Leaderboard

A new server release is available which features significant improvements to our transcoder in terms of performance, reliability and features. Without much further ado, here are the highlights: Improved reliability and quality of video transcoding A new transcoding throttling feature which can dramatically reduce cpu usage in certain situations Improved support for Advanced SubStation Alpha and SRT subtitles Improved DLNA reliability Added DLNA special folders Added resume progress bars with DLNA images Support webp image output for faster browsing Support for additional photo metadata Support for album disc sub-folders Display mirror setting now remembered Added an option to save metadata and images as hidden files Added an option to control when chapter images are extracted New Transcoding Features Our transcoding has improved significantly. Not only is it faster and more reliable than ever, but it will also throttle itself when it gets far enough ahead of the player. Let's take a look at how that works. Simply start playing something and monitor the cpu usage from ffmpeg: As you can see it starts out pretty high, but depending on the content being played the transcoder may be able to move at a faster rate than you're actually watching. Let's monitor that from the server dashboard: As you can see the transcoder position (in red), is a few minutes ahead of your current position. Media Browser Server is able to identify this and throttle the transcoder in order to reduce cpu usage: The throttling is smart and will speed up and slow down as needed in order to maintain smooth playback. Now the reduced load on your server will allow more devices to stream simultaneously without putting too much pressure on your system. But these are not the only transcoding improvements. Our handling of SRT and Advanced SubStation Alpha subtitles has improved and is now more efficient and reliable than ever. Improved DLNA Support This release also brings a number of DLNA enhancements. For starters, device compatibility has increased significantly thanks to pull requests submitted by 7Illusions. In addition, we now display special folders throughout your library. Click into your TV, Movie, or Music sections and you'll see some nice categories like Resume, Next Up, Latest, Favorites, etc. In addition, you'll now see progress bars for titles that can be resumed, just like you're accustomed to with our other apps: WebP Image Output Support This is a technology feature for the developers. WebP is an open source image format designed by Google that achieves as much as a 34% reduction in file size from JPG/PNG at the same level of quality. This is going to allow faster browsing with apps that are capable of supporting them. Look for WebP support soon in the following apps: Web Client with Chrome and Chrome Android browsers All Android apps Chromecast New Photo Metadata Support With this release we are now capturing more robust photo metadata, with stats such as Aperture, Shutter Speed, Latitude, Longitude, and a long list of others. This is only the beginning of our photo revamp and you can expect robust filtering as well as slideshows and galleries in future updates. Album Disc Sub-Folder Support A long requested feature, we now support numbered disc sub-folders. Please see the music section of the knowledge base for details: http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/674-media-files-folders-structure/?p=21480 Join the Media Browser Team As always, we're looking to grow the team with new developers, testers, designers, or any skill set you bring that you feel can help us. In particular we are looking for more Android and iOS developers to help bring us onto new devices and form factors that are rapidly becoming popular, such as living room set top boxes and wearables. Drop us a line!

There may not have been a lot of public activity on the MBT development side for a while, but behind the scenes, there has been some significant movement. Media Browser Theater is currently going through a significant architectural re-write. Most of the changes are there to make the developer's lives easier, while also greatly improving the extensibility of the software (to support themes and more powerful plugins in the future). However, there are also major changes to the GUI incoming. This post is the first in what will be a series which will give you a preview of what is to come. It will be quite a while before this work is ready for release. New Item List Page Changes A new look Smooth scrolling Indexed skip list Home/End and Page Up/Page Down to skip through items Dark and Light themes Some of these were requested quite a lot, so hopefully a few of you will appreciate their inclusion. Video Preview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfFbX9Amq2g&feature=youtu.be