Sapphire Browser Beta 4.1 Release Notes
Sapphire Browser beta 4.1 (Universal) (765.7 KB)
- Fixed an issue with the movie importer that was causing some movie titles to be omitted from the movie title chooser. This fixes #32.
- We have changed the way Sapphire stores cover art. Once the importers have been ran, Sapphire will automatically create folders to house your cover art. See Collection Art for more details.
- “~/Library/Application Support/Sapphire/Collection Art/@TV/”
- Sapphire will download all TV show screen caps to this directory and place them in the appropriate sub-folders. ShowName/Season #/
- Placing a cover.ext in any of these directories will have sapphire display them as directory art.
- for example: the file: “~/Library/Application Support/Sapphire/Collection Art/@TV/24/cover.ext” will display as the default cover art for all 24 episodes where “~/Library/Application Support/Sapphire/Collection Art/@TV/24/Season 3/cover.ext” would display for any third season 24 episode.
- “~/Library/Application Support/Sapphire/Collection Art/@MOVIES/”
- Sapphire will download all posters to this location.
- “~/Library/Application Support/Sapphire/Collection Art/@TV/”
- Users now have the option to “Hide Poster Chooser” in the settings menu. This tells Sapphire to automatically pick a poster to use for a given movie without the user needing to select a poster during the movie import.
- Movie Importer will no longer give the user an empty title chooser.
- Fixed issue with no posters found causing an exception. This fixes ticket #26.
- The File Joiner menu has been improved.
- Fixed various spelling and grammar errors.
- All menus can now wrap around. This should help users transitioning between the top and bottom of a menu more quickly.
- Users will now see “Premiered” date for movies instead of “Released” when previewing a movie in the browser.
- Added badges to the Title Chooser lists. This should help with accidentally selecting the correct title in the wrong importer.
- Users can now delete metadata for individual files or folders using the Mark Menu.
- Fixed an issue where the import tools wouldn’t flush their queues when the import process was canceled. Changing the skipped collections will no longer require sapphire to be restarted.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
[…] Beta 4.1 see Collection […]
December 14th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Just found out about this plugin for Front Row and I’m so Happy
This is a godsend. But I’m actually unable to get it to scan my files even once. It always crashes. One thing that might be causing the problem is the lack of options when it comes to choices for scanning. As I’m limited to scanning the entire external drive, which has more than one usage. So instead of scanning a hundred files, it’s scanning thousands. I have yet to see what it will do when it gets to my backups of music and video files.
Is there any ways to tell it to only scan a certain folder on the drive. This would be so much better. I’d hate to have to get another drive for backup purposes, just because of this.
Also, I have some Anime shows, the only choice I get is has a Movie, it would be great if we had an extra option when being showed title choices. Something like:
Not A Movie
A TV Show
————
titles…
This way, if Saphirre doesn’t know what it is, we can tell it it’s a Movie but a TV Show, then perhaps the same list of titles could come up, but it would be classified at the right place. (in my case it was “Bleach (2004) TV Series” that ended up in movies)
Thanks so much for a great Plugin, can’t wait to get it to work completly
December 14th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Oops, never mind, just realized the naming convention on that show was wrong, so it was confusing it. The crash is due to a show in particular, it just doesn’t seem to like it’s name. (reported it as a bug).
It would be helpfull if there a master XML or plist file that was created from all the info, so one could edit it if shows or movies didn’t get added right. I only get offered the wrong name for some movies. (In my case it was a japanese Anime movie but IMDB has the wrong name for it.. or perhaps a weird english translation) Would love to be able to go in and fix it)
Anyways, thanks again for a great tool.
December 15th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Well I guess it’s a good thing both my comments are waiting moderation, you can delete both, lol. Just found out where the plist that contains all the info is. I assumed it was dynamicly getting the info on imdb every time, but I’ve now found the file I need to change. I could even add the show that is making it crash, but since it’s 66 files, I might not, lol.
But I could at least add a movie that was also making it crash (the last king of scotland).
Thanks again, again, for a great tool
December 15th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Francky, hope you don’t mind I approved the previous comments. Your last comment is missing context without them.
So, “Last Kind of Scotland” is causing it to crash?
December 16th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Yes, as is “Robot Chicken” the TV series.
For now I just moved the series from the first folders scanned and stop it before it reaches it. I’ll do without for now
I work in CG graphics and was thinking of customizing the graphic elements of Saphire a bit. To better integrate with the rest of front row. If you don’t mind, I have some suggestions design wise.
