Release Notes MC29

29.0.36 (4/20/2022)
1. Changed (internal change): Changed the way default language is determined.


29.0.35 (4/19/2022)
1. Changed: Updated the Catalan language (thanks Josep!). 2. Changed: When starting IPTV channels with Sat>IP streams (RTSP URL), the unnecessary step of determining file type is skipped, to speed up the start up.
3. Fixed: Possible problem doing DSD output to an ASIO device that took 32-bit input data.
4. Changed: MCWS function Television/GetGuidePrograms will return information in a single xml formatted string, instead of multiple strings one for each program.
5. Changed: RTSP based IPTV will try to buffer more data before attempting to play.
6. Changed: Artist Spotlight matches library albums when multiple artists are listed.
7. Changed: Increased max amount of time for JRiver video player to probe for audio/video formats in non-DirectShow-based TV playback.
8. Changed: Added optional parameters "Tags", "ExecCom", and "ComArgs" to Television/SetRecording MCWS function.


29.0.34 (4/15/2022)
1. NEW: Spotlight: Add clickable play icon for matching albums in your library.
2. NEW: Spotlight: Clicking on Similar Artist opens Spotlight for that artist.
3. NEW: Spotlight: Clicking on album goes to Google search for that album.
4. Changed: Spotlight button now is a simple yellow circle (it is skinnable).
5. NEW: Made the toolbar icon style customizable between dimming the icons and leaving them full color.


29.0.33 (4/14/2022)
1. Fixed: The player window could fail to show an image for a playing file if the thumbnail had not been built yet.
2. NEW: Added the advanced option to not show the sequence column in Playing Now.
3. Changed: When showing or hiding the sequence column, the option is set automatically.
4. Changed: When you look at columns to show, the sequence column will be available.
5. Changed: Turned off checking file existence in a list by default (optional and can be turned on).
6. Changed: The default statusbar text no longer checks for a file existence. This should prevent MC from accessing the file system until it plays.


29.0.32 (4/12/2022)
1. Fixed: Subtitles on Blu-rays in menu playback could blink on and off on certain discs.
2. Fixed: Spotlight button would be clipped when there is overflow in web links.
3. NEW: Ctrl+click of Spotlight button opens in new tab.
4. NEW: Added support for nine and ten stage biquads (testing appreciated).
5. Changed: Album based relational fields simply use the album value for images and videos instead of also looking at the artist.


29.0.31 (4/8/2022)
1. NEW: Albums and Similar Artists thumbnails on Spotlight.
2. NEW: MCWS function Television/CancelRecording to cancel TV recordings.
3. Fixed: Loading DSP presets could crash (the threading was using a background thread to load the plugin, but now it has been moved to the main thread).
4. Changed: Convolution adds choices to the drop-list as they are entered instead of only after re-opening DSP Studio.


29.0.30 (4/7/2022)
1. Changed: Use different icon for Spotlight button.
2. Fixed: With the platform file set to a different platform, import could duplicate the import over and over as it changed the slashes.
3. NEW: The convolution dialog will list the last 10 selected filters in a combobox for the path (instead of simply being an edit).
4. NEW: MCWS function SetRecording to set up TV recordings.


29.0.29 (4/5/2022)
1. Fixed: The D3D11 hardware deinterlacing in JRVR is fully reset when seeking or changing to progressive, to avoid artifacts.
2. Changed: Updated German translation file (thanks Bytestar).
3. Changed: Clicking on the image in the player with control pressed will open Playing Now in a new tab.
4. Changed: Made the program faster to show lists of thumbnails.
5. Fixed: Seeking with JRVR would blank out the frame before the new frame was available, for a visible blinking effect.
6. Changed: The JRVR OSD shows the Media Center version for easy identification.
7. Changed: Made the XML parser faster to get numbers (used in iTunes playlist import, etc.).
8. Changed: Use separate button to show Spotlight Page (no longer uses web links).
9. Changed: Updated Greek translation (thanks Panagiotis).
10. NEW: Added the Catalan language (thanks Josep!).


