ErsatzTV

Release Notes

Fixed

• When all audio streams are selected with HLS Direct, explicitly copy them without transcoding
  • This only happens when the channel does not have a Preferred Audio Language
• Fix scanner crash caused by invalid mtime
• VAAPI: Downgrade libva from 2.15 to 2.14
• Fix bug with XMLTV that caused some filler to display with primary content details
• Multiple fixes for content scaling with Nvidia, Qsv and Vaapi accelerations
• Properly scale image-based subtitles
• Fix bug where a schedule containing a single item (fixed start and flood) would never finish building a playout
  • Logic was also added to detect infinite playout build loops in the future and stop them
• Fix bug where Other Videos wouldn't be included in scheduling mode Shuffle In Order

Added

• Add Preferred Audio Title feature
  • Preference can be configured in channel settings and overridden on schedule items
  • When a title is specified, audio streams that contain that title (case-insensitive search) will be prioritized
  • This can be helpful for creating channels that use commentary tracks
  • External tooling exists to easily update title/name metadata if your audio streams don't already have this metadata
• Add Amf hardware acceleration option for AMD GPUs on Windows
• Add QSV Extra Hardware Frames parameter for tuning QSV acceleration
  • Performance may improve on some systems after doubling or halving the default value of 64

Release Notes

Fixed

• Use MIME Type application/x-mpegurl for all playlists instead of application/vnd.apple.mpegurl
• Replace setsar filter with setdar filter
  • setsar caused issues scaling between two different aspect ratios
    • For example, some 4:3 content would appear stretched when scaled to a 16:9 resolution
  • setdar is now only used when aspect ratios match
• Prioritize aspect ratio from container when video stream contains conflicting aspect ratio
  • This is usually caused by bad authoring, but the change should improve scaling behavior for edge cases

Added

• Support DSD audio file formats (DFF and DSF) in local song libraries
• Support OGG audio file formats (OGG, OPUS, OGA, OGX, SPX) in local song libraries

Changed

• Always return playlist after a maximum of 8 seconds while starting up an HLS Segmenter session
• Use multi-variant playlists instead of redirects for HLS Segmenter sessions
• Upgrade ffmpeg from 5.0 to 5.1 in most docker images (not ARM variants)
  • Upgrading from 5.0 to 5.1 is also recommended for other installations (Windows, Linux)

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix database initializer; fresh installs with v0.6.4-beta are missing some config data and should upgrade

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix subtitle stream selection when subtitle language is different than audio language
• Fix bug with unsupported AAC channel layouts
• Fix NVIDIA second-gen maxwell capabilities detection
• Return distinct search results for episodes and other videos that have the same title
  • For example, two other videos both named Trailer would previously have displayed as one item in search results
• Fix schedules that would begin to repeat the same content in the same order after a couple of days
  • Playouts will stop repeating over the first couple days after upgrading, or they can be reset to immediately fix

Added

• Add 640x480 resolution

Release Notes

Fixed

• Maintain stream continuity when playout is rebuilt for a channel that is actively being streamed
• Properly apply changes to episode title, sort title, outline and plot from Plex
• Fix search index for other videos and songs
  • In previous versions, some libraries would incorrectly display only one item
• Properly display old versions of renamed items in trash

Added

• Add Minimum Log Level option to Settings page
  • Other methods of configuring the log level will no longer work

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix content repeating for up to a minute near the top of every hour
• Check whether hardware-accelerated codecs are supported by the NVIDIA card
  • Software codecs will be used if they are unsupported by the NVIDIA card
• Fix sorting of channel contents in EPG
• Fix Jellyfin admin user id sync
  • Ignore disabled admins and admins who do not have access to all libraries

Added

• Add 32-bit arm docker tags (develop-arm and latest-arm)

Changed

• Regularly delete old segments from transcode folder while content is actively transcoding
  • This should help reduce required disk space
  • To further minimize required disk space, set Work-Ahead HLS Segmenter Limit to 0 in Settings

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix Jellyfin show library paging
• Properly locate and identify multiple Plex servers
• Properly restore Unavailable/File Not Found items when they are located on disk

Added

• Add basic music video credits subtitle generation
  • This can be enabled in channel settings

Release Notes

Fixed

• Additional fix for duplicate Other Videos entries; trash may need to be emptied one last time after upgrading
• Fix watermark opacity in cultures where , is a decimal separator
• Rework playlist filtering to avoid empty playlist responses
• Fix some QSV/VAAPI memory errors by always requesting 64 extra hardware frames

Added

• Enable QSV hardware acceleration for vaapi docker images

Changed

• Use paging to synchronize all media from Plex, Jellyfin and Emby
  • This will reduce memory use and improve reliability of synchronizing large libraries
• Disable low power mode for h264_qsv and hevc_qsv encoders

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix error display with HLS Segmenter and MPEG-TS streaming modes
• Remove erroneous log messages about normalizing framerate on channels where framerate normalization is disabled
• Fix unscheduled filler gaps that sometimes happen as playouts are automatically extended each hour

