QUI for MPlayer / News: Recent posts

I've uploaded a Python distutils package to the files section so that you can get QUI in a more user-friendly manner. Instructions to install are in the README file in the tar file.

Do keep in mind that I still consider this a beta. I've been using it for a few months now so it works pretty well, but in that time it has changed a lot so there are probably plenty of bugs that were introduced. Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I didn't include MP3 tag editing in this new version (there are almost certainly better applications for that than QUI was) so there's almost no chance of it irreparably damaging anything but itself. :-)

Has Portal been out for too long for that title to still be relevant? Oh well, it fits this post so I'm using it anyway.

I've finally started on a QT 4 port of QUI for MPlayer because the QT 3 version no longer runs on my Gentoo system, and since I still haven't found a frontend that I like better for general multimedia playing than my own (shocking, I know) I need an updated version. Because the old code was...charitably...awful, and it was not clear to me how difficult it would be to do a straight port to QT 4, I'm doing the thing I've criticized the KDE people for and starting from scratch. Not only that, but I'm moving to Python so I'm pretty much throwing out all of the old code.... read more

I've checked in the latest source to my subversion repository for QUI. You should be able to check it out and presumably build it too. I make no guarantees as to that last part though since I haven't tested it. Also, do note that this is the QMake based project so there's no configure script, and thus it may not be very portable. It includes the KDevelop project file as well so you can probably use that too, if other methods fail. This should allow people to get updates before I make an actual release, since creating a release is a somewhat time consuming process and committing changes to subversion is very quick and easy, so I'm not very likely to make releases as often as I commit things to subversion.... read more

It hasn't quite been Debian-scale time since the last time there was a release, but it's been quite a while. In that time I have actually gotten a fair amount done, although not as much as I probably could have. I'm just about to a point now where everything is cleaned up enough for a release (development again). Not all of the features may be fully functional, particularly ID3 tag editing for MP3's. Although the parts will be there they won't do anything. Anyway, once the release is made there should be more details on what has changed. Look for it hopefully sometime this weekend.

I've realized that these news releases are rather redundant. Pretty much all of the information in them is duplicated on the main page of the site, so there's no reason to be doing them for every version that I release. Plus I keep forgetting to do them and by the time they get posted it's not news anymore:-)

In light of this, I'm going to cut back a lot on the news releases (which I'm sure will make whomever at SourceForge has to read them all happy). Check the site for the latest updates in the future. Also, I will try to mention releases in the Version History so if you're wondering you can also look there.... read more

Yep, that's right, a mere one month after the last release another one is available. Unfortunately not much was changed in the process because I've been fighting with an MPlayer bug and getting everything setup under Gentoo, but another fullscreen bug was fixed and QUI works correctly with MPlayer 1.0pre6 again (video file detection was broken because of a change in the MPlayer output).

Note that there is no RPM available as yet for this version. I'll work on getting one made, but it makes no sense to do it under Gentoo so I have to figure out an easy way to do it under one of my Mandrake installations.... read more

It's official, the long drought in QUI development has ended. This version is probably pushing the definition of a stable release a bit since I made significant changes, but some of those changes were important enough that it needed to be released into the stable branch.

Specifically, fullscreen play should behave more correctly now, in particular when switching from fullscreen video to audio files. Also, I've closed a bug that was about a year old by including support for lsdvd (if installed) to get accurate lengths for DVD's. The other more minor change is that the buttons now automask correctly, so when using a KDE/QT theme where the buttons are not perfectly square they don't have black boxes around them. This will make background images look nicer (see the README for information on using a background image).... read more

I'm going to change how I organize releases. In the future, if I ever do get around to making another release, the development versions will still get their own new package, but all stable releases will go into the qui4mplayer-stable package, so if you want to monitor for stable releases you can. I noticed before that a few people were looking for notifications of releases, but when I changed packages all the time that got messed up. This new way should take care of that.

It's up for download now, but I haven't updated the entire site or the bug list. Will try to do that tonight.

1.4 is completely ready for packaging as soon as I have an hour or so to do that and update the site and everything. Unfortunately I have the semester from Hell right now so I haven't had much time to do that.

Anyway, part of the reason it wasn't released a long time ago is that there were some fairly major bugs I found in it that really needed to be fixed and they all are now. If you've been running into any of them check the Bugs page for their status. Most are fixed already, but not closed because they haven't made it into a stable release.... read more

After one of the longer layoffs in releases for QUI, I've finally made 1.31b available. It mostly fixes the rather large bug in fullscreen play that could at times cause X to lock up. That's obviously not a good thing.

On a more general note, part of the reason that development has slowed down a little is that pretty much all of the features that I really want are now included. There are a few more little things, but most of them I don't use much myself so they're just extras that I think would be nice.... read more

The first development version for 1.4 has been released. It fixes a couple of bugs that popped up in 1.21 and also adds an options dialog so there is no longer any need to edit defaults.conf manually. This should make QUI a lot more userfriendly.

