Version 9.5.0 released

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SubJunk
Lead Developer
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Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 4:12 pm

Version 9.5.0 released

Post by SubJunk »

General:

This release improves support for Amazon Fire TV Stick, fixes episode titles, significantly improves performance and resource use, and more!

We are busy preparing our next beta which improves and extends our metadata, allowing for things like recommendations, genres, ratings from major sources, etc. as well as remote access.

Download:

Windows, macOS and Linux: Our front page or our official mirrors
Docker: docker pull universalmediaserver/ums

Changes since 9.4.3
  • General:
    • Significant improvements to scanning and browsing speed and resource use
    • Fixed episode titles in the Media Library
    • Fixed aspect ratio validation
    • Added more automatic regression tests for file format detection
  • Renderers:
    • Added support for Vimu Player on Amazon Fire TV Stick (thanks, nouse and Nadahar!)
  • Translation updates via Crowdin:
    • Dutch (92%)
    • Turkish (100%)
  • Dependency updates:
    • 7zipj from 9.20-2.00 to 16.02-2.01
    • assertj-core from 3.16.0 to 3.16.1
    • junrar from 1.0.1 to 4.0.0
    • oshi-core from 5.0.1 to 5.1.0
Notes:
  • Windows has limited support from XP onwards, but full support is for Windows 7 onwards
  • macOS 10.10+ is fully supported
Rhialto
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:47 am

Re: Version 9.5.0 released

Post by Rhialto »

What were the changes to VT60 in 9.4.3? I'll be interested to test like you suggested.
Paradox
Posts: 151
Joined: Tue Dec 17, 2013 5:50 am

Re: Version 9.5.0 released

Post by Paradox »

The addition of Vimu conf is a nice one, been using that on my fire stick for a while. A tip for development of that renderer though...
The vimu renderer conf has been over complicated, there is no need to specifically list every "supported" video and audio type you can just use the...

Code: Select all

StreamExtensions =
To achieve the same affect similar to what is used in the Google-Android.conf file. This will also be a lot easier also considering many mixed sound formats, image formats and video formats it supports that are not currently defined in the new conf. As a couple of examples no current definition for JPEG images which it supports by default (no need to define them), no definition for H265 video with AC3 audio (only aac audio for now) which it will also support is in the conf.

Vimu is an incredibly versatile playback app and probably will just stream 99.9% of stuff with the far simpler Streamextensions setting. I doubt you would even need to define the subtitle formats like what has been done, they should still also work without those extra lines. You could also probably even get rid of the "TranscodeAudio = LPCM" as AFAIK it will basically stream every audio format by default (IE no transcoding needed) anyway
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mik_s
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Re: Version 9.5.0 released

Post by mik_s »

Not heard of vimu before, but a quick look it appears that it will play the formats supported by the device running it. If it was running on a TV that couldn't do h265 then it won't play those files (I'm probably wrong but have no experience using it).

this is what it says on the Google play store

Code: Select all

- Support for most common file formats: MKV, AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, TS, MPTS, WMV, DIVX, 3GP, VOB, MP3, FLAC, ALAC, JPEG (depends on device capabilities).
- Hardware decoding up to 4k (HEVC/VP9) on Android TV for compatible devices.
So it would be better having less supported formats in the config and have the rest watchable though transcoding then always saying cannot play.

Setting up the subtitles will probably be needed so UMS knows to send them to the renderer.

I know it is tedious to set up every supported format, I use Movian on the PS3 and that plays just about everything and had to write a config for that. Unfortunately as the PS3 has no hardware h265 decoding it has to use the CPU, which is too slow to be watchable. Maybe Vimu is the same? It may be easier to use some regex to allow all but a few unsupported formats but that is something I have not yet looked into.
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Paradox
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Re: Version 9.5.0 released

Post by Paradox »

All my experience is based on a Fire TV stick however....

Vimu is basically similar to VLC but has an additional engine built in allowing it to support other formats which can be enabled and disabled within its settings. VLC on Android TV (and variants) does not display image files for example JPEGs as it simply does not have the function for images/pictures (it only does audio and video on android TV). That and a few interface differences is about the only real difference. VLC on Android TV is not the same it should be noted as on regular Android.

