejoicing.

Changes for v0.9.2.4 - v0.9.2.5

Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice, men and software engineers.
The last release contained a stupid database bug which caused the following issues in certain cases (mostly from-scratch scans):
Scans wouldn’t bring in new content.
Deleting the trash would crash the media server.
We apologize profusely for this issue, and we will strive to do better in the future. For starters, we’ll be sure to push major new releases as incrementals/betas before we push via Sparkle. We’ll also consider either administering beatings or reducing the beer rations as negative incentives for those guilty of the bugs.
(A known issue with this release – the last few, actually – is IDX/SUB subtitles. We’ll be working on it.)

Changes for v0.9.2.3 - v0.9.2.4

FIX: The Media Server would crash on start if you had certain plug-ins installed with bogus XML.
FIX: In certain cases, a scan would result in multiple movies showing the same name/poster.
FIX: A few fixes for soft deletion, including merged movies not showing the /!\ icon.
FIX: Changing the view type in Unwatched Shows would change the view type for episodes.
FIX: Possible fix for an OS X Lion crash (Plex is still unsupported on Lion).
FIX: Plex should now pick DTS/AC3 tracks over stereo when connected to a receiver.
FIX: When you play a video via iOS application, screen saver is turned off on Plex.
FIX: [Win] Issue with the transcoder, many videos wouldn’t play.
FIX: [Win] Posters for seasons/episodes not displaying.
FIX: [Win] Customization of application support directory wasn’t working.

Changes for v0.9.1.13 - v0.9.2.3

You’ve been patient, and now it’s finally here! We’re not enabling auto-update quite yet for it, so consider this a pre-release. It might even have a bug or two (gasp!). Play with it, and please let us know how you like it. Mac and Windows downloads are available on the home page.
The iOS app is just getting wrapped up and getting ready for submission.
(Also, we know that some people are having issues with A/V sync and other playback issues. Please realize that we’re aware of this, and have plans for addressing it. Really.)
Also, bear in mind that skins need updating for the universal search functionality. Maverick214 and Reddragon220 are hard at work at this, as is se.bastian, who just released his amazing RetroPlex skin, and updated it already to support search. You can get RetroPlex and other skins via the via the most excellent Preen Skin Manager.
NEW: Universal Search.
NEW: Direct Play and Direct Streaming for clients.
NEW: Subtitle support in agents, and streaming subtitles from server to clients (SRT/SMI/SSA).
NEW: Support for secure access via Web Media Manager.
NEW: Turbo Scanning (option-click to do regular “deep” scan).
NEW: Soft Deletion.
NEW: Added the By Folder second level menu.
NEW: Support for our Bonjour replacement, known as G’Day Mate (GDM). Easy discovery!
NEW: [Win] Support for storing application support files anywhere.
FIX: The “Add Application” button was broken.
FIX: Don’t refresh metadata every two weeks.
FIX: In rare cases a Python process would take 100% CPU.
FIX: “Unwatched” section second title was incorrect.
FIX: Browsing for subtitles on Plex for Mac client.
FIX: Flash 10.1/10.2 works now.
FIX: With newer Flash installed, PMS is not restarted after 5.1 audio (as Flash but was fixed).
FIX: Refresh works with local media agent even if media isn’t matched (for subs, posters).
FIX: [Win] Various crashes (shutdown, during scans)
FIX: [Win] Issue with dialogs popping up asking you to insert drive.
FIX: [Win] Updated to latest transcoder, fixing lots of issues.
FIX: [Win] Make sure we don’t conflict with installed Pythons.
FIX: [Win] Lack of season/episode posters.
FIX: Movies with ratings of 10 don’t show up under “5 stars”
FIX: Any “phantom” media in the database is whacked after a scan.
FIX: Don’t let the machine sleep while transcoding.
FIX: Empty machine name crash.
FIX: Support for audio playback from Android with security enabled.
FIX: Add countries and producers tags to metadata models.
FIX: Media is downloaded on metadata refresh, and always kept around.
And gobs of other fixes…
This release, as always, is brought to you by Barkley, who is bummed that lilikoi season is over.

Changes for v0.9.1.5 - v0.9.1.7 incremental release

NEW: We’ve fleshed out the Plex Media Manager to allow browsing into seasons and episodes, albums and tracks. It’s here, it’s pretty, and finally you can do things you’ve wanted to do for ages like edit season thumbs. Please note, even though it’s functional, it’s not finished by any means, and things like selection states and keyboard navigation are missing.
NEW: Separate buttons for refreshing and agent settings.
NEW: Keyboard shortcuts for Edit Metadata, Refresh, and Fix Incorrect Match.
NEW: Typing letter scrolls to the first item which starts with that letter in the browser.
NEW: Show Media Manager when dock icon is clicked.
NEW: Include the WebManager.bundle in the package. This web-based media manager is really quite awesome. Built using the advanced Cappuccino framework by our one and only Brian D, it gives you a way to access and organize your media via any web browser (even on your iPad) and leaves you wondering “was that really a web app??” Try it yourself by hitting http://x.x.x.x:32400/manage – if you have an older version, delete the WebManager.bundle and let PMS refresh it for you on start (it’ll autoupdate shortly).
FIX: Delete collection instead section when clicking the [-] button (sorry!)
FIX: Only allow dropping onto same-section collections.
FIX: The Fix Incorrect Match button wasn’t working in the details view.
FIX: We remember selection and scroll location when navigating back.
FIX: Broken forward navigation, forward swiping in browse view.
FIX: Missing last character in path bar in media manager.
FIX: Plex Media Server issue which could result in hang or missing sections/plug-ins.
FIX: Long beachball adding/removing sections.
FIX: Rescan whacks collections, they weren’t locked correctly if you created them by dragging and dropping or context menu.
FIX: Abort on start with Aperture XML file with weird permission/location.
FIX: Don’t perform Bonjour resolves during video playback, fixes an every-ten-minute or so stutter.
FIX: Rare crash in Plex when left idle.
FIX: Continue scanning if we run into permissions issues.
FIX: Dock icon weirdness when disabling and attempting an immediate restart.
FIX: We’ve reverted the transcoder to use the older quality settings, which will reduce CPU usage.

