+ Top FAQs with Plex - for more help please check the WIKI.
- How do I add internet video such as TED, YouTube, CNET etc?
- Internet sources are added using the App Store found in the Applications menu. See the following screencast for more info. vimeo.com/3315184
- One of the plug-ins has stopped working.
- 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.
- I don’t see the Applications Menu Item.
- If you previously used v5 of Plex we suggest deleting the folder called Plex found in ~/Library/Application Support/. Many things have changed and a fresh install will ensure the best performance with Plex.
- How do I make Movies and TV Shows show up in their respective areas with poster art, plot info, etc?
- View this screencast for more info vimeo.com/2758185
Release 0.4.5: An interim release
The Apple Remote work is taking a bit longer than I expected, so another release is probably a good idea, to share some of the bug-fixes and new features that are complete. Here are the changes in this release:
- NEW: High quality software upscaling is now supported. You can specify preferences in Video -> Player as to when the scaling is enabled and what scaling algorithm is used. This makes a huge difference when viewing SD content. It takes quite a bit of processing power, but the good news is that decoding SD content doesn’t.
- NEW: Monitor blanking is now supported. When selecting a full-screen mode, you have the option of telling XBMC to blank the other monitors. The preference is in Appearance -> Screen. I suspect Martin will be happy that he can stop throwing a sweater over his iMac, which sounded like a total fire hazard to me.
- NEW: The built-in web server now works. Among other things, it serves as an alternate remote control for those of you using a laptop as an expensive remote. Make sure to set a port above 1024.
- NEW: You can now store your own skins in the /Users/XXX/Library/Application Support/XBMC/skin directory, to avoid having to move aside and reinstall skins every time you upgrade. Thanks to d4rk for coding this up!
- FIX: A crash when reading WMA files.
- FIX: The OS X mouse cursor sometimes made an unwelcome appearance in full-screen mode.
- FIX: Settings that made no sense for OS X have been removed to reduce confusion.
The XBMC source has been updated to near-trunk as well, which means a host of improvements and fixes. Note that the new music library features may still have some kinks, but hopefully things work pretty well for you.
We’ve got some good stuff in the pipeline for 0.5.0, including the improved Apple Remote support and some display/computer sleep stuff that Cayce’s been working on.
Also, as a side note, if you have a moment, register your usage of the application on http://osx.iusethis.com/. I’ve tried to update the version on there, but unfortunately someone else “owns” the application and doesn’t seem willing to give it up.
And now of course, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.
65 Comments so far
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Can’t wait to test out the improved upscaling. Thanks for another great release!
“You can now store your own skins in the Library/Application Support/XBMC/skin directory, to avoid having to move aside and reinstall skins every time you upgrade. Thanks to d4rk for coding this up!”
Good news and thanks to d4rk!!!
“high quality software upscaling is now supported”
Great !!!
Awesome Elan, i was wondering when do you think a fix for Shoutcast streaming radio is due? Now it crashes as soon i open a stream.
Thank you so much for everything, im using xbmc as my main mediacenter software and it works awesome.
This new update may not seem like much to you, but the ability to store skins out of the XBMC “package” for me is one of the best updates here!
I love all the other stuff, and the constant updating by the team, but even that little update makes me happy!
Thanks to everyone on the team!
YAY!
Thank you so much! Your work is really awesome and both the upscaling and skin-storage is great new features!
And if the new upscaling make your fans spin faster and louder I can recomend another great software called http://www.coolbook.se that lets you undervoltage your CPU without reducing any performance, I managed to get my temperature down by 12°C! Well worth its $10.
Cool!
Question: How is sd content determined when “Enabled for sd content” is set in hq software upscaling? Is it depending on resolution or bitrate or something else?
Keep up the good work!
I’d just like to make sure everyone understands that the new skins don’t go in /Library/Application Support/XBMC/skin, but into /user/Library/Application Support/XBMC/skin.
Took me a couple of goes to figure out why I couldn’t get my skins to show up! And don’t put Project Mayhem III in there cause it will show up in the skin list twice!
I’d like to say that I have found the following skins seem to work perfectly with OSXBMC:
Basics-101
Media Center 2006 v6
Project Mayhem I
Project mayhem II
Project mayhem III (It should, it ships with it!)
Slate
xTV
If anyone knows of any others that work well, maybe we should start listing them?