If it were a case of as you state and the google play site states "play the formats supported by the device running it" (by the way the vimu site is vastly out of date if you look at www.vimu.tv/blog section it only mentions upto version 7 they are on version 8 of the app now that description on there and google play is old) then people running kodi on a fire stick or some android/TV/devices in general will be screwed. If you look at the vast amount of formats in the kodi.conf file, you will see there are plenty of formats in that where it may be a case of kodi runs on certain devices (both android and some TVs) but the android/TV/device does not even support half those. Hell if someone has kodi on a 10+ year old PC it will not playback half the formats perfectly because the hardware will not be up to it.

In most cases though they will all play fine because kodi like VLC and Vimu know what to do with the file, the only time it matters will be if someone has a crap device with a slow processor and they try playing lets say a 8k file. Kodi, vlc, vimu will all try to play it but if the device is not up to the task it will either just result in stuttering playback of other weird video artifacting. Limiting the kodi file to basic file types just like with vimu would be daft, people running any app on hardware not up to the task of playing extreme file types are to be blunt not very smart and those that have a device capable should be able to experience everything not only the device can do but the software also and not suffer.

Kodi, Vimu and VLC use their own engines to identify file types AFAIK.......... The device it is running on should not make any difference (well maybe if its a very old Android version it will matter or if the device has a poor performing old processor, but in that case transcoding may hurt it more anyway). If it did make a difference then AVI, xvid, divx files as an example should not play on a Fire stick without transcoding because by default the amazon fire stick is only capable of the following formats...
Video formats: H.264 1080p30, H.265 1080p30
Audio formats: AAC-LC, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (eAAC+), AC3 (Dolby Digital), eAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus), FLAC, MIDI, MP3, PCM/Wave, Vorbis, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, Dolby Audio, 5.1 surround sound, 2ch stereo, and HDMI audio pass through up to 7.1
The 4k fire stick is the same except obviously video files can be up to 4k resolution.

HOWEVER in vimu, vlc and kodi on a fire stick ALL divx and Xvid files will play fine NO TRANSCODING NEEDED, despite the fire stick specs saying it will not do it, you only have to tell the conf file to support avi format and it will do anything in avi format. You do not need to specify the codec as Vimu, vlc, kodi takes care of and recognises that in its own engine.

Running Vimu on an older version of UMS (IE 9.4.3 and earlier) worked just fine, it just results in it using the Google-Android.conf anyway. That conf file has no info in it for subtitles yet subtitles will still work perfectly fine without the settings which have been added in 9.5.0 and the Amazon-FireTVStick-VimuPlayer.conf file.

About the only file type you had to use the transcoding folder for in 9.4.3 and earlier what i could find was FLV files and that is only because the Google-Android.conf and its line of StreamExtensions = did not have flv in it (which correct me if im wrong but they would playback on any android device anyway also???) modifying the Google-Android.conf file to include flv in that line results in flv files also working fine in Vimu.

If you really want to define a conf file for vimu which has the sections of # Supported video formats:, # Supported audio formats: etc then the kodi file may be the best place to start as basically anything already mentioned in that should be capable in Vimu AFAIK though obviously i can not guarantee it as normally when i am using my fire tv device i do not use it with UMS, even though it works.

Personally i think for all the android based conf files, the kodi ones, the vlc one and now the vimu one they would all be much more simple to maintain using the StreamExtensions = line in a conf. If not then VLC technically needs another conf file from what i can see as technically speaking the VLC-for-desktop.conf file is not the same as what VLC on SOME android and other devices is.

Either way whatever the decision (its upto you clever guys :) ) this was just my opinion, keep up the good work and either way its nice to see the Fire Stick and Vimu getting some love :)


EDIT:

Funnily after digging a bit further it seems my ethos/thinking was the same as someone which previously did older conf files. If you look at the XBMC.conf file (an older version so to speak of kodi) that uses the StreamExtensions = technique/method. So i have no idea why anyone went to the bother of manually defining nearly every format in the world for the kodi.conf file :lol: sure it is more complete but they could had just done the same/similar to the xbmc.conf file and added additional formats they wanted to a StreamExtensions = line atleast thats what i would had done. Ah well different strokes for different folks i guess some just like hard work :lol:
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