Changes for v0.9.1.2 - v0.9.1.5 incremental release

NEW: Allow sorting based on date added.
NEW: Keyboard accelerators for clipboard operations.
NEW: Optional dock icon (set in Preferences).
NEW: Home movies section works much better: ratings/view status/resume is now remembered, and of course you can edit all the metadata.
FIX: Resume offset/view status now remembered for media even if it’s not matched.
FIX: Stuttering issue with VIDEO_TS media, previously released in hot-fix form.
FIX: Recently Viewed Shows wasn’t working.
FIX: Lower CPU usage when refreshing TV shows.
FIX: Seasons/episodes views weren’t getting graphics from the media server.
FIX: Cases where a scan failed and we deleted lots of media out of the library.
FIX: Crash in the scanner with a bogus AVI file.
FIX: Posters/art not appearing when searching for movies.
FIX: Tweaks in Plex to hopefully not “lose” sections and plug-ins (more fixes forthcoming).

Changes for v0.9.8.4 - v1.0.7

Upstream fixes:
Fix video ripple on Mavericks with Intel GPU
PHT Fixes:
Update app translations.
OSX: Make sure we reset audio devices to PCM mode correctly
OSX: Don't apply a mix matrix when the input channels are the same as output channels
Crash fixes

Changes for v0.9.0.21 - v0.9.1.1

TweetWithout further ado, we’d like to introduce you to the latest version of Plex/Nine. It’s much more stable, it’s faster, has more features, and it’s also much shinier than the last release. The release can be downloaded via auto-update or from the home page.
This release also includes all the changes from the various hot-fixes, which I’ll summarize here as well for the sake of completeness.
NEW: ?Cast information restored to movie information dialog in Plex for Mac.
NEW: Ability to choose a specific piece of media to watch (e.g. HD, SD) if you have multiple media items. (You can disable this in Preferences > Video.
NEW: Added back “By Albums” in iTunes plug-in. Sometimes all you need is a little more cowbell.
NEW: Allow splitting apart TV Shows and Movies in the media manager. You can see an example here.
NEW: Added an “Unwatched” section for Movies and TV Shows.
NEW: Added “By Album” in music library sections.
NEW: Allow browsing for on-disk graphics (posters/art) in the Media Manager.
NEW: Support for volume control in new remote control protocol.
NEW: Display number of items for each piece of media (e.g. if you have SD and HD versions of a movie). If you sort by items descending it’s a good way to see if you have any duplicated media (Reveal in Finder will show all of them) or if the agents have mistakenly matched two different pieces of media to the same thing. Yes, I’m really this disorganized, or at least I was until now!
NEW: Searching for matches in the media manager is now asynchronous and can be cancelled. Death to beach balls!?
NEW: ?In Preferences > Transcoding, we’ve added an option to offer higher bitrates over 3G.
NEW: In Preferences > Library, you can optimize your database.
By far we spent the most time fixing bugs. Hopefully this release will resolve most of the really pesky issues. We appreciate all the patience and kindness you’ve shown us with this first release. As we’ve mentioned, this was a ground-up rewrite of the entire library, so problems were definitely to be expected.
FIX: That dratted issue with posters and art continually re-downloading off the Internet. The Plex Media Server is now the single entity that downloads the graphics, and all the clients request from it. Expirations have been fixed, and other improvements around caching have been made. The bottom line is that, while not perfect, it should be much, much better. N.B. As part of this change, it’s of course going to have to download everything one last time in order to transition over to this new scheme.
FIX: Leopard crash on start (thanks, Ryan!). Also a crash on start when your computer didn’t have a name. And a few other crashes on start.
FIX: Stuttering playback (mostly with HD media). In some cases the cache size was being set incorrectly based on bad analysis, and this could lead to stutters during playback.
FIX: Anamorphic videos fix for iOS. Additionally, anamorphic MP4 files play correctly on Plex for Mac (thanks, Ryan!).
FIX: High CPU usage during scan, which could cause stuttering during playback as well.
FIX: Plug-ins could go missing in Plex when starting at same time as PMS.
FIX: We now quit the Scanner if the Media Server quits.
FIX: When detecting a rename, we upload location the in the database, otherwise media gets whacked when removing old location.
FIX: When a duplicate episode was found, it lost the “addedAt” time (making it disappear from “recently added”).
FIX: Allow backspace to exit the weather section, preferences, and a few other places where you could get stuck with the iOS app.
FIX: The “-1? year issue in list view.
FIX: Better handling of locked database file.
FIX: In certain cases, stacked movies were not played in the right order.
FIX: Sometimes partial fanart files were displayed, leading to corrupted images being displayed.
FIX: Better handling for audio/video distinguishing in iTunes for foreign languages.
FIX: Allow changing metadata agent settings when there are no sections.
FIX: Video podcasts passed back as Video elements instead of Track.
FIX: Hebrew subtitles were displaying punctuation incorrectly.
FIX: The word “dvdmedia” was displayed at the end of the movie title.
FIX: Occasionally startup issues could result in agents not showing up, improve the recovery from this.
FIX: Issue on startup, due to space in home folder.
FIX: Videos stopping randomly in the middle of play.
FIX: A few tweaks to the Media Server’s menu bar, to make canceling a library refresh possible, and to make it harder to accidentally start one.
FIX: iTunes/iLife plug-ins mysteriously disappearing.
FIX: Lots of crashes while scanning and analyzing media, including some MP3s.
FIX: The Media Server starts (and installs) on a machine without Internet.
FIX: We fixed a .BUP/.IFO ordering issue which could cause a crash when playing a VIDEO_TS movie. You’ll need to remove and add the section to fix the ordering (but you won’t lose view state/progress doing so).
FIX: A buffer overflow issue reported by d1dn0t, which also caused crashes when navigating into some plug-ins.
FIX: Adding library sections from the command line wasn’t working (thanks, Atrus!).
FIX: The library would occasionally refresh continually.
FIX: Crash of the iOS app near the end of a video.