29.0.28 (4/2/2022)
1. Changed: When the system language is Czech (LANG_CZECH) that will be selected as the default translation.
2. Changed: Added several more system languages to the default translation list.
3. Fixed: The default video playback mode was set to Advanced in some cases instead of Red October JRVR in 29.0.26.


29.0.27 (4/1/2022)
1. NEW: Television/GetGuidePrograms MCWS function.
2. Changed: Updated Czech translation (thanks Jan Boháč!).
3. Fixed: Do not reset the custom web links and always add Spotlight as the first.
4. NEW: Add Albums and Similar Artists links on the Spotlight Page.


29.0.26 (3/31/2022)
1. Fixed: Some TV recordings in JTV format might be skipped randomly.
2. Fixed: Possible interface leak when playing or recording a DirectShow based TV channel.
3. Fixed: Playing a Blu-ray with VC-1 video in Menu mode could result in stuttering playback.
4. Changed: Red October JRVR is now the default recommended video playback mode (in favor of Red October Standard).
5. Changed: Renamed Red October HQ to "Red October madVR" to clearly indicate the difference in renderer used.
6. NEW: Add Spotlight Page preview accessed by Spotlight link at top of Playing Now.


29.0.25 (3/29/2022)
1. NEW: Clicking on the image in the player window jumps to Playing Now.
2. Changed: Renaming a tree item will update saved favorites.
3. Changed: Moving a playlist will update saved favorites using that playlist.
4. Changed: Deleting a playlist or other view will delete any saved favorites.
5. Fixed: Some video analyzer files were left in Temp folder undeleted.
6. Changed: The program is better about deleting temporary image files retrieved during DLNA serving, MCWS serving, etc.
7. Fixed: Scaling the UI would not draw icons correctly in all cases (for example at 110% the Options icons would overlap the borders).


29.0.24 (3/25/2022)
1. Changed: The Verge news reading works better with their updates.
2. Fixed: The "Date Tagged" field could incorrectly get set when changing the new Last Played Album date.
3. Fixed: The "Date Tagged" field could incorrectly get set when changing the skip count field.
4. Changed: Moved setting the date tagged field to the actual tagging (please report any issues).
5. Fixed: Improved DVD Menu behavior in JRVR when the menu consists of still frames.


29.0.23 (3/24/2022)
1. Fixed: Saved default audio program selection on an IPTV or DMS channel was not applied when the channel playback was started.
2. Fixed: Mixed interlaced and progressive content could show a few frames out of order at the cross-over with JRVR.
3. NEW: Added a "Sync Changes With Library Server" toolbar button.
4. Changed: Removed Jokes4All.net from Theater View because it went away.
5. Changed: Added a different joke of the day site to Theater View.
6. Changed: If you pick Group By > Album again for a list, it will use new logic that uses the album artist (auto) when possible.
7. Changed: Updated the "New / Improved This Version" to point to v29.
8. Changed: The View Extras feature looks at all the image associations MC has instead of just a few.
9. NEW: Added video files to the View Extras menu.
10. Changed: When TV recording on an HLS IPTV channel is done, a flag is saved as a property in the "Playback Info" field, to indicate that it has an index sidecar, so that the recording will be handled properly at playback time.
11. Fixed: JRVR will allow rendering the OSD even when no image from the source has arrived yet.
12. NEW: TV recordings on HLS IPTV channels can now be played on Library Server clients.


29.0.22 (3/17/2022)
1. Fixed: The fix to not show at boot was making the program not activate when you clicked it. Trying a different fix to showing.


29.0.21 (3/17/2022)
1. Changed: When outputting 2.1, Audio Path will report that instead of the container format 5.1.
2. NEW: DSP presets can be set on TV channels, and will be honored when the channels are played.
3. Changed: Variable Refresh Rate/GSYNC will be disabled for Media Center on NVIDIA GPUs by creating a custom profile on first video playback.
4. Fixed: Loading Java for Blu-ray Menus could fail on some systems.
5. Fixed: The player could still show a screen in some cases when starting at boot (even if it should have only run Media Server).
6. NEW: "Audio Programs" context menu is now available for IPTV and DMS channels.