Added

• Clean transcode cache folder on startup and after HLS Segmenter session terminates for any reason

Changed

• Remove thread limitation for scenarios where it is not required
  • This should give a performance boost to installations that don't use hardware acceleration
• Use hardware acceleration to display error messages where configured

Release Notes

Fixed

• Reduce memory use due to library scan operations
• Fix some instances of filler getting "stuck" when a filler item is encountered that's too long for the gap
• Properly ignore Plex Other Videos libraries (movie libraries where agent is com.plexapp.agents.none)
• Fix Custom Title for schedule items with One, Multiple and Flood playout modes
• Fix scheduling bug where flood items would sometimes fail to continue after midnight

Added

• Add metadata_kind field to search index to allow searching for items with a particular metdata source
  • Valid metadata kinds are fallback, sidecar (NFO), external (from a media server) and embedded (songs)
• Add autocomplete functionality to search bar to quickly navigate to channels, ffmpeg profiles, collections and schedules by name
• Add global setting to skip missing (file-not-found or unavailable) items when building playouts
• Add filler preset option to allow watermarks to overlay on top of filler (disabled by default)
  • This option is applied when new items are added to a playout; rebuilding is needed if you want the change to take effect immediately
• Read track field from music video NFO metadata and use it for chronological sorting (after release date)
• Add Random Start Point option to schedules
  • When this option is enabled, all Chronological or Shuffle In Order content groups will have their start points randomized
  • When this option is disabled, all Chronological or Shuffle In Order content groups will start with the chronologically earliest item

Changed

• Replace invalid (control) characters in NFO metadata with replacement character � before parsing
• Store partial (incomplete) NFO metadata results when invalid XML is encountered
  • Previously, no metadata would be stored if the XML within the NFO failed to validate

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix processing local movie NFO metadata without a year value
• Fix processing local movie fallback metadata
• Fix search edge case where very recently added items (hours) would not be returned by relative date queries
• Fix search index validation on startup; improper validation was causing a rebuild with every startup
• Block library scanning until search index has been recreated/upgraded
• Fix occasional erroneous log messages when HLS channel playback times out because all clients have left
• Fix fallback filler playback
• Fix stream continuity when error messages are displayed
• Fix duplicate scanning within Other Video libraries (i.e. folders would be scanned multiple times)

Added

• Add show_genre and show_tag to search index for seasons and episodes
• Use aired value to source release date from music video nfo metadata
• Add NFO metadata support to Other Video libraries
  • Other Video NFO metadata must be in the movie NFO metadata format

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix adding episodes with no title to the search index
  • This behavior was preventing some items from being removed from the trash
• Support combination NFO metadata for movies, shows, artists and music videos
  • Note that ErsatzTV does not scrape any metadata; any URLs after the XML will be ignored
• Fix bug causing some Jellyfin and Emby content to incorrectly show as unavailable
• Fix extracting embedded mov_text subtitles
• Properly extract embedded subtitles on playouts where subtitles are only enabled on schedule items (and not on the channel itself)

Added

• Add experimental arm64 docker tags (develop-arm64 and latest-arm64)
• Use Sort Title from Movie NFO metadata if available
• Support multiple Artist entries in music video NFO metadata

Release Notes

Fixed

• Cleanly stop all library scans when service termination is requested
• Fix health check crash when trash contains a show or a season
• Fix ability of health check crash to crash home page
• Remove and ignore Season 0/Specials from Plex shows that have no specials
• Automatically delete and rebuild the search index on startup if it has become corrupt
• Automatically scan Jellyfin and Emby libraries on startup and periodically
• Properly remove un-synchronized Plex, Jellyfin and Emby items from the database and search index
• Fix synchronizing movies within a collection from Jellyfin

Changed

• Update Plex, Jellyfin and Emby movie and show library scanners to share a significant amount of code
  • This should help maintain feature parity going forward
• Optimize search-index rebuilding to complete 100x faster
• No longer use network paths to source content from Jellyfin and Emby
  • If you previously used path replacements to convert network paths to local paths, you should remove them

Added

• Add unavailable state for Jellyfin and Emby movie and show libraries
• Add height and width to search index for all videos
• Add season_number and episode_number to search index for all episodes
• Add season_number to search index for seasons
• Add show_title to search index for seasons and episodes

Release Notes

Fixed

• Cleanly stop Plex library scan when service termination is requested
• Fix bug introduced with v0.5.2-beta that prevented some Plex content from being played
• Fix spammy subtitle error message
• Fix generating blur hashes for song backgrounds in Docker

Changed

• No longer remove Plex movies and episodes from ErsatzTV when they do not exist on disk
  • Instead, a new unavailable media state will be used to indicate this condition
  • After updating mounts, path replacements, etc - a library scan can be used to resolve this state

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix unlocking libraries when scanning fails for any reason
• Fix software overlay of actual size watermark

