You may of noticed over the past few months different parts of the application (like “Live TV” viewing and playing the videos stored on your local device) have used a brand new player based on ExoPlayer v2. It’s a more advanced and capable player, with broader playback capabilities, and as such, some of you have been desperate to get your hands on it. Well the wait is finally over with beta v6.13!
While we’ve locked ourselves in our testing basements (and closets, tool sheds, the borrowed garage of “weird coffee shop guy”, etc.) and have been furiously testing our new player with a variety of media, we still haven’t been able to cover every scenario. So, we need your help as beta testers to make it the best Android player for your content!
What’s changed?
Pretty much everything! The Plex player on TV and mobile is now capable of playing back a host of new containers such as AVI, MPEG, MPEGTS, and WMV. There is now support for software decoding of AAC LATM, AC3, MP1, MP2, FLAC, OPUS, WMA, MPEG, VC1, VP8/9, and WMV. It also brings a lot of performance improvements and fixes for existing setups and devices.
What’s really changed?
We now rely on the same media framework as we use in Plex Media Server for transcoding, so we can demux and decode a variety of a new formats. This required a lot of integration with ExoPlayer v2 on a native level with C++, but comes with some huge benefits (aside from the extra playback functionality). For instance, we can now demux much faster and reduce the battery usage during playback.
What do you need tested?
Basically everything video-playback-related needs testing to help ensure the broadest coverage. Go ahead and throw your old, obscure, early-90s home movie or your super-high-bitrate GoPro footage at the player and see how it does.
Oh noes, something doesn’t play right! How do I report it?
Providing detailed info when you encounter a playback issue will help us investigate (and resolve!) the issue quickly, so things improve for everyone.
- Test whether you see the same playback problem with the old player (see the information on switching back below)
- Reproduce the playback issue with the NEW player
- Grab logs from your Android app (Android App Logs)
- Save the “XML file” for the library item you tried to play (XML File Information)
- If possible, create a small sample file (Generating Sample Files) of the video causing the issue, verify that the sample still causes the issue, and then upload that sample to somewhere such as Dropbox or Google Drive
- Report your issue in our Android Beta forum (https://forums.plex.tv/categories/beta-builds) with details about what exactly you experienced. Be sure to attach your logs and “XML file” and link to the sample file.
Do I really have to do all that?
We know it sounds like a lot, but it’s not as bad as it might first seem. It’s super important to get this information to allow us to investigate and resolve the issues, though. We all want the issue fixed and working, right?
TL;DR: A brand new video player is in beta with lots of improvements and new formats supported. Enjoy and report issues in the Android beta forums!