Changes for v0.8.3 - v0.8.5

FIX: A bug where Plex and the Plex Media Server could get out of sync and display the wrong contents for a directory.
FIX: An issue when stopping music playback, where the GUI “clicks” don’t restore and the playing track is still selected.
FIX: Photo thumbnails were broken for plug-ins (thanks to orr721 for the report!)
FIX: Hitting the menu button during a blank slideshow causes a crash. (thank to Majkel and other for the report!)
FIX: When a track fails to play, Plex jumps into (blank) Now Playing screen anyway.
FIX: Sometimes the photo screensaver started going “crazy fast”.
FIX: The new remote code logged too much.
FIX: The duration didn’t show up in plug-ins.
FIX: You weren’t returned to the main menu correctly from items added to your Favorites, or direct links to plug-ins in the Music section. Existing favorites will need to be removed and re-added. (James)
FIX: The iTunes plug-in now sorts artists by the “sort artist” field in iTunes. This one is for Scott!
FIX: Crashes with WebKit plug-ins that appear in the Music section.
FIX: PlexHelper occasionally stopped responding (or responded incorrectly) to button presses.
FIX: Sometimes Plex didn’t start after the first run. Believe it or not, this was an OS X bug, now worked around.
FIX: Plex hung when using the mouse wheel to scroll through text (thanks to hqrs for the report!)
FIX: Changed the servers in the TVDB scraper to use the load balanced ones. (many thanks to kruisje for the fix!)
FIX: Fixed a crash loading some RAW files.
FIX: DTS-to-AC3 was broken in the last release. Thanks to our audio doctor Ryan who fixed it and improved the AC3 trancoding in the process.
FIX: When you select “previous track” it now does the right thing with streamed content: moving to the start of the track or the previous track depending on how far along the track is (awesome, James!)
NEW: Plug-in preferences show up on the context menu for the plug-in itself.
NEW: Auto-sourcing of remote Plex Media Server iLife plug-ins. Let’s say you have a laptop with iTunes music, or your wife’s iMac has iPhoto on it. No longer do you have to manually add the sources, or wonder if they’ll work when you click on them. With the new version, sources add and remove themselves auto-magically thanks to Bonjour. Make sure you install the new Plex Media Server on the remote machines.

Changes for v0.8.2 - v0.8.3

FIX: On Snow Leopard, 5.1 audio had issues. We’ve cleaned up the code, fixed the problems, and it now runs great on 10.6. Many thanks to Ryan for all his work on this one.
FIX: We fixed an issue with the new caching system that could cause some MKVs and other files to stutter when played over the network.
FIX: Video playlists work again.
FIX: Multi-part videos display thumbnails again.
FIX: Crash reading GPS EXIF data from photos.
FIX: Fix for crash when displaying subtitles (Thanks, Billy J!)
FIX: A few crashes in the Media Server (custom iTunes genre artwork, and playing Netflix movies).
FIX: First WebKit play on a fresh install didn’t work.
FIX: App Store would sometimes not show up on a fresh install.
FIX: GForce visualizer for iTunes causes Plex to crash.
FIX: TVDB image issue (thanks to Poldi!)
FIX: Posters issue in IMDB scraper (thanks, Jay!) and issue with cast lists (thanks to Todd G!)
FIX: DTS downmixing method reverted to use libdts. People who listen on headphone *may* be happier.
FIX: Make keyboard backlight feature optional (James). You can access this setting in the advanced Cocoa preferences area under the Videos tab.

