Video Library

Jmarshall has posted before about his proposed library makeover, and now he’s ready to put it into action. The goal is to combine the file and library views into one useful mechanism, while making it easier and more straightforward to add, organize, filter, and display content. Watch for a post with much more detail from Jmarshall in the near future.

Addons

We’ve received lots of complaints about the addon structure (or lack of it) in XBMC. As a result, discussion has started about the possibility of adding an official addon manager inside of XBMC itself so that everything would be available directly from the interface. Also, there was much discussion about different ways of organizing the plugins and keeping them up to date. Plans are far from finalized, but surely the results will be up to XBMC’s usual standards.

Web browser and Flash Integration

This one is only a maybe, but is being evaluated. To be clear, this has nothing to do with adding a full-blown browser in XBMC, only the ability to grab media content (such as flash) from the web for use in plugins.

Release Schedule

We believe that the current 6-month release schedule (based upon Ubuntu releases) is still viable, though it will be shifted by a month or so to give us time for testing with the new version. We will also probably start doing interim releases as new features are added. These will not go through the same testing schedule as the major releases, but should reduce the need for users to compile their own builds or look for 3rd-party sources just to keep up with the bleeding-edge features.

Translations

The XBMC community has always been great about contributing to the translation effort, and blittan has stepped up to help ease the work. He will be coordinating a move to Launchpad so that the community can become even more involved. Also, to help alleviate some of the redundant translations, some ‘common phrases’ will be added that all addons can use.

Website Changes

It’s time to knock the dust off of xbmc.org and shake things up a bit. We realize that most of our loyal users go straight to the forums because that’s where the good stuff is, but we’ll be making a concerted effort in the near future to reorganize our site. We hope to make it easier to find the current news and developments all in one place.

DevCon 2009 - Some of the XBMC team members in attendance

Watch for these and many other changes in the future. We’ll be sure to let you know as plans unfold. And If you haven’t already, don’t forget to Vote for XBMC for the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards!

However now comes the really important part! The actual voting to select SourceForge CCA winners has begun today, and and XBMC is a finalist in no less than four categories this year. So now please head over to SourceForge.net again and VOTE for “XBMC Media Center”. You will find us under the following headings:

• Best Project
• Best Visual Design
• Best Project for Multimedia
• Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything

Note that if you are not logged in then you will have to give your email address, click “Send My Vote Now!” after you made your choices and then simply go to the link that is mailed to you for identity confirmation. So be sure to follow the instructions in the confirmation message that follows or your vote will not be counted.

After you have voted, please help us spread the word. If you know someone who loves using XBMC Media Center as much as you do, pass this message along. Help us tell the world that XBMC is the best open source media center there is!

We know we have the best looking media center, and with your help, we can have the best looking booth at the show as well!

Our current thinking is to first plaster the entire booth in black to differentiate from all the other boring white/grey booths, and then have white on black posters, (with a bit of color thrown in for good measure), extolling the virtues of XBMC - perhaps with some giant blown up screenshots from your favorite skins.

We need some poster designs from you guys, by the end of this week. The prize is the glory of thousands of people seeing your designs at the show, plus we will send you copies of a couple of full size posters for your own walls. Some ideas to get you started:

1. Incorporate the plain text version of the XBMC logo or the web URL of the project.
2. Some short, sharp slogans with what XBMC is all about, parts of the project vision, or maybe mention a few key features, and community driven addons.
3. A ‘cloud’ with the names of the third-party open source (library) projects we depend on, with “XBMC” in the middle, (perhaps with bigger text for bigger projects?)
4. Incorporate screenshots from your favorite skins.

We also need some other stuff for the booth, so if you are not in the mood for poster design, how about a T-shirt design or some pamphlets that we can hand out at the show?

Pop over to the forums and post your designs!

For those interested, here is a brief changelog:

• Updated the web scrapers
• Fixed segfault when clicking on either a Video or Music source which contains a malformed .pls file
• Shoutcast had two “..” paths
• Typo caused VobSub subtitles to render at incorrect timestamps (and possibly crash XBMC)
• Diffuse texture used the wrong coordinates for orientation when scalediffuse=”false” was specified
• Reset LCD dim after resuming from suspend
• HDHomeRun was crashing when browsing tuners
• Main title DVD/ISO rips did not return to GUI when playback finished
• XBMC would suspend directly after resume when suspend time > shutdown time
• Speed up RAW image loading and handle more file extensions
• Better WAV handling on 64-bit operating-systems
• Metadata from NFO files not used unless default scraper is the same as the URL in the NFO
• H.264 video and AAC audio streamed over RTMP memory leak and video FPS problem
• [OSX] EventServer could be started multiple times on Mac and Apple TV
• [LINUX] RAW image loading was broken
• [LINUX] Startup.xml was not loaded
• [LINUX] Some plugins were crashing on 64bit
• [WIN32] Updated: ImageLib.dll
• [WIN32] Fixed raw image loading
• [WIN32] XBMC crashed on playing media or no sound with MP3 and video files
• [WIN32] XBMC would crash before the OpenGL warning pop-up message was shown