AWESOME! I love how every post has a picture of your cute dog. Keep up the good work, for all we know this project is getting people to look at the mac mini as a real media center… I certainly do now.
@cjc
I use Aeon. Most beautiful XBMC skin there is.
@ Elan
Thanks for the time you spent on this shiny diamond:)
Great update, especially the upscaling.
I have a problem with the library though. After the update some movies are listed 3 times in the library. Anyone have the same issue?
@Paul:
Wow! That Aeon-skin almost made me wet myself, it looks so delicious I just can’t wait to get home from work to install!
@muzo;
you will have to clear your library as the url scheme stacked and rarred movies are stored with changed
@elan
Yes, now I can finally put my fire extinguisher away, Elan!
Great Work.
Just one Question, why is the CPU Load so high on Idle?
More then 18% CPU Load just for idle?
OS X 10.5.2
4GB RAM + Core2Dou 2.4Ghz
Absolutely amazing Elan.
@cortez the shoutcast streams I played worked fine. If there are any in specific you can’t get working file a bug ticket and upload a sample.
Hi,
When i try to use the Aeon skin, it seems like the font is corrupt. The menubar (the big one in the middle) is just blocks instead og text.
Anyone have any experience in this?
hi. i “own” the iusethis entry. isn’t there a “claim ownership of this app” link somewhere? i never got a message yet, and as soon as i figure out how to transfer, i will.
so don’t say i refused
@ tarzan. I’m experiencing the same with the Vinci skin. I think it might be an issue with the mac mini’s integrated graphic card (GMA950). The skin performs fine on my Mac Pro at work. What computer & graphic card do you have?
Great work man!
cjc: Thakns for that update, new post should be updated as well with the correct path.
Hmm, still having problems with skin. I either get the error:
The skin requires version 2.0 with xTV and Aoen (or similar, can’t really read when the text places itself like that)
Or when I try an other release of xTV all the font color goes black so I can’t read shit.
Am I the only one with this problem? Running latest release and have had this problem since 0.4 on the newest Mac Pro with a 8800 GT.
hi again. i just asked the iusethis team, and they transfered ownership.
@tarzan and platanito21:
Inside the Aeon skin folder, make a copy of the 720p folder (with content) and rename that to 1080i. That solved it for me!
@cortez: Shoutcast crashes (which seem pretty random) are a known problem, I just haven’t had time to track them down. Please post a detailed bug to Trac.
@gebur: Great question. Anything 720p or above is considered to not be SD content. So anything up to 720p gets the upscaling, anything at or over 720p does not.
@Zoltan: Another great question. I just ran a quick profile, and found that the majority of the time is spent in TTF rendering. No doubt some caching improvements there would help things out.
@tarzan: Aeon works for me (8800 GT), but I have heard of that problem. Search around on the forum, you may find the solution. It might have been something about 4:3 aspect ratio not working right. It should be added to our FAQ. Say hi to Jane for me.
@neko: Hey, thanks for transferring that over! I click on “request transfer” a few times and never heard anything, so that’s why I figured whoever owned it was refusing
Probably just an email problem…
Me tarzan, you lame
I will try the rename the folder to 1080i
>> Anything 720p or above is considered to not be SD content. So anything up to 720p gets the upscaling, anything at or over 720p does not.
Is this determined by vertical or horizontal resolution? For example, a letterboxed, but cropped 720p movie with a resolution of 1280×533 would be considered 720p, correct?
Thanks again for all the work you’re doing on XBMC!
Im getting a magenta and green flashing screen with the video running in the top left hand corner on a couple of ISO’s and a .vob file I’ve tried with the upscaling enabled for SD content. They seem to do it in exactly the same place every time. Anyone else getting this? They play back fine with the upscaling switched off.
(I’ve using an Intel 2Ghz Mac Mini)
@LilGator: Both horizontal and vertical resolutions are checked. You example movie would be considered 720p.
@Phullup: It *could* be an interlacing issue. Make sure interlacing is turned off and see what happens. Also consider filing a bug and uploading a sample of the video to Trac. Thanks!
Ok, I seem to have have fixed my xTV-problem by using the Arial font instead of the theme one.
But problem with aeon remains, why is it shaded in gray and not selectable?
Crash trying to FFWD a DVD to the menu. Pastie…
http://pastie.caboo.se/177555
Cheers.