Changes for v0.8.1 - v0.8.2

NEW: Allow Plex Media Server photo sources to be used for the slideshow screensaver. It’s kind of nice to have a subfolder of Web Gallery of Art as your screensaver, your date will be impressed.
NEW: This has been a popular request for those of you without surround receivers. We’ve added a new setting that links OS X sound volume with Plex sound volume. This means that you can use your Apple Remote for *all* of your volume changes, including all the WebKit plug-ins. (For those of you with surround receivers, you’ll continue to use your receiver’s remote for all of your volume changes.)
NEW: This is one that’s bothered me for ages. Setting the cache size in Megabytes is really silly, because the amount you want to cache depends on the bandwidth of the content. For example, if you set it high, your Apple Movie Trailers might play without stuttering, but then that low bandwidth FLV would take forever to buffer. With this version, we’re introducing Bandwidth-based Caching®, which dynamically adjusts the size of the cache depending on the needs of the stream. The result: lower bandwidth streams start faster, and higher bandwidth streams play with less stuttering. Also as a consequence, the cache settings now look quite a bit more simple. You simply specify the number of seconds of media that you would like to cache.
NEW: Greatly improved responsiveness when browsing. Things like entering or leaving a big list of items (e.g. iTunes artists list) that could hang the entire interface for 5-15 seconds are now instant.
NEW: Thanks to James, the keyboard backlight turns off during videos playing so you can grope your date more easily.
NEW: Maverick214 on the forums submitted a great patch for displaying the end time for videos. Always nice to know how much longer you’re going to be tortured watching So You Think You Can Dance.
NEW: We’ve added a “Shuffle” context menu item for the photos area.
NEW: Do you like having your cake and eating it too? Do you like the Now Playing screen, but wish you could induce epileptic fits in your pets with the visualizer at the same time? Luckily for you, Scott was stuck on a plane, armed with a laptop and he hacked together this perfect marriage. Not for you? Simply select the “Hide Now Playing in Visualizer” in the Skin settings.
NEW: Improved Snow Leopard support. There are still a few glitches, but Plex now runs quite well on the new kitty.
NEW: James cleaned up the shutdown options for Plex. In the skin settings, you can select which of Quit, Sleep, or Shut Down appears on the main menu. If you want to access the other choices, you simply hit “right” to pick another option. If you have your Harmony remote mapped to something custom, you can use the actions Plex.Quit, Plex.SleepSystem, and Plex.ShutDownSystem.
NEW: We display error messages when an item fails to play (as opposed to silently returning to the menu).
Along with all these additions, we’ve fixed quite a few bugs:
FIX: Manually added PMS sources can be removed via context menu (James).
FIX: The default folder for the slide show was set to “F:/” (#303)
FIX: Fixed an issue when Auto-Subtitles are enabled, we weren’t allowing manual activation of other subtitles if they were automatically disabled.
FIX: Crash in the Media Server in iTunes plug-in.
FIX: James made some minor tweaks to menu/keyboard handling, so that the ‘Move focus to the menu bar’ command (mapped to ^F2) works, and also ?W now closes the About window.
FIX: We now scrobble to Last.fm as “Plex”.
FIX: Thumbnails obtained from the Plex Media Server are all stored in their own directory, and given a limited time to live, so that you shouldn’t need to go manually whack icons or fanart any more. In addition, thumbnails created by the Plex Media Server with Quick Look are also only cached for a limited amount of time.
FIX: Removed the System Info window, which really wasn’t doing much good (thanks to James).
FIX: Disable cross-fading by default (also thanks to James).
FIX: Fixed an error in the keymap (thanks to Mickey for reporting, and James for fixing).
FIX: The Plex Media Server quit confirmation dialog didn’t always appear on top (James).
FIX: Improved A/V sync, those with senses tuned to this sort of stuff should find it better behaved.
FIX: iTunes visualizers didn’t show elapsed time (thanks to Daniel for reporting it).
FIX: Resume point for videos is now saved when quitting.
FIX: Years weren’t showing up in IMDB matches.
FIX: On updates or restarts, PlexHelper (and thus Apple Remote) could stop working.
FIX: If you had the Plex Media Server set to “Always running” it would not start on boot.
FIX: A crash starting a zoomed MKV (with software upscaling enabled).
FIX: A crash on startup with audio device changes.
Also, we’ve worked on the interaction between Plex and the Media Server, as well as the Python Framework. James just pushed the official v1.0 to the store, and he’ll be blogging about all the great changes in the final release. Note that all plug-in caches and data will be reset because of changes to the encoding, which means that you will need to re-enter login data into some plug-ins (we apologize for this).
NEW: We now support redirection from HTTP to RTMP, MMS, and WebKit streams.
NEW: Site configurations can live inside plug-ins.
NEW: We check for other Python files changing besides __init__.py inside of Contents/Code.
NEW: Seek bars are allowed to specify small/large percentages to jump.
NEW: Video items can specify bandwidth if they wish to override the automatically computed bandwidth (also useful for some FLV files where it’s not possible to extract it).
NEW: You can pass back cookies from the Media Server to Plex, which is useful for accessing authenticated content.
FIX: The Preferences item refreshes parent, useful for displaying/hiding sub-menus based on logged in status (James)
FIX: Javascript seek bars didn’t reset properly.
FIX: String keys are now allowed for album media items.
FIX: The Plex Media Server would crash if a site configuration moved to an unknown state.
FIX: Showing a message dialog at the top level of a plug-in didn’t work right.
FIX: The Media Server didn’t forward requests to the right plug-in when they shared a common prefix (James)

Changes for v0.8.0 - v0.8.1

FIX: Idle CPU reduced greatly. On an iMac we went from 24% to around 9.8%. On a 1.83GHz Mini we went from 38% to 16%. Al Gore is happy.
FIX: Hang when playing WebKit content after 5.1 content.
FIX: A few issues causing App Store/plug-ins to disappear.
FIX: Hang on exit (when Media Server Scrobbler was enabled).
FIX: Cannot play/browse AC/DC (and other artists with funky names) from the iTunes library. Heavy metal fans rejoice!
FIX: Scrobbling plays of AAC files to the Plex Media Server wasn’t working.
FIX: Crash on start when Plex Media Server was run on a computer without Plex.
FIX: Intermittant lack of audio when starting 5.1 videos when background music/themes was enabled. (We also disabling the fading, which was not helping.)
FIX: VC-1 apparent regression in ffmpeg 0.5 which caused much higher CPU usage and related problems. Ryan and I resolved it by reverting to an earlier version of the codec. Thanks to Peter for bringing the issue to our attention, and to Aaron for help in tracking it down.
FIX: View Slideshow context menu items weren’t enabled for top-level photo plug-ins.
FIX: Jay and Isaac tweaked the default settings for IMDB to make sure the best quality posters are returned.
FIX: James made some tweak to Now Playing. The flip time is now configurable in the Advanced Settings Cocoa UI (Make it flip every 5 seconds! Make your child and/or pets motion sick!) Additionally, the background is more in line with look of MediaStream.
FIX: We’ve defaulted the automatic audio stream selection to false, as we think that default makes more sense (Thanks, Isaac! You can turn it off manually yourself in the video player preferences.) We also fixed an issue with the auto-selection of subtitles if the auto-selection of audio streams was disabled.
FIX: We pulled the latest libdcr code which decodes RAW images (it fixes some pink-hue issues with newer cameras).
FIX: As forum user “someone” reported, the German strings were botched in the previous version.
FIX: Sébastien Vaast kindly send us updates to the French translation.
FIX: We fixed a possible crash with Javascript seek bars in site profiles.
FIX: Relative coordinates on “thumb” seek-bars were broken, many thanks to Robert Nio for reporting the issue and testing the fix.
FIX: We pulled the latest XBMC UPnP code, in hopes this would help with some problems reported on the forums. We also pulled a fix related to the sendkey HTTP-API command, and a few other fixes.