I’ve noticed some “continuity errors” in the interface. When in the TV shows Section, if no image is assigned to a show, we get a Color Bar, this color bar doesn’t reflect, like the rest of the artwork, be it images for shows, or even the clapper in Movies when similarly no artwork is specified. (I changed the “color bar” image to a blank tv image, to look and act more like the Movie section)
Also, it would be cool if the image used to represent Favorite, watched and unwacthed shows, was different for the small icons and the huge one at the top. I was thinking of also custmizing it, to again better match the rest of front row. Perhaps have a small blue dot, like potcast do, for unwatched shows. I’m also planning to change the S of saphire to Perhaps have a TV Screen with the letter S inside or perhaps the word “Sapphire”
Lastly, when entering either the music section or movie section, there is always artwork on the left side of the screen, it would be cool if this also happened when entering Sapphire. Perhaps having the TV and Movie art spinning around, when hilighting each section. If none is found, then perhaps just the standard clapper and tv artwork is showed. (or then again, if this is a bitch to do, just the clapper and TV artwork, period, lol)
I really see this plugin as THE MUST HAVE plugin for frontrow. To tell you the truth, (and others might not like me for saying this) I would easily pay for this. Even though I love my Mac Mini as a HTPC, this just about made it better by Ten folds. And I get the feeling that all the other projects for new Media Centers software for mac might as well call it quits. Lol
I’ve even removed the FrontRow Plugins for Movie and TV Shows, simply having your Sapphire plugin in their place. Though I must admit, I did rename it to “Video” instead of “Sapphire”, opting to simply represent it by it’s icon. This way my list consist of “video, music, podcat…”. Just perfect
Yeah sorry for my huge post again, I had tried to find you email on you site, so not to flood you comment system, but had no luck, lol
-Francky
December 17th, 2007 at 5:45 am
I’m with Francky on all remarks except that I still need Front Row’s Movies plugin for playing VIDEO_TS folders on my Mac mini HTPC.
Not a big deal at all, but after playing mkv’s to the end the plugin does not bring me back to the menu.
Again, thank you very much!
December 17th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Well I simply converted all my Video_TS folders to surround MKV files, and then used a couple of tools to also add the chapters to then, so I didn’t need Video_TS anymore and gained a ton of more space
The only thing I didn’t like about MVK files was that front row couldn’t show Previews from them… but Sapphire fixed that 
A thing I did noticed though, I had enabled surround on my system (thanks to a couple of tweaks) But Sapphire actually screws it up when the surround option is on, my guess is that when you exit front row it reverts the setting back to “default”.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Francky, “Robot Chicken” was a known issue, and has been handled for the next release. VIDEO_TS should be possible with the DVD Playback framework at some point (someone with expertise on this around?).
AC3 passthrough is turned off when Sapphire is done with it because that is the developer’s suggested operation for the A52Codec. It should work while within Sapphire.
BTW, since MKV files are designed to work in a way that is completely incompatible with QuickTime’s operation, I convert all mine to .mov files (lossless conversion). Sapphire can do this for you through its join interface. See http://appletv.nanopi.net/manual/advanced/ for more info.
December 17th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Hey Graham, thats what I imagined was happening with the A52Codec, but strangely, before enabling passtthrough in the codec, AC3 files simply played in Stereo. Once Sapphire runs and reverts my setting back to “default”, instead of just stereo, I get Huge POPS and Clicks… so I’m guessing its reverting something back to a value that isn’t right. If I turn off PassThrough in Sapphire and set back all the tweak to always have surround, the problem goes away…
What is the advantage of using .mov files instead of .mkv ? As .mkv seem fine except for the “streaming thing it does for a bit. If .mp4 or .m4v supported AC3 it would be the perfect format. I can only hope Apple fixes that eventually. Does creating a .mov keep all the aspect of an .mkv file ? (Chapters, anisotropic ratio and Surround) while getting rid of the “streaming” issue ?
Thanks
December 17th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Well scratch that first comment, strangely enough, I’m was playing a file on my mac pro and the click and pops are happening, even though I never fiddle with this one to get surround ?!
When playing those file before in front row, this doesn’t happen. I always assumed Quicktime and Front Row would play a file the same way.
Tried to convert a file on the Mac pro instead of the Mac mini… 20 minutes instead of 2 hours, DAMN
I Guess I’ll be doing it this way from now on 
December 18th, 2007 at 6:03 am
> Does creating a .mov keep all the aspect of an .mkv file ? (Chapters, anisotropic ratio and Surround) while getting rid of the “streaming†issue ?
Yes. Everything that perian supports in mkv is supported by mov. It really creates a mov file in memory when importing an mkv.
Frontrow and QT don’t exactly play the same way. Just look at the perian bug reports to confirm this.
As far as converting files from mkv to mov, simply open the file, wait for the import, and hit save. It will ask you to save as a reference or self-contained. Reference movies are smaller (about 2MB), but still require the existence of the original mkv. Self-contained movies are actually slightly smaller than the mkv itself (mov is a more efficient format).