Plex Blog

We’ve been talking about Plex/Web for a while now. Making you drool with lots of juicy screen shots. PlexPass holders have been tweeting about it. And now, my friends, we’re making it available for everyone.

tl;dr ~ To get Plex/Web, follow these easy steps:

1. Download and run the new Plex Media Server.
2. If you’re a myPlex user, hit this link.
3. Otherwise, hit http://x.x.x.x:32400/web
4. Prosper, and be merry.

We’re super excited about Plex/Web, and we suspect you will be too. It’s the fastest and richest Plex client that exists today for managing, browsing and playing your content. No, it’s not a replacement for the gorgeous Plex Media Center, but you can run Plex/Web from anywhere in the world in any (reasonably modern) web browser.

Also, this is the first release of the media server which has run the PlexPass gauntlet. We made three releases, each of which was tested thoroughly. Bugs were reported, suggestions were made, and as such, we’re confident that this is a better release than it would otherwise be.

Update: The Plex/Web forum is now open for everyone! Join the fun!

I’ll also note that with Plex/Web leaving PlexPass, this means that there will be a new MYSTERY FEATURE making its PlexPass debut tomorrow. It’ll be great with Thanksgiving coming up, and no, it’s not a turkey.

The new Plex Media Server has some really nice new stuff in it too, which I’ll go over quickly. To kick it off, we’ve made a number of improvements around photos. Scanning them in is much quicker, and we read in lots of EXIF data and allow rich filtering.

Secondly, and this is pretty much my favorite feature ever, we’ve made the media server manage the transcoder much more intelligently, so that it doesn’t use all your precious CPUs and warm up your laptop to the point where it fries eggs and prevents you from having offspring. Up until now, we’ve run the transcoding as quickly as possible, using all your CPU. It got even worse when you had multiple mobile devices streaming video.

With this new smart management, you’ll find your CPU is used only when actually needed (which always makes Al Gore happy), your machine will run cooler, and your server will be able to stream to more devices simultaneously.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also taken a baby step towards supporting subtitles in DLNA and made it work on some devices (e.g. the PS3). Any device which uses MPEGTS as a transcode target now gets subtitle support.

There are lots of other juicy bits, like support for more administrative tasks (such as cleaning out unused bundles) and a ton of additions to the API, for all those writing Plex clients.

Here’s the full list of changes, below the Barkley, who’s tired after an hour of swimming.

• NEW: Read some EXIF data for photos and allow filtering on it.
• NEW: Add support for filtering videos by resolution.
• NEW: Improve filtering/sorting options for specific types.
• NEW: Transcoder now goes idle when it gets ahead, saves CPU, helps multiple sessions coexist.
• NEW: (DLNA) MPEGTS target supports transcode throttling (lower CPU usage).
• NEW: (DLNA) MPEGTS target supports audio stream picking and subtitle burning.
• NEW: Use Plex/Web for the default manager now across platforms (option + click uses old Cocoa manager).
• NEW: Added Sony 2011 DLNA profile from (thanks to yardco & tcviper).
• NEW: (API) Add /library/metadata/X/split and /library/metadata/X/merge?ids=a,b,c endpoints.
• NEW: (API) Add /library/clean/media to delete unused media bundles.
• NEW: (API) Add /library/clean/bundles to delete unused bundles.
• NEW: (API) Add ?checkFiles=1 parameter to /library/metadata/X endpoint to check for existence/access for files.
• NEW: (API) Add /library/metadata/X/<tag class>/[add|remove] endpoints to allow adding/removing tags from items.
• NEW: (API) Add new unviewedLeafCount/unwatched/unwatchedLeaves filter fields.
• NEW: (API) Allow >=, <=, and != operators on filter fields.
• NEW: (API) Added a new /library/onDeck global On Deck endpoint.
• NEW: (API) Added fledgling new endpoints /transcode/sessions (and corresponding DELETE /transcode/sessions/<key>).
• NEW: (API) Pass back default sort/direction in /sorts.
• NEW: (API) Added lots more details to WebSocket notifications.
• FIX: An issue which could result in On Deck items being ordered incorrectly or empty.
• FIX: Don’t pass back filenames for shared sections.
• FIX: An issue where season art for date-based shows wouldn’t get loaded the first scan.
• FIX: A few memory leaks and a socket leak.
• FIX: An issue which could lead to the media server becoming unresponsive and crashing with no network.
• FIX: Recently Viewed Show count bumped to 25.
• FIX: When signing out of myPlex, deregister server in cloud.
• FIX: Fix some photos not getting thumbnails.
• FIX: (Windows) Crash when enabling network logging.
• FIX: Crash analyzing some .TS files.
• FIX: Speed up photo scanning greatly.
• FIX: 1/16 of the time, we were incorrectly computing OpenSubtitles hashes. Existing ones are repaired.
• FIX: Attempt to work around newer LG TVs causing PMS to churn with big music sections.
• FIX: Date-based episodes could be inappropriately merged.
• FIX: Store format of sidecar subtitles.
• FIX: Rare issue where HTTP server could stop accepting new connections.
• FIX: Massive speedup when computing number of watched episodes for a show.
• FIX: Quitting PMS during startup could lead to a hang.
• FIX: Move the deletion preference into the library preferences group.
• FIX: Fix a crash in JSON serialization.
• FIX: Tweak to phrasing for episode sort list.
• FIX: Don’t refresh metadata when asked to re-analyze media.
• FIX: Fix an occasion hang where the media server would become unresponsive to requests.
• FIX: Watched/unwatched episode counts could get out of sync after a scan.
• FIX: Filter out non-ASCI characters from EXIF tags.
• FIX: Scanner crashes analyzing DNG files from Lightroom 4.1
• FIX: Occasional crash when scanner exits.
• FIX: Sort files before handing them to the scanners.
• FIX: Run photo and music analysis two at a time, which speeds things up even more.
• FIX: Reduction of memory and thread usage.
• FIX: (DLNA) Fixes for remote/shared server access.
• FIX: (DLNA) Fix when DlnaDeviceDiscoveryInterval was 0.
• FIX: (DLNA) Fix issue with XBox360 and MOV files with 64-bit offsets.
• FIX: (DLNA) OnBrowseMetadata returned wrong content, fixes XBMC playback.
• FIX: (DLNA) Profile for Panasonic Viera TVs.
• FIX: (API) Send back titles with library timeline notifications (for Plex/Web).
• FIX: (API) An issue where WebSocket got closed prematurely.
• FIX: (API) WebSocket handshake failed when URL has X-Plex-Token in it.
• FIX: (API) A few WebSockets crashes.
• FIX: (API) Ensure lastAccessedAt attribute always present for channel listing.
• FIX: (API) Ensure the endpoint which stops a scan doesn’t return until the scan actually stops.
• FIX: (API) Return library section XML when POSTing a new section.
• FIX: (API) Fix a case where library background art endpoint didn’t work.
• FIX: (API) Allow PUT /library/metadata/X to take multiple IDs.
• FIX: (API) myPlex signups work again.
• FIX: (API) Return errors from myPlex when signups don’t work.
• FIX: (API) When sorting by title, actually use the sort title.
• FIX: (API) Expose Flash/Silverlight installation state, start state via root XML.

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