Changes for v0.7.15 Beta - v0.8.0

NEW: Have you ever been annoyed by a video playing with subtitles even though the audio track is in your native language? Or having to look through all the 24 subtitle tracks in the MKV just to find the one in your language? Annoying, right? Plex/Eight auto-manages subtitles and audio tracks based on your language setting (i.e. the OS X language setting). For example, if your language is set to English, videos with English audio tracks won’t display any subtitles, whereas a foreign film will display English subtitles. If the language is set to Portuguese (Olá amigos!), an English film with lots of subtitles will auto-pick the Portuguese ones.
Likewise, for those of you encoding dual 5.1/stereo tracks in your MP4 files, Plex will pick the AC3 track if the receiver is AC3-capable and the tracks have language tags.
These options are both on by default, and they will not override per-video settings. Also, note that some video files don’t have language information for the audio and subtitle tracks. The code tries to be clever, but it’s not magic.
NEW: James whipped up a cool animation for the Now Playing screen. Those of you with Plasma screens can now rest easy. The animation triggers every two minutes. Drink some nice red wine and stare at the screen.
NEW: There are more and more of you using the Plex Media Server to stream your iTunes libraries to Plex, and a common request was to update the play counts and mark podcasts as viewed. In Plex/Eight, Plex now “scrobbles” plays to the Media Server, which updates the iTunes library (note that since it uses AppleScript, you’ll need to have iTunes running on the machine where the Plex Media Server is, and it will be started by OS X if it’s not). This feature is off by default, and you can enable it in the Media Server section of the preferences.
NEW: Anamorphic zoom mode. Falk Husemann submitted a patch to change the 16×9 zoom mode to work with projectors which have anamorphic lenses attached. You can read more about this sort of set up here. You can enable this new mode by setting true in your advanced settings.
FIX: Sometimes album art didn’t show up in the Now Playing window.
FIX: Remote fanart (e.g. iTunes) wasn’t showing up.
FIX: Very slow start/skipping tracks for music. We made some improvements to the Media Server, and the ever-skilled jmarshall committed a nice related fix which we pulled. You won’t believe how much faster it is.
FIX: Speaking of performance, a big shout out to Jens Kleemann, who has been working for a while on analyzing and improving the performance of Plex. A few weeks ago, he told me that one of the main sources of the idle CPU usage was in some code that was locking and unlocking a mutex. He even sent over a patch that did less locking, and Plex took less CPU with the fix. Now this didn’t seem right to me, as a thread that is blocked on a mutex doesn’t consume any CPU. One night I looked over the mutex code, and I noticed a line of debug code that got the thread’s Mach port. I’d put this line in when I was trying to track down a threading issue *ages* ago, and it wasn’t used anymore. Except, as it turns out, it was responsible for consuming about a quarter of Plex’s CPU usage when idle. So a big thank you to Jens, and a big apology from me. Just think how many trillion of instructions your computers have executed for no good reason because of me. I might actually be responsible for global warming.
FIX: We’ve changed the thumbnailing code for photos to use a single thumb instead of four, by popular request.
FIX: Nikolas Stephan kindly submitted a patch so that Last.fm scrobbling works with tracks played from the Plex Media Server.
FIX: Nikolas Stephan also submitted a patch which allows selecting folders for the photo screensaver, apparently something which used to work.
FIX: We restart the Plex Media Server when we quit after 5.1 play (or upon restart after a crash). This is needed to work around a CoreAudio/WebKit issue, and you would have seen this issue as WebKit videos playing back without audio.
FIX: We automatically remove empty iLife sources, so if you don’t have Aperture, it won’t show up, for example.
FIX: GlimmerBlocker no longer prevents WebKit plug-ins from working.
FIX: The new wider list view works with the “hide thumbs” option.
FIX: Some SSA subtitles (e.g. Chinese) didn’t render correctly.
FIX: James made some fixes to background music; the volume level of the background music shouldn’t be quieter than regular music, and fixed a couple of problems with it not restarting properly. Also, it’ll fade out when starting a video.
FIX: The fonts have been fixed in the Now Playing window for the Original font set.
FIX: A possible crash in the Plex Media Server.
FIX: Better keyboard mappings for the Now Playing window and Mira (thanks to marklight!)
FIX: We pulled the latest IMDB scraper from XBMC (thanks to aaron and jayman for testing it out!) and this should fix it bringing down incorrect posters when the IMPA awards option is on.
We also pulled a good bunch of code fixes from XBMC. (No Aeon fixes, sorry.)

Changes for v0.7.14 Beta - v0.7.15 Beta

We’re coming to the end of the Plex/Seven series, so we’re primarily focused on bug-fixes, but we did find the time to add a few new things for your enjoyment. Many, many thanks to all the people who helped out with this release. In the next few days, we’re going to release a few new plug-ins (and updates to existing ones) that make use of new features/bugfixes in this release, so be sure to update as soon as you can! The release can be downloaded here.
NEW: One of the complaints we’ve heard is that the visualizers available with Plex, while cool, sometimes cause seizures in kids and household pets. Others say that it leads them to look forward to 4:20 PM. In any case, James and Mike B (of MediaStream fame) teamed up to bring you a sexy new option: The Now Playing visualizer. Select it just as you would any other visualizer, and take it for a spin.
NEW: We’ve added support for ratings in Plex Media Server content. So in the next revision of the Netflix plug-in, for example, you’ll now see star ratings, as you will in another new plug-in that will be released shortly.
NEW: Do you ever find yourself struggling to shuffle a playlist, or play an album straight through, by displaying the playlist, toggling settings, and then switching back, having forgotten what you were doing in the first place? James added a convenient Shuffle item on the context menu to make that struggle a thing of the past. Together with the new Now Playing visualizer, we’re hoping you find music playing just a little bit easier this release.
NEW: New iLife art (thanks to the talented tassitassi). You see some of it peeking out from the screenshot above. (Note: you’ll have to whack your existing cached art at ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/Thumbnails/Programs/Fanart/)
NEW: Our friend Kent has been hard at work on analyzing our user data. Among other things, he’s discovered that our Swedish users rock! There are more Plex users per capita in Sweden than any other country. He compiled this data by looking at the Sparkle update requests. To make his job a bit easier, we’ve added a token to each update request that’s unique for each computer. We’re sending a one-way hash of the computer’s MAC address, which when broken down into plain English means that (a) we’ll be able to figure how many total computers are running Plex and (b) we can’t use the data to obtain any information about your computer.
We’ve also fixed a number of bugs in this release:
FIX: The context menu was broken for the Favorites section.
FIX: We weren’t saving the ’show extensions’ setting correctly in advanced settings.
FIX: James fixed a long-standing (since Plex/Five) scraper hang with tvshow.nfo.
FIX: We got a patch from rgrove (thanks!) that ensures that LAN cache settings are used for SMB shares.
FIX: Caching was disabled, which caused no end of trouble playing back Internet content.
FIX: We added Lanczos back to the OSD upscaling menu.
FIX: We increased the size of the default fonts. I have to personally apologize for that, apparently I ate too many carrots as a baby.
FIX: Crash/hang when exiting after playing a video.
FIX: Also a longstanding bug, the occasional lack of GUI sounds after playing videos (thanks to Kent for helping me track this down).
FIX: The Plex Media Server is a Universal Binary again.
FIX: Ryan helped me fix a DTS->AC3 transcoding channel mapping bug.
FIX: A Plex Media Server crash (when stopping a WebKit video shortly after starting) was fixed.
FIX: We’ve made the list view give more room to text. After all, scrolling text is hard to read.
FIX: Stopping a video with 5.1 audio could be a bit slow.
FIX: The clock could display letters (e.g. “kk:49?). Thanks to Daniel for helping me track this one down.
FIX: James made the thumbnail searching code respect the dvdthumbs advanced setting (so you can add support for Front Row style preview.jpg files).
FIX: Double speed playback of 22KHz audio in videos (e.g. some FLV video).
FIX: Enhanced the caching of directories to work well with the Plex Media Server (much quicker backing up to parent directories).
FIX: Isaac fixed a few confusing strings.
FIX: Improved Russian strings (thanks to friendly).
FIX: Blurry fanart. Thanks to tassitassi for bringing it to my attention and to jmarshall for the fix).
We also added a few new Media Server plug-in features and fixed some bugs:
NEW: Support for typing a string in the site config (requested by Rick, useful for authenticating into Flash sites).
NEW: We allow specifying a dead zone in the seek bar site config, which can help make a tooltip disappear after a seek.
FIX: Preferences weren’t being correctly escaped, which could lead to problems logging into Netflix, for example.

