Release Notes

Added

• Add Active Date Range to block playout template editor to allow limiting templates to a specific date range
  • This is year-agnostic, meaning the Month/Day range will apply to every year
  • This also supports wrapping the end of the year (e.g., start 12/1 and end 1/15)
• Add new Deco system for "decorating" channels with non-primary content
  • Decos currently contain
    • Watermarks
    • Dead Air Fallback (i.e. fallback filler)
  • Similar to blocks, decos have deco groups for organization
  • Similar to blocks, decos have deco templates for filling a "day" with decos
  • In the playout template editor, playout template items can have both a block template and a deco template
    • This allows watermarks and dead air fallback to change at different times than primary content
  • Block playouts can also have a default deco
    • This will apply whenever a deco template is missing, or when a deco template item cannot be found for the current time
    • Effectively, this sets a default watermark and dead air fallback for the entire playout
• Add XMLTV Days To Build setting, which is distinct from the existing Playout Days To Build setting
  • The value for XMLTV Days To Build cannot be larger than Playout Days To Build
  • This allows, for example, a week of playout data while optimizing XMLTV data to only a day or two
• Add health check to detect config folder issue on MacOS
  • ETV versions through v0.8.4-beta (using dotnet 7) stored config data in $HOME/.local/share/ersatztv
  • ETV versions starting with v0.8.5-beta (using dotnet 8) store config data in $HOME/Library/Application Support/ersatztv
  • If a dotnet 8 version of ETV has NOT been launched on MacOS, it will automatically migrate the config folder on startup
  • If a dotnet 8 version of ETV has been launched on MacOS, a failing health check will display with instructions on how to resolve the config issue to restore data
• Add Video Profile setting to FFmpeg Profile editor when h264 format is selected
• Add Video Preset setting to FFmpeg Profile editor for some combinations of acceleration and video format:
  • Nvenc / h264
  • Nvenc / hevc
  • Qsv / h264
  • Qsv / hevc
  • None / h264
  • None / hevc
• Add experimental list type Playlist
  • Playlists contain an ordered list of:
    • Collections
    • Multi-Collections
    • Smart Collections
    • TV Shows
    • TV Seasons
    • Artists
    • Movies
    • Episodes
    • Music Videos
    • Other Videos
    • Songs
    • Images
  • Playlists can be added to schedules as a schedule item
  • Each time through the playlist, one item will be scheduled from each playlist item (if Play All is unchecked)
    • NB: This does not mean every collection will always schedule one item; the normal flood playout restrictions like duration and fixed start times still apply here
  • If Play All is checked, that playlist item will play all of its items each time through the playlist
    • This can be helpful if you want to play entire collections in a specific order, e.g.
      • Every episode from Show 1 Season 2
      • Every episode from Show 2 Season 3
      • Every episode from Show 1 Season 3
  • Playlist items with fewer media items will be re-shuffled (if applicable) before those with more media items
• Add two new environment variables to customize config and transcode folder locations
  • ETV_CONFIG_FOLDER
  • ETV_TRANSCODE_FOLDER
• Add checkbox to allow use of B-frames in FFmpeg Profile (disabled by default)

Fixed

• Fix some cases of 404s from Plex when files were replaced and scanning the library from ETV didn't help
• Fix more wildcard search phrase queries (when wildcards are used in quotes, like title:"law & order*")
• Fix non-wildcard simple queries when asterisks are used in quotes, like title:"m*a*s*h"
• Fix bug where channels would unnecessarily wait on each other
  • e.g. in-progress streams would delay responding with a playlist when new streams were starting
• Update Plex show title in ETV when changed in Plex
• Reindex seasons and episodes when show is updated from media server
  • This is needed to keep show_* tags accurate in the search index (e.g., show_title, show_studio)
• Fix external subtitle detection to support forced/sdh subtitles with language tag before and after forced/sdh tag:
  • Something.forced.en.srt
  • Something.sdh.en.srt
  • Something.en.forced.srt
  • Something.en.sdh.srt
• Fix playback from Jellyfin 10.9 by allowing playlist HTTP HEAD requests
• Fix HLS Segmenter V2 segment duration (previously 10s, now 4s)
• Fix HLS Segmenter V2 error video generation
• Fix MySql database migrations
• Fix Plex library scans with MySql/MariaDB
• Fix block playout playback when no deco is configured
• Fix HLS Segmenter V2 to delete old segments (use less disk space while channel is active)
• Fix template and deco template editors to prevent items that go beyond midnight
• Fix block playout random seeds
  • Different blocks within a single playout will now correctly use different random seeds (shuffles)
  • Erasing block playout history will also generate new random seeds for the playout
• Fix building playouts that use mid-roll filler and have content without chapter markers
  • When this happens, mid-roll will be treated as post-roll
• Fix VAAPI decoder capability check
  • This caused some streams to incorrectly use software decoding
• Fix scheduling loop/failure caused by some duration schedule items
• Fix video_bit_depth search field for Plex media
• Fix template and deco template editors with MariaDB/MySql backend
• Fix transcoding 10-bit source content using QSV acceleration on Windows

Changed

• Show health checks at top of home page; scroll release notes if needed
• Improve HLS Segmenter V2 compliance by:
  • Serving fmp4 segments when hevc video format is selected

    • 1.5. The container format for HEVC video MUST be fMP4.

  • Using accurate BANDWIDTH value in multi-variant playlist
  • Using proper MIME types for statically-served .m3u8 and .ts files
  • Serving playlists with gzip compression
• Use HLS Segmenter V2 for channel preview when channel is configured for HLS Segmenter V2
• Detect and use /dev/dri/card* devices in addition to /dev/dri/render* devices
• Change default folder locations in docker using new environment variables
  • ETV_CONFIG_FOLDER - now defaults to /config
  • ETV_TRANSCODE_FOLDER - now defaults to /transcode
  • If the old locations are still present in docker, these variables will be ignored, so you can migrate at your own pace
    • Old config location: /root/.local/share/ersatztv
    • Old transcode location: /root/.local/share/etv-transcode