While you are brimming with XBMC Media Center love and excitement, show your appreciation by nominating us for the SourceForge 2009 Community Choice Awards, it only takes a minute, and we really appriciate everyone who participates.

Among the many new features in XBMC 9.04 is PPC (PowerPC) support for Mac OS X, VDPAU (NVIDIA GPU Hardware Accelerated Video Decoding for Linux), updated Codecs, new Karaoke features, more Media Info Scrapers, improved FanArt support, and of course enhancements to the XBMC Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful. For the full list of what is new in this version of XBMC please see the 9.04 milestone on trac.

Team-XBMC would like to especially thank everyone who submitted patches and helped hunt bugs.

XBMC Community Forum discussion: XBMC 9.04 ‘Babylon’ released, ready for download

We have some work to do to prepare for LinuxTag - we need to design up some posters to decorate the booth, produce some leaflets or cards to give out to attendees and organize some equipment so as to showcase XBMC in the best way that we can.

If you think you can help out with LinuxTag preparations, whether it may be helping with ideas as to what we can do in and around our booth, helping with designs for posters, cards or leaflets, or to assist with equipment or volunteer in manning the booth, then please let us know in the forums.

LinuxTag 2009 takes place from June 24-27 at the Fairground in Berlin, Germany. See www.linuxtag.org for more information.

XBMC Media Center 9.04 releases for Windows and all Mac OS X platforms may be found here.

The XBMC for Linux (on Ubuntu) release are available via the PPA on Launchpad as usual.

Note! If updating from an older version of XBMC you will have to scan in your library again.

The Mac OS X and Apple TV release may be found here .

The Windows release may be found here .

The Linux release will be available via the PPA shortly.

As predicted by many, the codename for this next release is Babylon.  New in 9.04 among many things is the VDPAU code (hardware accelerated video decoding of H264 and VC1 on recent NVIDIA graphics controllers under Linux) worked on by motd2k, karaoke worked on by oldnemesis, and some major path cleanup work (meaning all python scripts and plugins need to be updated to work properly), so from now XBMC will no longer steal all those drive letters under Windows, in addition to all the usual improvements and enhancements that you have come accustomed to expecting.

We now need your help to get things nice and stable for release.  This means taking time to test things thoroughly, helping developers reproduce problems, identifying any holes in the current documentation and so on.

Let the bug-bashing begin!

Q: Let’s talk a little about XBMC itself. What would you say separates it from other media centre and HTPC software?

JM: The biggest thing for me are that it’s completely opensource - both in terms of code release and the development model. This has led to a large, active and enthusiastic community being built up around the project, which pushes the development further than could be achieved with a closed model. The obvious difference with XBMC is it does not attempt to restrict you in any way, whilst still attempting to be as user friendly as possible. The commercial media centre offerings cannot compete with this, and we think we’ve done a better job than the many opensource projects out there on the user friendly side of things - though obviously there’s still a great room for improvement in this respect!

Q: As a project, XBMC never seems to sit still. It has evolved from an Xbox hack into one of the most full-featured and customisable media experiences available. What influenced the decision to go multi platform?

JM: As with most major new things that affect the project, the decision to go multi-platform came from a developer fronting up and putting in the work. Yuval was responsible for the port to linux which was the main departure point from the xbox. I’d done some initial work earlier on porting to win32, and once the linux port was working nicely, Elan Feingold did the initial porting work to OS X. This is the great thing about open source - developers from outside the main team can come along, grab the code, and make changes as they see fit.

Q: Despite the long release cycle, XBMC’s feature set continues to evolve at a rapid pace. How do you keep the project from stagnating?

JM: We don’t have to do anything as a team really - the community as a whole is so enthusiastic that it keeps things running along far faster than we could if we were doing all the pushing. I personally find I don’t have enough time to implement even 20% of what I’d like to, and I’m sure other developers feel the same way.

Pop over to brave little meme and check out the rest of the interview.