Changes for v0.7.12 Beta - v0.7.14 Beta

We’ve been working hard for the last month and I’m really happy to finally be able to announce this next release (download here, but please read the release notes first). Besides the usual bunch of new features and bug-fixes, this release brings with it support for the next major release of our Media Server plug-in API, and this means that you’ll be seeing lots of new content in the App Store this week (and hopefully provides extra incentive to upgrade quickly!)
NEW: Cocoa UI for advanced settings. Why should you have to edit XML files? You shouldn’t, and now you don’t have to, because the most important advanced settings are easily accessible in this advanced settings dialog that James added. The dialog is accessible via Plex > Advanced Settings… in the menu bar.
NEW: This all started with a giant bug that Youngcho Kim posted detailing improvements that would help Korean users. Seeing as I like ?? ??? as much as the next guy, I read the bug, thought about it, and we decided that a lot of his suggestions were really excellent for all non-English first time Plex users. So we’ve done a few things:
Plex respects the language setting in the International preference pane. Whatever language your OS X applications start with, Plex will start with (assuming there’s a translation).
Plex respects the units setting (Metric/US) also specified in that preference pane, and these are used to determine the units for temperature and speed.
Plex uses the date and time formatting specified in that pane as well; for example, MediaStream uses the short time format for its clock, which you can easily configure it in a number of different ways. More importantly, it will use whatever format you have configured already.
Plex auto-selects the font based on your language, so if your language is configured in OS X to be Chinese, for example, it will use Arial Unicode automatically.
If you really want Plex to be running with different language/units than OS X, you can specify this in advanced settings ( tag, e.g. “en” or “it”, and tag, e.g. “metric”).
NEW: Evan Schoenberg was kind enough to add support for the IRKeyboardEmu virtual remote, which provides support for his awesome Rowmote app for the iPhone.
NEW: SMS jump support for Harmony, to make it easy to jump around in lists (thanks to aaronjb!)
NEW: Ryan updated our ffmpeg to v0.5 from the XBMC source, and added the new version of libfaad2 and some other patches which provide support for more formats. See his blog post for more details. The new ffmpeg adds support for WMAv2 and lots more.
NEW: We’ve enhanced support for .dfont files, to allow specifying font variants; the skin now uses Helvetica Neue by default, except for languages whose character sets aren’t supported by that font, which use Arial Unicode. We’ve also moved to using mixed case, which we think is more readable than all-caps. (We’ve left the original font-set as “Original” for those who prefer it).
NEW: Improved fanart images for iTunes, iPhoto and Aperture, thanks to Aargh-a-Knot.
NEW: Support for Plex.MoveToNextScreen and Plex.MoveToPrevScreen actions, as requested by Felix Schwarz, the author of Remote Buddy.
NEW: Finished up localization support in Plex and the Media Server so that plug-in localization works. There was already support for it in the framework, but it needed a bit of plumbing.
NEW: James enhanced the photo text overlay so that (a) it hides after 10 seconds and (b) you can toggle it with the ‘info’ command (’t’ on the keyboard, menu on the Apple Remote). We’ve tweaked the keymap in slideshows to be more consistent with other sections, so pressing menu displays information, holding menu returns you to the browser. Additionally, hold left and right zoom out and in, and hold play displays photo EXIF details. Also, if you just don’t want to see the overlay at all, you can hide it in the skin settings.
Lots of good fixes in this release as well.
FIX: Allow specifying “always on” vs. “on for SD content” for software upscaling (we’ve also allowed you to select the algorithm used in the advanced settings dialog).
FIX: If you have audio linking to system output, it restores the original setting when exiting.
FIX: Improved support for SMI subtitles (pulled from XBMC).
FIX: Backing up from App Store or Help brings you back to main menu.
FIX: When upgrading, helper and Media Server sometimes didn’t get restarted. This one was driving me crazy.
FIX: Apple Remote could drop key-presses when system was loaded (many thanks to Evan Schoenberg for the fix, this has been annoying many for quite some time).
FIX: When using an HTTP proxy (like Glimmer Blocker), the Media Server wouldn’t play Flash content.
FIX: Huge speed increase starting plug-ins in the Media Server on startup.
FIX: Signature on Media Server should always be correct now, eliminating firewall warnings.
FIX: iPhoto album ordering now exactly matches iPhoto.
FIX: Many things restored to Mediastream which were taken out in the last version (allow hiding Movies, TV Shows, and the Quit items, back back background image folder settings, restored “hide thumbs in list view”, and put back the library button in music files).
FIX: Sometime when displaying a slide show, moving to the next image would simply exit out of the slideshow (nice find, James!)
FIX: HD Homerun should work now.
FIX: Stillness sent an encoding patch and scraper updates for KinoPoisk.ru (thank you!)
FIX: Seasons and episodes views will now display correctly for first-time users, thanks to Isaac.
FIX: We were missing a key mapping for deleting individual video bookmarks.
FIX: Ryan, our resident audio wizard, fixed an issue with static noise when skipping forward in an AAC 5.1 file.
And lots of changes in Plex Media Server land:
Support for new V1 of Plex plug-in Python framework. Major cleanups and enhancements, if you thought the first version was easy to use, you’ll love what James has done with this version. We’ll have great documentation available shortly.
Support for plug-in preference panes (and support in the V1 framework for adding preferences).
Support for conditions in simple seek bars (i.e. for specifying that played color is *not* a given color).
Support for sending key presses to WebKit plug-ins in site configuration.
Support for setting cookies in site configuration.
Support for WebKit plug-ins that change frame size.
Support for specifying relative coordinates for cropping and mouse events (e.g. 10 pixels from the right).
Support for Javascript seek bars, and Javascript conditions.
Support for site configurations reading values from a plug-in’s preferences (useful when performing authentication).
Allow manually locking plug-ins on a page, useful with authentication and some misbehaved sites.