Since this is a fairly major improvement, I'm probably going to try to make another stable version including it available soon. There may be some other changes that I make between now and then too though, so I can't make any predictions.

Once again I managed to forget to post this when it happened, but about 4 days ago I released version 1.21 of QUI. It includes support for images on the buttons in the main window. I'm still debating whether I will add that capability to the playlist buttons because I think it could get immensely confusing without the text there. That's the only important change since 1.2, so if you don't want to use it you don't need to upgrade. Instructions for how to use images are in the README file (if they're not let me know because that means I made a huge mistake:-).... read more

This is the second officially stable version of QUI to be released. It makes some significant improvements over the original one, particularly in that it handles a wider range of formats better. In fact, it can theoretically play anything MPlayer can to some extent, though file information may not be available for all.

It also includes a number of new features that should make it more attractive to more people. It no longer has a fixed color scheme, although it's still definitely not eye candy. However, it does work (in my experience anyway) so the looks are of somewhat secondary importance to me.... read more

The first release candidate for QUI version 1.2 is available. I don't expect to wait long before releasing 1.2 as a stable version because I haven't had to do a lot of bug fixes lately. Most of the changes in the past couple of versions have been new features.

In addition, I would like to make a newer stable version than 1.0 available because the latest development releases have been significantly more stable than 1.0 ever was. So if you find any problems with this version let me know right away (or just let me know period:-).

I decided to do a 1.16b release before 1.2rc1. It includes a number of new features that I thought would make 1.2 more user friendly. See qui4mplayer.sf.net for all the details.

QUI 1.15b has now been released. See qui4mplayer.sf.net for details, but there weren't really any major changes to the functionality, and I don't really plan any before 1.2, so I'll probably have a release candidate available for that soon.

An FAQ has now been added to the site and some reorganization was done so it looks a little less messy than it had gotten. I hope you like it.

Version 1.14b has been released, and includes a few new features and fixes that should make video playing a little more convenient. There is a bug in the playlist placement that will need to be fixed for next release, but it doesn't affect usability, so it's mostly just aesthetic.

I recommend 1.14b over 1.0 now because it is actually more stable in the basic features, and the new beta features are all working pretty well now too. I'll try to get a stable version out soon so that it is obvious that 1.0 is outdated, but for the moment take my word that 1.14b is better in almost every way.

This version includes some fairly significant changes from 1.12b. It is now possible to show the QUI window when MPlayer is in fullscreen mode, and the color options in the defaults.conf file now work correctly (they were close before, but there were a few problems).

There are too many changes to mention them all here, so see the Version History on qui4mplayer.sourceforge.net for more info. Suffice it to say that I haven't been idle in the two weeks between releases.... read more

Oops, I forgot to post this to the news again. QUI 1.12b mostly includes the new feature of being able to change the color scheme for both the main and playlist windows of QUI. It's still a beta feature and I haven't tested it with any other themes so I don't know for sure how it will look for other people. I'd like to know if you have trouble or if it works for you so I know if I need to fix things.... read more

QUI 1.11b has now been released into the devel package. It includes mainly bugfixes from 1.1b, but there are a few things that were changed that are improvements. The most important of these is that 1.11b supports more file types more easily. It should now be capable of playing any file MPlayer can, at least in some capacity.

I still recommend staying with 1.0 if you're not having trouble, but I think 1.11b is stable enough that if you have even small problems with 1.0 it should be worth checking out.

QUI for MPlayer 1.1b has been released into the devel package of QUI. This fixes a lot of problems I have recently run into with KDE 3.2 and QT 3.2.3, as well as my new version of MPlayer. If you have tried 1.0 and it had strange behavior, you should check 1.1b out. Otherwise, the only difference from 1.0 is a few preliminary versions of new features that may or may not work, so if 1.0 works keep it for now. A more stable version of 1.1b should be forthcoming.

At long last, a non-beta 1.0 version is available. This one made it through all of the tests that I could come up with, so I believe it is a stable version. Naturally, this does not conclude my work on QUI, but 1.0 includes all of the features I feel are necessary for a media player, so now I can start on some of the extra things that are nice, but maybe not necessary.

From now on, I intend to start putting my beta releases in a qui4mplayer-devel package instead of the main qui4mplayer one since now there will actually be a stable version and an in-progress version.

Oooh, a Friday the thirteenth release date. Kinda spooky:-)

This is to announce the first release candidate of QUI for MPlayer. It doesn't include any new features, but does have a number of bugfixes (some of which were fairly major), and is much more thoroughly tested than previous versions were.

I've been working pretty hard squashing some minor bugs before I release rc1. The good news is that even though I've found quite a few, most of them were either not that serious, or were caused by something I did after the offending piece of code was written. I take this as a good sign because it means that I've found most of the original bugs, and there should be less of these second generation (so to speak) bugs.... read more