@JoacimW
The Aeon trick worked - thanx!
Everybody else - go get that skin.. now.
The Aeon trick, creating a folder called 1080i and copying the font.xml file from the 720p folder, did not work on my macmini.
After playing around with it for a bit, I figured out that all you have to do is modify the font.xml file in the 720p folder and set the default font sizes for mainmenu and weather to 50 (default is 60,75 respectively). You can use textedit to make these modifications. Works perfect in fullscreen and windowed mode.
Hope this helps!
ps. great job on the latest osxbmc release!
Wooohooo, nice work. I’m glad that the mouse cursor problem is fixed.
I saw the mouse cursor with this release last night
Now that we have web server support, you may want to check:
http://tlrobinson.net/projects/xbmciphone/
… it seems there are no recent changes to it but maybe now it gets renewed interest…
Is there any other (good) web-based remote access compatible with PDA / iPhone / IPod Touch … ?
Thanks for the update! i haven’t tried in a few releases, but it looks like my apple remote no longer responds?
Another top release Elan. I had the crash on exit bug after switching from Aeon skin back to PMIII, but haven’t been able to reproduce it…
One thing I noticed from a comment you made back during the “old days” of 0.15… how’s the ITunes integration coming along?
It would be nice to have access to existing ITunes library album artwork instead of having to re-scrape the metadata on for existing tunes
Hello,
thanks for all the hardwork
I’d just like to know if i’m alone with this: the blank monitor option doesn’t seem to work on my macbook (c2d 2ghz), enabling or disabling the option doesn’t work for me
any tips?
thank you
my bad, it works today… (it seems you have to close xbmc et start it again)
Hello.
Elan, please add in the next release of a new video scraper KinoPoisk.xml (KinoPoisk.gif) from ../linuxport/…
Phullup’s problem also occurs on my macBook, only with upscaling enabled.
I also have to say that an external scripts folder would also be nice (just like the skins folder)
this release really rocks!!!
I get problem as Phullup on my c2d macmini as soon as upscaling is enabled. Only seems to happen on SD material though (even when enabled for all is set)
@HJ & @azrael: Can you make sure interlacing is disabled and see if it makes a difference at all?
I get the same problem with Phullup/HJ/azrael
I can’t find anywhere that says anything about interlace but I don’t think I have ever set anything to interlaced.
Also, I set my res settings to 720p to get a window so I could try and grab an example and as soon as the video starts it switches to full screen mode. After quitting the video it stays in fullscreen but the mouse pointer is constrained to the position of the window before the mode switch, does that make sense?
This is all directly on my iMac screen, no output to TV at all and I tried “Always” and “Enabled for SD Content” and I tried Bicubic and Lanczos, same result every time.
This only happens when trying to play a DVD rip, its fine on ‘normal’ video.
Screengrab is at http://idisk.mac.com/choccyhobnob-Public/blah.jpg
Has anyone else noticed that the mouse cursor stops working if you don’t move it for a few seconds? It’s been like it since I first tried the osx port.
The best place to see it is in the settings page, if you put the mouse over a cycle button (for instance the video resolution cycle) and click to change the resolution again and again and again, after a few seconds of doing this the mouse stops responding to the clicks, you have to move the mouse a little to reenable it, its probably something to do with the mac auto hiding the mouse when its not in use and xbmc’s funky way of trapping mouse clicks so the mac doesn’t see them or something.
Thank you for this update.I just want to know if anyone else noticed a problem with items list while the video is running in a preview mode if you try to play another video
xbmc looses its resolution and you get a black screen or xbmc crashes this also the case in the linux port.
OS X 10.5.2
4GB RAM + Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz Mac mini
@Phullup/HJ/azrael/ChoccyHobNob
I can get the same result when I set the Interlaced handling to “Bob”, “Weave” or “Blend”. The green/magenta stuff that is..
So make sure it´s set to “None” like Elan said.
You find it by pressing the menu-button(or return on the keyboard) when a movie is playing, then press the button below the larger play/pause button. A video settings menu should appear. See if it helps.
@ChoccyHobNob: Yeah, I have noticed exactly the same thing with the mouse. Cool name by the way
@gebur the interlaced setting was automatic, i set it to off and the display sorts itself out. thanks for that, I knew i’d never set any interlaced settings!