Added

• Add support for burning in embedded and external text subtitles
  • This requires a one-time full library scan, which may take a long time with large libraries.
• Sync Plex, Jellyfin and Emby collections as tags on movies, shows, seasons and episodes
  • This allows smart collections that use queries like tag:"Collection Name"
  • Note that Emby has an outstanding collections bug that prevents updates when removing items from a collection
• Sync Plex labels as tags on movies and shows
  • This allows smart collections that use queries like tag:"Plex Label Name"
• Add Deep Scan button for Plex libraries
  • This scanning mode is slow but is required to detect some changes like labels

Changed

• Improve the speed and change detection of the Plex library scanners

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix subtitles edge case with NVENC
• Only select picture subtitles (text subtitles are not yet supported)
  • Supported picture subtitles are hdmv_pgs_subtitle and dvd_subtitle
• Fix subtitles using software encoders, videotoolbox, VAAPI
• Fix setting VAAPI driver name
• Fix ffmpeg troubleshooting reports
• Fix bug where filler would behave as if it were configured to pad even though a different mode was selected
• Fix bug where mid-roll count filler would skip scheduling the final chapter in an episode

Added

• Add Empty Trash button to Trash page

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix HLS Segmenter bug where it would drift off of the schedule if a playout was changed while the segmenter was running
• Ensure clients that use HDHomeRun emulation (like Plex) always get an MPEG-TS stream, regardless of the configured streaming mode
• Fix scheduling bug that caused some days to be skipped when fixed start times were used with fallback filler

Added

• Add Preferred Subtitle Language and Subtitle Mode to channel settings
  • Preferred Subtitle Language will filter all subtitle streams based on language
  • Subtitle Mode will further filter subtitle streams based on attributes (forced, default)
  • If picture-based subtitles are found after filtering, they will be burned into the video stream
• Detect non-zero ffmpeg exit code from HLS Segmenter and MPEG-TS, log error output and display error output on stream
• Add Watermark setting to schedule items; this allows override the channel watermark. Watermark priority is:
  • Schedule Item
  • Channel
  • Global

Changed

• Remove legacy transcoder logic option; all channels will use the new transcoder logic
• Renamed channel setting Preferred Language to Preferred Audio Language
• Reworked playout build logic to maintain collection progress in some scenarios. There are now three build modes:
  • Continue - add new items to the end of an existing playout
    • This mode is used when playouts are automatically extended in the background
  • Refresh - this mode will try to maintain collection progress while rebuilding the entire playout
    • This mode is used when a schedule is updated, or when collection modifications trigger a playout rebuild
  • Reset - this mode will rebuild the entire playout and will NOT maintain progress
    • This mode is only used when the Reset Playout button is clicked on the Playouts page
  • This requires rebuilding all playouts, which will happen on startup after upgrading
• Use ffmpeg to resize images; this should help reduce ErsatzTV's memory use
• Use ffprobe to check for animated logos and watermarks; this should help reduce ErsatzTV's memory use
• Allow two decimals in channel numbers (e.g. 5.73)

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix streaming mode inconsistencies when mode parameter is unspecified
• Fix startup on Windows 7

Added

• Add option to automatically deinterlace video when transcoding
  • Previously, this was always enabled; the purpose of the option is to allow disabling any deinterlace filters
  • Note that there is no performance gain to disabling the option with progressive content; filters are only ever applied to interlaced content

Changed

• Change FFmpeg Profile video codec and audio codec text fields to select fields
  • The appropriate video encoder will be determined based on the video format and hardware acceleration selections
• Remove FFmpeg Profile Transcode, Normalize Video and Normalize Audio settings
  • All content will be transcoded and have audio and video normalized
  • The only exception to this rule is HLS Direct streaming mode, which directly copies video and audio streams
• Always try to connect to Plex at http://localhost:32400 even if that address isn't advertised by the Plex API
  • If Plex isn't on the localhost, all other addresses will be checked as with previous releases

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix HLS Direct streaming mode
• Fix bug with HLS Segmenter (and MPEG-TS) on Windows that caused errors at program boundaries

Added

• Perform additional duration analysis on files with missing duration metadata
• Add nouveau VAAPI driver option

Release Notes

Fixed

• Fix song sorting with Chronological and Shuffle In Order playback orders
• Fix watermark on scaled and/or padded video with NVIDIA acceleration
• Fix playback of interlaced mpeg2video content with NVIDIA acceleration
• Fix playback of all interlaced content with QSV acceleration
• Fix adding songs to collections from search results page
• Fix bug scheduling mid-roll filler with content that contains one chapter
  • No mid-roll filler will be inserted for content with zero or one chapters
• Fix thread sync bug with HLS Segmenter (and MPEG-TS) streaming modes
• Fix path replacement bug when media server path is left blank

Added

• Add automated error reporting via Bugsnag
  • This can be disabled by editing the appsettings.json file or by setting the Bugsnag:Enable environment variable to false
• Add album_artist to song metadata and to search index
• Display album_artist on some song videos when it's different than the artist

Changed

• Framerate normalization will never normalize framerate below 24fps
  • Instead, content with a lower framerate will be normalized up to 24fps
• Shuffle In Order will group songs by album artist instead of by track artist