29.0.20 (3/15/2022)
1. NEW: An option in "Rename, Move, & Copy files..." to copy sidecar files (tag sidecar, subtitle sidecar etc.) when the mode of operation is "Copy" or "Copy and update database location to point to the new location."
2. Changed: Updated Norwegian translation (thanks Øistein Rian).
3. Changed: Parameters in the Parametric Equalizer dialog show up to five digits of precision instead of two.
4. Changed: Low and high pass filters have a default Q of 0.7071.
5. Fixed: On boot the program could show when it was set to Media Server mode.
6. Changed: The sunrise and sunset times are not gotten again at startup if they were gotten in the last day.
7. Changed: Sunrise and sunset are reloaded from the server every 5 days instead of every day.
8. Changed: Updated to Monkey's Audio 7.50 which removes the 4 GB encode limit.
9. Changed: Made WAV files with -1 for the content length read the entire file for the length.
10. Fixed: Improved the consistency of text subtitle placement with JRVR.
11. Fixed: IPTV playback could fail due to lack of certain dependencies on a fresh installation of MC.
12. Changed: When the same DSP preset is used by two files in a row, it is only loaded once (instead of for each file).


29.0.19 (3/9/2022)
1. Changed: IPTV recordings with a sidecar index file will always be played in JRiver Video Player.
2. NEW: Added a "Maximum subtitle resolution" option to the video settings.
3. Fixed: Seven and eight stage biquads were not functioning properly.
4. Changed: Made WASAPI report itself as WASAPI Exclusive when playing as exclusive in Audio Path.
5. NEW: When renaming/moving/copying/deleting indexed HLS IPTV recordings, the index files are also renamed/moved/copied/deleted.


29.0.18 (3/8/2022)
1. NEW: TV recordings of HLS IPTV channels will have a sidecar index file saved, to make playback of such files smoother, in particular when discontinuities are involved. This is supported in JR Video Player only (not in DirectShow engine).
2. Changed: Updated libplacebo in JRVR for improved tonemapping, dithering, and various performance, stability and compatibility fixes.
3. Changed: Moved and reworded the "Gamut Handling" JRVR setting to better reflect that it is going to be used for SDR as well, as well as adding a new default setting.
4. Changed: Introduced a set of Trade Quality for Performance options in JRVR to limit the bitdepth of frame buffers and disable the use of frame buffers entirely for very low end systems (not recommended otherwise).
5. Changed: The EditType and DataType returned by MCWS are no longer translated.


29.0.17 (3/7/2022)
1. Changed: Updated the Edge WebView to the latest version.
2. NEW: Re-designed ASS/SSA subtitle renderer for JRVR for significant performance improvements.
3. Fixed: The layout of the all pass filter was not correct.
4. Fixed: Changing the filename of a custom biquad did not reload the filter.
5. NEW: Up to 8 stages of biquad filters can be loaded (was capped at 4).
6. Changed: The sign of a1 and a2 are now flipped when loading a minidsp biquad (according to specification).
7. Changed: Added DisplayName to the MCWS Library/Fields.
8. NEW: Ctrl-R will reset the JRVR performance metrics.


29.0.16 (3/4/2022)
1. Fixed: Biquad and divider filters could get swapped in the last build.


29.0.15 (3/3/2022)
1. NEW: Added support for custom biquad files (in minidsp format) in Parametric Equalizer.
2. NEW: Added the ability to set the Q used in the all pass filter.
3. Changed: Improved handling of timestamp discontinuity in IPTV (HLS) playback. Now playback and seeking both work seamlessly at discontinuity.
4. NEW: Added the ability to select the number of extra channels in DSP Studio > Output Format (instead of the choice being grouped together).
5. Changed: Updated Greek translation (thanks Panagiotis).


29.0.14 (3/1/2022)
1. Changed: Slovak translation updated (thanks Peter Lukac).
2. Changed: Made the VST buffer size option global instead of zone specific so it works with DLNA zones better.
3. NEW: Support for playback of rotated videos in JRVR.
4. Changed: Updated LAV Filters to 0.76.1, fixing an issue with hardware acceleration in JRVR on Intel GPUs, and improving integration of DVD menus with JRVR.