Changes for v0.7.11 Beta - v0.7.12 Beta

FIX: Silly regression which resulted in you being left in an empty directory after installing from the app store (and a few other cases).
FIX: Improved compatibility with certain Flash sites.

Changes for v0.7.10 Beta - v0.7.11 Beta

FIX: Crashes in Plex Media Server with Safari Adblocker and other similar plug-ins.
FIX: Pulled a fix from XBMC for variable framerate FLV files (important for a new plug-in).
FIX: Crashes in Apple Movie Trailers with 5.1 audio (integrated Ryan’s excellent audio fixes).
FIX: Some of the menu shortcuts were broken (thanks to migueld for pointing this out).
FIX: Some other crashes in Plex Media Server with badly behaved or misconfigured sites.
FIX: Much improved Swedish translation, with many thanks to atrus.
FIX: Updated to the latest Amazon scrapers (thanks to John Lockwood).
NEW: Support for executing Javascript inside plug-in site configurations (as an action).

Changes for v0.7.9 Beta - v0.7.10 Beta

We just pushed a new release out which improves compatibility with some Flash sites, and to go along with it, Scott prepared a new version of the Hulu plug-in with some nice enhancements, including more fanart, better thumbnails, flattened movie hierarchy, and more results returned for specific shows.
Besides the known issue of the Plex Media Server not working with Safari Adblocker, if a plug-in stops working, it’s likely that the structure of the site changed. This doesn’t happen very frequently with most sites, but it’s a definite possibility. When this occurs, an entity we call the “Campfire Robot” springs into action automatically and tracks us down to let us know, and shortly thereafter we can push an update.
As such, if a site stops working, the best thing to do is to check the App Store for updates. If you have automatic updates turned on, check your install history to see if an update got installed while you were getting coffee.
To answer your question, no, we rarely sleep.

Changes for v0.7.8 Beta - v0.7.9 Beta

FIX: Fixed permissions on the Plex binary to allow non-administrative users to run.
FIX: Tweaks to the skin for upcoming Plug-ins.
FIX: Some crashes and leaks in the Media Server.
FIX: Fixed the scrapers/NFO issue, this time for real (many thanks to Isaac for all the hard work on this one!). We also include the TMDB scraper again.
FIX: A regression where only the first iPhoto album showed up.
FIX: Improved compatibility with Flash sites for the Media Server.

Changes for v0.7.6 Beta - v0.7.7 Beta

FIX: iPhoto events sort by date, not by name.
FIX: Slow access to media, marking unwatched/watched, etc.
FIX: The HTTP receive timeout was increased to 15 seconds, to hopefully allow TVDB time to respond. Thanks to Todd L on the forums for suggesting this fix.
FIX: IFO files weren’t showing up in DVD video directories.
FIX: The MediaStream “Info List” view mode was tweaked to make the list the same size and positioning vertically as the regular list view.

Changes for v0.7.5 Beta - v0.7.6 Beta

changes for this release:
FIX: Ryan coaxed DTSWAV files into playing. It turns out to be impossible to play 44.1KHz DTS files on OS X, as it assumes encoded audio is 48KHz. For now, we’re mixing down the files, and shortly we’ll move to transcoding them to 48KHz AC3 files. Not optimal, but better than nothing given the limitations of the platform. (I’m looking forward to this personally, because I want to have the first 1080p Wizard of Oz + 5.1 Dark Side of the Moon party.)
FIX: The highly annoying bug which caused TV shows to lose audio randomly with TV theme music enabled.
FIX: Certain dialogs in the update code didn’t support UTF8 strings (James).
FIX: There is now an option you can disable to prevent Plex linking the system audio output device with the device selected in Plex (System > Audio > Link System Output).
FIX: The audio device settings didn’t appear to be remembered in the settings (they actually were saved, just not displayed correctly).
FIX: We’ve disallowed deleting files from inside Plex by default. Much safer! This is a change to the settings, so you’d need to delete your guisettings.xml file to get the new value.
FIX: We fixed a bug that prevented actions from being sent to Plex via event clients (used by Remote buddy).
FIX: Ryan fixed a crash when attempting to transcode a corrupt DTS stream into AC3.
FIX: Background music tracks are now played completely randomly.
FIX: Isaac fixed some issues in the harmony and keyboard maps, and also added Hold Up/Hold Down to control volume in Full Screen Video and Visusalization for Mira users (and likely Sofa Control users as well). He also went through and “humanized” some of the error messages that Plex spits out to be more intelligible.
FIX: Tweaked permissions on a MediaStream file.
FIX: Mikey gave us some fixes to French strings (thanks!)
FIX: Stillness sent some fixes for the KinoPoisk scraper (thanks!)
FIX: A crash in Weather for some regions.
FIX: Maddox suggested some excellent changes in the scraper defaults which result in better movie covers by default.
We have also updated the Plex Media Server (included with Plex) with the following changes:
NEW: James added support for nested iTunes playlist folders and iPhoto folders (a much requested feature).
NEW: Audiobook support.
FIX: More tweaks for “album artist” tag.
FIX: iPhoto sorting of events and albums was broken.
We’ve also pulled the usual bunch of fixes from XBMC, including updated scrapers, updated UPnP code, and some fixes.

