Release Notes

Added

• Next engine:
  • Add full graphics engine support
  • Add hardware-accelerated padding for QSV on Windows, Linux and Docker (note that this requires the latest ETV custom ffmpeg build)
  • Enable av1, vc1, vp8, vp9 hardware decoding using QSV when supported by GPU
  • Add hardware-accelerated HDR10 tonemapping using QSV when supported by GPU
  • Add AMF capability detection (AMD on Windows)
  • Add AMF hardware-accelerated decoding for AV1, H264, HEVC, MPEG2, VC1, VP9
    • MPEG2 hardware decoding requires the latest ETV custom ffmpeg build
  • Add AMF hardware-accelerated scaling
  • Add AMF hardware-accelerated tonemap
  • Auto-select best AMF (AMD) device in multi-gpu systems
• Periodically delete unused artwork from cache folder on disk
• Probe Dolby Vision and HDR10 metadata in local library content
  • All HDR content in local libraries will be re-scanned once after updating to refresh this metadata
• Add music video credits drop down to playback troubleshooter

Changed

• Next engine:
  • Deinterlace with send_frame mode by default; this maintains fps and is significantly more performant. send_field and other modes can still be used via channel config.
  • Optimize anamorphic pipelines by only performing one scale instead of two
  • Optimize tonemapping pipelines by downscaling before tonemapping when possible
  • Optimize QSV pipelines by merging consecutive vpp_qsv filters as much as possible (e.g. tonemap, scale and format using a single filter)
  • Show error messages over black/silence fallback streams by default
    • To disable, create the file next/channel-config-overlays/default.json in ETV's config folder with the contents {"fallback":{"show_error":false}}
• Graphics engine:
  • Use Seek Seconds in playback troubleshooter directly as MediaItem_SeekSeconds in templates
    • Previously, MediaItem_SeekSeconds was always zero, so graphics elements often started wherever troubleshooting playback started instead of being anchored

Fixed

• Next engine:
  • Fix many issues with subtitles that caused black/silence (error output from next)
  • Fix AAC audio encoding when FFmpeg Profile is configured to output more than 2 channels
• Fix health checks causing a flood of (harmless) logged errors when quickly navigating away from home page
  • Health check results will now be cached for 5 minutes by default; a refresh button has been added to immediately re-run all checks
• Fix /api/sessions response when channels use Next streaming engine
• Save and restore sequential schedule mid-roll, post-roll, and graphics state between builds
• Fix subtitle playback with Plex other video libraries
• Fix Plex other video tag generation when Plex server and ETV server use different path separators (i.e. Windows and Linux)
• Graphics engine:
  • Fix motion element timing, including hold behavior when seeking into hold
• Many reliability fixes to playback troubleshooter; e.g. so it doesn't stay locked until ETV is restarted
• Improve local library path validation
  • Paths must now be absolute; e.g. a relative path saved on macOS could previously break all future edits to that library
  • Validation errors now include the problematic path
• Fix custom ordering of manual (movie) collections to support dragging posters instead of just titles
• Fix remote stream libraries to allow .yaml extension (previously only allowed .yml)