29.0.13 (2/24/2022)
1. NEW: The mode for Get Cover Art is saved between each run and use.
2. NEW: Ctrl+Shift+M will show a DVD or Bluray menu.
3. Fixed: JTV recordings could be imported with wrong video dimensions (1920x1080 HD video tagged as 1280x720) and/or wrong frame rate (29.97 video was tagged as 59.94).


29.0.12 (2/18/2022)
1. Fixed: Playing multiple DSP profiles would restore the previous profile instead of original.
2. NEW: Added the latency of the audio converter and from input until data is heard to the Audio Path.


29.0.11 (2/17/2022)
1. Fixed: IPTV channels that stream VOD (video on demand) could hang if a seek is performed after all data have been downloaded.
2. Fixed: Seeking of an IPTV playback could cause video to stutter for a few seconds.
3. Fixed: The check for focus for translating shortcuts in a web view was not working properly.
4. Changed: Pasting a string will no longer trim the trailing spaces.
5. Changed: Manage Library Fields would be sized incorrectly when opening to a large expression.
6. NEW: When a DSP profile is loaded for a file, the current configuration is saved before loading and restored when the next track starts.
7. Fixed: Editing Theater View file info panel with a big expression selected first would invalidate the sizing.
8. Changed: Added several more 5.1 inside channel layouts to the mixer (inside 10, 12, 14, 16 channel container).
9. Fixed: Added some missing items to the window position placement reset.


29.0.10 (2/15/2022)
1. Changed: Revamped the Tooltips for expression functions on Expression editor, to make them more user-friendly and translation-friendly.
2. Changed: Bitmap subtitles in JRVR will now be rendered at their original resolution and resized by JRVR (faster!).
3. Changed: The code to not translate shortcuts in web views will not consider a web view active unless it has the focus.
4. Fixed: HDR subtitles and menus from UHD BDs are now properly tonemapped in JRVR.
5. Changed: Adjusted the Q for the low and high pass filters to be muliplied by the square root of 2 (to make MC more in line with other tools).
6. Changed: The subwoofer limiter is lossless when it's not limiting the signal (previously it could adjust the volume).
7. Changed: If files have a list of artists, the first artist is used to decide if that album is a mix and the album artist (auto) value.
8. Changed: Improved IPTV bytes-per-second estimate, and thus the time-stamp and duration estimate, especially in poor network condition.
9. Changed: Text subtitles with JRVR will more consistently make use of black bars to display, if present.
10. Fixed: The AllPass filter was not working properly.
11. Changed: Updated Czech translation (thanks Jan Boháč!).


29.0.9 (2/10/2022)
1. Fixed: Subtitles in JRVR could stop working after seeking backwards.
2. Changed: Subtitles in JRVR are now handled in small rectangles, instead of the full frame, for faster rendering.


29.0.8 (2/9/2022)
1. Changed: Updated Chinese (simplified) language file (thanks YanJun Sun).
2. Changed: The tree no longer expands and collapses on space bar (so space bar will play / pause instead).
3. Fixed: The MCWS call Playback/Playlist would not work with remote zones.
4. Changed: Internal changes how JRVR handles subtitles.
5. Fixed: JRVR is more lenient when dealing with files with invalid HDR metadata.
6. Fixed: JRVR would not toggle the OS HDR mode when playing HLG or DV HDR content with pass-through enabled.


29.0.7 (2/8/2022)
1. Fixed: Mini view would allow resize vertically, but should not have.
2. Fixed: Playing to a windows MC DLNA renderer when it's connected as a client to a non-windows library server wouldn't work.
3. NEW: Added a "Reload" button to the Convolution DSP.
4. Changed: Vis Studio allows editing rectangles with semi-colons in the list of numbers for a rectangle so either decimal point character (,.) will work.
5. Changed: DSP Studio no longer allows an empty name to be used for a preset name.
6. Changed: High and low shelf filters now use "Q" instead of "S".
7. Changed: Reduced chance of hanging when IPTV servers do not have data to stream.
8. Changed: Improved start up speed of IPTV channels.
9. Changed: Reduced the frequency of needing to pause video for buffering when playing IPTV.