The screen switching to full screen when I play something was also down to my dumb xbmc settings. I had the resolution in settings->appearance->screen set to 720p but the resolution in settings->videos->player set to 1680×1050(full screen) instead of “best available” does xbmc need to have two places to set the resolution? seems a bit redundant if we should always be leaving it at “best available” anyway (no idea what setting tweak madness made me change it!)
@JayBird Oh good, its not just me then! Thanks for the comment on the name, its my gamertag
@ChoccyHobNob just to put your mind at ease, XBMC for Linux (daddy to this MacOSX port) has the same exact problem. So either it’s a pure XBMC bug or a SDL bug (not sure if MacOSX port also uses SDL)
Hello thanks for your hard work - I noticed in the 0.4.5 release it mention fixing a crash when reading WMA files, I haven’t tried any WMA audio files but i do have some video files conveterd for my 360, It will play these files fine video only, but I do not have an audio, These videos are WMV vid format with WMA 10 Pro audio.
What am i missing a codec etc for my hackintosh or?
Thanks
AJ
Can second that.. “WMV-HD” files play with no audio.. e.g IronMan Superbowl Full Length trailer
@Aj | @jms_uk
No Audio on “modern” WMV’s is because the audio codec is proprietary and FFMpeg does not yet have support for it.
ONLY way around this currently is to add external codec support to our Dvdplayer core.
Ahh.. cool.. is that slated for any future release?
Thank you for all your efforts. I’m using this now as my primary media center software on my mac mini. Your work lets me play high definition content using familiar, easy to use xbmc structure.
I have a question: Have you given any thought to launch and control (e.g. harmony universal remotes)? I recall the command/key mapping on my xbox remote for xbmc was excellent and intuitive.
@weavus: Can you describe what the situation was when you saw the mouse cursor? Window/full-screen, multiple monitors, etc.
@jms_uk: iTunes/iPhoto/Aperture/etc. integration is definitely on the list.
@azrael, @Phullup, @ChoccyHobNob: I’ll be improving the upscaling support, and fixing that issue in the next release.
@ChoccyHobNob: Apropos those two different video resolution settings, I found it a bit confusing too. I’m interested to know if any Mac users actually set the option to anything other than “Best Available”.
@jms_uk and @Aj: I’d be interested in getting Windows DLL loading working for codecs, which would probably allow WMA Pro and other Windows-only codecs to work on other platforms.
@Andy: We’re working on greatly improved remote support right as we speak, including for high end remotes like the Harmony. Stay tuned.
I know this will probably be low priority (especially as you didn’t know what it was initially) - but is there any chance we might see the karaoke (mp3+cdg) feature enabled?
thanks again for all your hard work.
2 things:
1…..is there a key command for the monitor blanking? i like to keep the monitor blanking on, but occasionally while watching something, i want to have access to my imac screen. if there was a key stroke to disable and enable it it would be perfect.
2…..for some reason, when i first start to watch a video file (mostly avi), the screen will flash a few times between the video and the menu, and then will play the video in slow-motion for about 2 or 3 seconds. the audio will then kick in, and the video will align with audio, and then it plays normal. whats weird is that it will do this again at certain spots in all the video files (it seems like it does it exactly where the video would have normally cut to commercial and back).
@Bender: I totally agree with point 1, that would be really useful.
Problems with the area that the mouse pointer is allowed to use when in 1080p or 1920×1200, it looks like the area( of size 720p or 1024×768 ) for the mouse pointer is the upper left corner of the 1080p or 1920×1200 screen size.
The consequence of this is that there is a reverse L shape of approx 30% the screen lower right that the pointer never reaches.
Did anyone make a pool/forum/fucntionality-rating for skins yet?
@Bender:
1) No such key command right now. When we go into full-screen mode we either capture all the screens or just one. I can see how it might be useful, however.
2) This is probably XBMC dealing with “glitches” in the stream. I’ve noticed that “fast video” even when skipping around, which is probably similar to what happens after a commercial section has been cut out. I think one of the other developers (elupus or vulkanr?) was looking into it at one point.
Does XBMC use liba52? or does it use quicktime? it’s essential for it not to use quicktime according to this link: http://www.thismuchiknow.co.uk/?p=24 but use liba52 or similar for 5.1 sound on a MacMini with optical output.
Latest Remote Buddy has built in XBMC behaviours, if anyone cares.