I would like to ask what are the next goals of plex; beside the rumored new library.
Hopefully it will not sound to rude since I can’t contribute much to the development, but in my opinion Plex is moving in the wrong direction. There is so much “blingbling” like the Plug-Ins. There are so much of them, but I think there are much more important things to looked after.
What are about the basics like simple playback of media?
automated swichting between 24p/25p/…
more efficient use of the hardware for high-bitrate-material
“flagging media”, for example 720p / 5.1 DTS / eng-ger-dutch
What will we likely see in the next weeks or moth?
The “rumored” library and subsequent UI improvements are what you will see in the next months. The new library will do a whole lot more than what I am assuming you are thinking. One of those features is flagging media.
Plex uses FFMPEG for video playback. Some of what you are thinking could be restrictions with that that may or may not be able to be tweaked on the Plex side.
As far as using hardware for high-bitrate-materials, this is not currently possible. The only apps that are capable of doing this are quicktime based apps.
ffmpeg is probably not gonna use anything snow leopard specific and apple is probably not gonna open up quicktime so hardware acceleration is off limits for time being.
I havent tested Quicktime + perian vs ffmpeg performace , anyone tried it with divx/xvid , h264/x264 ?
FYI: The latest article (read 2009-02-20) on the MPlayer homepage talks about hardware acceleration using ffmpeg: [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html](http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html)
The functionality is being built into ffmpeg in several ways. Don't assume no one but Apple (openCL) is developing ways to better use processors for x.264 playback.
that post was about VDPAU hardware decoding which is linux only. we’re not going to see anything like that for mac until nvidia decides to get their ■■■■ together and stop making feature crippled drivers for osx. seriously, windows users get purevideo and linux gets vdpau, but nvidia cant get their chips’ built in hardware decoders working on a mac? WTF
as for the future of plex, i’d like to know if it would be possible to get smoothvideo from xbmc. also (and yes i know its a non-trivial bit of work) the newer xbmc skinning engine. it seems to me that lately, while plex has been making huge leaps in usability, xbmc has been passing us by on technical fronts.
I’d like it if plex were to add some social-internet functionality like updates to facebook and twitter as well as plug-ins that enable viewing of photos from your facebook account.
Plex is in my opinion a mediaplayer. The possibility to handle music and pictures is nice to have.
Those plugins are completly useless to me and the social-networking-pleague shouldn't spread any further.
At the moment I'm thinking about to give XBMC a chance. Atm Plex is heading in a direction, I doesn't like. The mysterious new library could be cool... Maybe it's very "apple-ish" to cover the anticipated new feature in mist. Expectations rise and people often get disapointed.
[list]
[*]Solution for different Framerates
[*]XBMC-Skins should work without modifications
[*]more stable
[/list]
Those things are imo more important.
Edit:
I know, I have no right to complain. It's free. It's sort of a hobby. Just me 2 Cent. :)
i really pray plex does NOT ever add a pervasive social networking layer. if i wanted to know which of my “friends” are watching porn and eating cheeseits at this exact moment and the entire world to know when im taking a ■■■■ and when im watching Pretty in Pink, id be using boxee.
I do agree with you about the framerate thing- Plex cannot claim to be a high end media player without taking some of that stuff out of XBMC. I don't really doubt this will happen though- every time in the past the high end was lacking a major Plex feature Elan eventually stepped in with a solution (like the whole FFMpeg after 7.13 debacle). Even I have considered moving to XBMC if the audio sync to video thing doesn't pop up in the Plex 9 series (even though I would miss the TV theme songs soooo much), but I really think it will eventually be there before Plex goes 1.0. I guess we will see.
As far as the skins go, I hope that Plex as it progresses doesn't stay XBMC compatible. Quartz and Cocoa in OSX allows for much better interfaces than pure OpenGL can do. XBMC's new skinning engine relies on a lot of tricks to make modern themes work (like preloading images) that if Plex was a fully Cocoa interface would not be needed. A split from XBMC compatibility on this part could mean advances that XBMC (as it must remain multiple OS compatible) cannot have.
I will admit though thanks to the current lull in Plex development, XBMC has pulled ahead in almost every category (except for the media pluggins) so right now many people are switching over away from Plex. I don't think anyone will blame you if you follow this crowd. Its makes the most sense if you want to use XBMC skins....
I could see where someone outside of the US would be frustrated by seeing a ton of plugins released that they’re not able to use. The thing to understand here is that not only are plugins being developed, but the underlying framework is being developed as well. This has benefits that go beyond just the plugins. We have been able to build a team of very good plugin developers who understand the framework and will be able to translate that info into assisting with other areas of Plex.
There is no premeditated plan to imitate Apple’s veil of secrecy when it comes to releasing new information about Plex. We are a smaller development team and prefer to only post info about things that are very near to being released. Its difficult with all of us having full time jobs and families to estimate when a particular feature will be released.
Yeah, I don't want to blame anyone. ^^ I'm well aware of those things.
Not to mention performance issues.
Plex -> Event Horizon BR-m2ts-File doesnt work well. 10fps, after a few minutes playbacl stops
XBMC -> works like a charm
Hm, a few minutes ago I tested XBMC and it was rather disapointing.
Playback on some Files (Event Horizon transportstream for example) is way better then Plex.
But the skins can't stand my high expectations. Media-Flagging don't work for me. Afaik there are some Mods/Hacks which I need to pull of some github-thingies and badly documented. No idea what to do. I thought i choose the skin, and there it goes. BR/1080p/720p-Flag and so on. The final skins doesn't look like the preview-mockups. Aeon still sucks in terms of wide-banner-view.
Jeez, I want to watch my movies and tv-shows and i LOVE the theme-playback. <_<
If you want to go back and forth with testing, one skin I loved over them all for XBMC was this one. For PLEX you just have to set the backgrounds manually and it worked fine. Only performance for art heavy sections suffered.
All the familiar looks of Mediastream, with for vast refinements and improvements of the interface.
I sincerely hope this skin finds a home in PLEX in the future.
One last question:
Those flags, does XBMC recognize them on it's own, or do I have to do something (Write an .nfo-File, Rename them proper like Movie (Year).720p.dts.h264.mkv)?
Exactly - that way you get native media flagging (e.g. XBMC reads the media information directly from the files themselves, no need for .nfo files, skin based hacks, studio flag hacks etc etc).. The only bit that comes from the filename (depending on the skin) is the 'BluRay/DVD/HDTV' icon.
Personally I use Transparency! as my skin - so much faster than Aeon for me, but that's all personal choice :)
im playing with xbmc to try out some different skins, some certainly have the wow factor, but i have not found anything with near the everyday usability of mediastream. also it is one hell of a pain in the ass to manually download all the skins from the xbmc forums, i cant believe that some people are hosting these on rapidshare. also many of them (i really love minimeedia, but its the worst offender) dont include any sort of artwork at all, you have to find that yourself and manually download and install that. i REALLY REALLY hope when plex gets a second and third and so on skin to a usable state, they are included in the app store. as a first time xbmc user, i have to say that while it has some impressive features we do not yet, it seems as if it is purposefully making it as difficult as it possibly can to install, setup and configure things.