29.0.6 (2/3/2022)
1. NEW: Added an all pass filter to Parametric Equalizer (feedback appreciated).
2. Fixed: A couple dialogs could be sized incorrectly (debug logging, audio calibration, etc.).
3. NEW: Category-specific TV recording paddings (start recording early by x minutes, and stop recording late by x minutes).
4. NEW: Middle click on the stop button fires a "Stop After Current File".


29.0.5 (2/1/2022)
1. NEW: Skins can specify a maximized top and bottom border for the main frame (TopBorderMaximized / BottomBorderMaximized).


29.0.4 (1/29/2022)
1. Fixed: The upgrade install could copy more than it should have from the old Media Center folders.


29.0.3 (1/28/2022)
1. Fixed: JTV recordings were erroneously deleted when "Clean up time-shifting folders..." is run, either manually or automatically.


29.0.2 (1/27/2022)
1. Changed: Updated Greek translation (thanks Panagiotis).
2. NEW: Skins can specify Frame\Edit\Colors\Faded to specify the fade color of things like the instructions on a search box (it defaults to blending the text and background).
3. Changed: The disabled list text color is used out of the skin in more places (was building the color sometimes instead of checking the skin) (List\Colors\DisabledText).
4. Fixed: Enabling direct mismatched size rendering in JRVR could result in a larger border then expected.
5. Changed: Disabled JRVR Peak Detection by default due to its performance cost and potential for brightness shifts, and moved the option into the Advanced section.
6. Fixed: Loading and saving DSP presets did not contain the "Headphones" DSP plugin.
7. Changed: On a fresh upgrade to MC29, the library server settings from MC28 back to MC20 are transferred to MC29 and are turned off in the older version (so the server will start in MC29 only after install).
8. NEW: On upgrade, the visualizations folder is copied to bring along any custom saved scripts (instead of just the track info folder).
9. Fixed: Some DirectShow-based TV recording might be skipped since build 28.0.99.
10. Changed: Updated German translation file (thanks Bytestar).


29.0.1 (1/24/2022)
1. Changed: If the XMLTV file does not contain either <new> or <previously-shown> tag to indicate a show's "re-run" status, it will be determined by comparing the <date> tag with the program start date.
2. Fixed: Windows 11 will be detected when looking at System Info.
3. NEW: Made tile list styles adapt to the aspect ratio of the images instead of hard-coding based on the media type.
4. Changed: Thumbnails are a little better centered in the selection box.
5. Fixed: In some cases, zones could have the same GUID and it would make zone linking (and possibly other zone actions) impossible.
6. NEW: Made the Tempo & Pitch DSP able to support up to 32 channels (was capped at 16).
7. Changed: Added SRT subtitles to the list of data types the program understands.
8. Changed: When MC could not load SiliconDust EPG data due to not having an Authorization Code (most likely caused by not having enough time to discover HDHomeRun devices), retry will be attempted 3 minutes later instead of the usual 30 - 60 minutes later, and up to 3 retries will be allowed, instead of just one.
9. Changed: Ran all the translations through the tool to update to the latest strings from the source code.
10. NEW: Enabled Ctrl-J JRVR functionality in TV engine and non-DirectShow JR Video Player (on Windows, Mac, and Linux).
11. NEW: JRVR support for Dolby Vision playback (non-passthrough).
12. Changed: Re-designed JRVR HDR tone mapping and related options.
13. NEW: DVD playback with JRVR will now use hardware deinterlacing.
14. NEW: Added a JRVR performance option to avoid extraneous frame copies for systems with low memory bandwidth.
15. NEW: Playing HLG HDR content with JRVR can now be transformed to HDR10 for pass-through.
16. NEW: JRVR now caches shaders between runs, for faster subsequent startups.
17. Fixed: Improved YouTube Trailer playback to play more fluidly.

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