Changes for v0.7.4 Beta - v0.7.5 Beta

FIX: The audio dropout issue which was introduced in 0.7.2 should now be fixed.
FIX: The corrupted German MediaStream strings.
FIX: File size reporting bug in HTTP API has really been fixed this time.
FIX: Some tweaks to “album artist” tags in Plex Media Server iTunes module. Thanks to zanex for helping explain what was wrong.
FIX: Certain videos (FLV, YouTube, 22KHz MP3 tracks) played back at double-speed. Thanks to Ryan for explaining how to fix this one.

Changes for v0.7.3 - v0.7.4 Beta

FIX: Regression causing glitchy playback of videos.
FIX: Fixed a bug present since the start of the Plex/Seven series where music playback was oddly broken, and skipping tracks only worked some of the time (thanks to cheekyboy for the detailed report!).
FIX: Fixed another regression relating to photo downloading over the network.
FIX: Minor fix to the way we format file sizes over the HTTP API (thanks to thedroid).

Changes for v0.7.0 Beta - v0.7.1 Beta

NEW: Aperture support. James and I had a bet on who could finish first, I took Lightroom and he took Aperture. I’m sure you can guess who won. Same killer features as iPhoto and iTunes, including automatic reloading of databases, and access across the network.
NEW: Ryan greatly enhanced the CoreAudio driver, cutting out lots of old crufty code in the process. Not only does this fix the problem with fuzzy audio at low volumes and incorrect playback speed, but it also add some features that audiophiles will appreciate. The legacy XBMC code was performing a bunch of useless format conversions, whereas his new code converts from source format directly to 32 floating point, which is the CoreAudio native format. This means you can now play back 24-bit 96KHz media, at full fidelity. Ryan explains more in his blog post.
NEW: James enhanced the Programs area of Plex. Workflows can be added to the root-level menu, folders can be added as sources, workflows can be selected by navigating into folders. (Plex quits when starting workflows, releasing control of the Apple remote). Additionally, you can run Applescript scripts from the Scripts menu, or by mapping them directly to keys in the keymap files. This opens up lots of possibilities!
NEW: The Plex Media Server generates thumbs for artists, per request (picks an album thumb).
FIX: Lots of people had been asking for volume control via Apple Remote. While there’s nothing we can do about encoded digital audio volume (AC3/DTS) there are plenty of people who listen to music and videos in stereo. Hence, we’ve remapped some of the keys in an attempt to improve matters (and fixed a related bug in the process). The new mapping is as follows: up and down control volume in full-screen. Since the buttons are quite limited on the Apple Remote, we removed FF and REW and replaced them with big skip forward and back when holding left/right keys. This makes some logical sense, as hitting right takes a small skip forward, while *holding* right takes a larger step (and similar with the left button). Try it out, let us know what you think.
FIX: Really slow stream buffering of some Shoutcast streams.
FIX: Lots of Plex Media Server bugs fixed, including crash on Apple Lossless files, glitchy sound on start of track, incorrect play speed, crash at end of video podcast, and crash with no iPhoto libraries.
FIX: We now disable UPnP client by default, because it causes crashes (e.g. when waking from sleep). You can also now go into network settings and disable it.
FIX: Disable PlexHelper when launching EyeTV client (James).
FIX: Crash when in TV shows and theme music enabled (James).
FIX: Playing DRM tracks from Plex library now works (James).
FIX: Crash when skipping to the next track when playing a DRM music track with an iTunes visualizer enabled.
FIX: James fixed setting a source to be the default. For example, you can set the iTunes Plex Media Server source to be the default, and you’ll go directly there from the main menu.
FIX: Volume no longer affects visualizations.
FIX: A ton of iTunes visualizers fixes, including not showing new track information, crash when scanning for visualizers, support for new Disco iTunes visualizer, and iTunes visualizers not being offset/sized correctly for calibrated screens.
FIX: Some fixes for keyboard layout switching (thanks to Roman) and updates to KinoPoisk.Ru scraper.

Changes for v0.5.21 - v0.5.22

NEW: You can now configure the way the H.264 decoder does deblocking. Some will 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.

Changes for v0.5.19 - v0.5.20

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!)

Changes for v0.5.18 - v0.5.19

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!)

Changes for v0.5.15 - v0.5.18

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.
The problem has been fixed, and I’ve uploaded the new release. The good news is you should be able to use Sparkle to do the update for you.
This is Barkley catching guava fruit in his mouth. He loves guava, pineapple, papaya and avocado, and on occasion we’ve caught him eating freshly-fallen mango out in the yard.

Changes for v0.5.14 - v0.5.15

FIX: The issue with using Remote Buddy.
FIX: DVDs don’t play over SMB (and other non-local protocols).
FIX: Crashes when thumbnailing MPEG2 files.
FIX: Annoying popup asking to locate screensaver (99% sure).
FIX: Hebrew characters should work again (i.e. be the right way around).
FIX: Apple Movie Trailers thumbs don’t display.
FIX: Going to full screen without visualizer doesn’t work (thanks, jmarshall!)
FIX: Problems playing RAR files.
FIX: Fixed a crash after playing an unplayable file.
FIX: Cursor sounds work correctly until you play something.
NEW: Latest version of MediaStream! We’ve added an experimental skin fontset called “Unicode” which uses Arial unicode for all the fonts, it may help international users.
NEW: Mouse is turned off by default.
NEW: Default username for web server is “plex” not “xbox”.

Changes for v0.5 RC 3 - v0.5.14

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.

Version history for Plex Media Server (Mac OS X)

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