Some fixes for version 0.8 are now available

Version 0.8.0.2 is now available for download. This release is fixing issues with regard to the corruption of the media library when the media server and MShare attempt to modify it simultaneously, as well as a few other minor issues. We also extended the URL sharing feature to include sharing of MP3 streams and of HTTP URLs of M3U or PLS files. This means that for example radio stations from shoutcast can be added by sharing the URL copied from the shoutcast website using any web browser. There is no need anymore to save these URLs as files and then MShare the files, moreover the URL will appear under the “My Online Audio” entry with a title of your choice and will not be mixed with your playlists.

A few words about running MShare, MShare can still output an error message if invoked while the media server is refreshing the library. This is because only one of them can modify the library at a time. This failure however is temporary and no longer results in corruption of the media library, i.e. it is safe now to do it. Once the media server is done with the refresh, MShare will be successful. The error message that MShare displays has been revised to reflect that. Please also note that each time the media server is started it does a refresh of the media library (i.e. it is synchronizing the library with the content of the shared folders), and therefore at that time MShare is very likely to fail. Feel free to stop the media server when you need to share something right away, then run MShare and start the media server (even before MShare is done). Please also be advised that while MShare is running, the media server will occasionally fail to acces the media library, this is because from time to time MShare is committing the changes to the library, during which time the media server cannot read from the library. Those occasional failures may result in an error message on your media hub, however they will disappear once MShare is done. OK, now that we said it all we must add that it is not as bad as it sounds :), just try it, it is safe.

Before we finish, we want to encourage users to share URLs of new and interesting content. In order to facilitate that we started a new forum called “Share your online content URLs”. Users that have found some nice URLs should post them there so that others can enjoy them as well. In order to make it easy for users to try these URLs we ask that each post will include a short description of the content covering things like the topic, website, language, bitrate, etc. and then a line per each URL which is the same command line one needs to use in order to MShare the URL. This way users can copy this line and save it in a text file with a “.bat” extension and then simply run this file. Each user should have such a file (or files) for online content, so that they can easily restore their URLs in case they reset the media library or reinstall the server. Here is an example of what a message posted to this fourm should look like:

The US WB channel has the pilot of its new series the Supernatural (english) available for watching on Yahoo (http://tv.yahoo.com/feature/supernatural.html). You can add it to your TVersity content by running the following command:
MShare -T “Supernatural Pilot” -V “mms://wmcontent43.bcst.yahoo.com/b02r01/005/yahooinc/7/17987379.wmv?StreamID=17987379&ht;=30&pl_auth=6369e2e33d074a6ae98297cfb8030396&sg;_id=50273&b=4csm33d1cu6od431e4a37&RegID;=49169317097804260&ru=Windows-Media-Player”