Syncplay

Syncplay 1.3.4 RC2 has now been designated as “Final”. If you had that version then you do not need to upgrade.

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.4_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.4-Portable.zip
Linux: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.4.tar.gz

New and changed in Syncplay 1.3.4:

• ! (mpv) If mpv becomes unresponsive try to guess position for 60 seconds then give a critical error [RC2]
• ! (mpv) Prevents reset of room position when someone joins with no file
• ! Prevents file path from being sent to server (fixes bug introduced in Syncplay 1.3.2)
• * (UI) Updated German translation, e.g. for new features (contributed by DerGenaue)
• * (GUI) Improve performance of file checking feature (moved folder scanning into separate thread and added caching and 2 min auto re-check)

The ‘double click to switch media’ feature works as follows:

1. In the Syncplay configuration GUI, go to the ‘Misc’ tab and enter the directories where you store your videos into the “Directories to search for media” list. Syncplay looks through these lists recursively, so you don’t need to list sub-folders. WARNING: Because Syncplay will look through the sub-folders recursively, don’t select a directory with hundreds of sub-folders!
2. When the main Syncplay GUI window is open, if someone else is playing something which is in one of these media folders (or the folder of the currently playing file) then an icon will appear next to the filename in the list of who is playing what. If you double click the filename it will switch to that file.
3. If someone is playing a media stream (e.g. a YouTube video in mpv or VLC) then a different icon will appear in the list of who is playing what, and you can double click this to switch to that stream (assuming your media player supports that type of stream). Note: mpv works best with Syncplay for streams.

If you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl). Github users can also create an issue.

New and changed in Syncplay 1.3.3:

• + (GUI) Added “public server list” feature to config dialogue (inspired by feedback from Mike Williams)
• * (GUI) Added 2 second timeout for media search, and made it more efficient (issue reported by Adrian)
• * (GUI) Per-player arguments now only shown when “show more options” is enabled (inspired by a suggestion from wiiaboo, who also contributed code to the feature)

The 2 second timeout is not ideal, but seems like a reasonable stopgap before we add support to cache files found and to search in a separate thread (assuming the latter is possible). Thanks to everyone who has made this release possible, including Mark James who made the Silk icon set that Syncplay uses. If you enjoy this software, please tell your friends about it and consider contributing to the Syncplay art gallery.

The new(ish) ‘double click to switch media’ feature works as follows:

1. In the Syncplay configuration GUI, go to the ‘Misc’ tab and enter the directories where you store your videos into the “Directories to search for media” list. Syncplay looks through these lists recursively, so you don’t need to list sub-folders. WARNING: Because Syncplay will look through the sub-folders recursively, don’t select a directory with hundreds of sub-folders!
2. When the main Syncplay GUI window is open, if someone else is playing something which is in one of these media folders (or the folder of the currently playing file) then an icon will appear next to the filename in the list of who is playing what. If you double click the filename it will switch to that file.
3. If someone is playing a media stream (e.g. a YouTube video in mpv or VLC) then a different icon will appear in the list of who is playing what, and you can double click this to switch to that stream (assuming your media player supports that type of stream).

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.3_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.3-Portable.zip
Linux Tarball:  https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.3.tar.gz
Source code repository: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay
OSX  installation instructions (experimental): https://syncplay.pl/guide/install/#OSX

As usual, if you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue, or you could tweet us @syncplay or like us on Facebook.

New and changed in Syncplay 1.3.2:

• + (GUI) Double click to switch media feature (#65 suggested by bitingsock)
• + (Syncplay) Ability to specify per-player command-line arguments to be passed on to the media players
• * (UI) Improved Russian language support (PR #71 by BrokeRU)
• * (GUI) Change to how streams are displayed and checked for name sameness
• * (mpv/mplayer2) Ability to override arguments (PR #69 by wiiaboo)
• * (mpv) Shows YouTube-DL errors

The new ‘double click to switch media’ feature works as follows:

1. In the Syncplay configuration GUI, go to the ‘Misc’ tab and enter the directories where you store your videos into the “Directories to search for media” list. Syncplay looks through these lists recursively, so you don’t need to list sub-folders. WARNING: Because Syncplay will look through the sub-folders recursively, don’t select a directory with hundreds of sub-folders!
2. When the main Syncplay GUI window is open, if someone else is playing something which is in one of these media folders (or the folder of the currently playing file) then an icon will appear next to the filename in the list of who is playing what. If you double click the filename it will switch to that file.
3. If someone is playing a media stream (e.g. a YouTube video in mpv or VLC) then a different icon will appear in the list of who is playing what, and you can double click this to switch to that stream (assuming your media player supports that type of stream).

If you’ve already got Syncplay 1.3.2 RC1 then you don’t need to update as they are the same. Thanks for everyone who contributed to this release!

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.2_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.2-Portable.zip
Linux: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.2.tar.gz
Source code repository: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay

As usual, if you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue, or you could tweet us @syncplay or like us on Facebook.

New and changed in Syncplay 1.3.2:

• + (GUI) Double click to switch media feature (#65 suggested by bitingsock)
• * (UI) Improved Russian language support (PR #71 by BrokeRU)
• * (GUI) Change to how streams are displayed and checked for name sameness
• * (mpv/mplayer2) Ability to override arguments (PR #69 by wiiaboo)
• * (mpv) Shows YouTube-DL errors

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.2_RC1_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.2-RC1-Portable.zip
Linux: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.2-RC1.tar.gz
Source code repository: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay

As usual, if you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue, or you could tweet us @syncplay or like us on Facebook.

Syncplay 1.3.0 users can ignore this release unless they are using Syncplay with mpv on Windows.

This minor release fixes a compatibility issue with mpv 0.10.0+ on Windows. The issue was caused by mpv removing support for a command line switch which Syncplay was using. The switch was itself being used for compatibility with an earlier version of mpv, so this change may require you to update to a more recent version of mpv. Thanks to wiiaboo for so quickly making a pull request with a fix for this issue.

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.1_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.1-Portable.zip
Linux: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.1-tar.gz
Source code repository: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay

Thanks also to everyone who have helped spread the word about Syncplay, including those who have liked our Facebook page and/or followed us on Twitter.

Release Candidate 1 of Syncplay 1.3.0 is now available, and hopefully this will be come 1.3.0 Final.

(Update 2015-05-17): Syncplay 1.3.0 Final has now been released.

Windows installer: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.0_Setup.exe
Windows portable: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay-v1.3.0-Portable.zip
Linux: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay/archive/1.3.0-tar.gz
Source code repository: https://github.com/Syncplay/syncplay

Syncplay 1.3.0 comes with many new features, tweaks and  bug fixes, including:

• Improved support for MPC-HC, VLC, mpv and mplayer2 (and for Unicode).
• ‘Managed rooms’ to make it easy for large parties to watch together as only authorised people are allowed to pause, play and seek.
• ‘Readiness indicator’ feature so you know when everyone is ready to watch a video.
• German and Russian language support, thanks to DerGenaue, nilsding and BrokeRU.

For details about what is in this version, please see the changelog. Also check out our plans for the future.

As usual, if you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue. Those who do social media can tweet @syncplay and like us on Facebook.

The third beta brings improved VLC support (thanks Darkman802) and more options on how Syncplay should handle unpause events. If in the main Syncplay GUI menu bar you select ‘Window’ -> ‘Show auto-play button’ then you can also enable the ‘auto-play when everyone is ready’ feature. The ‘a’ part of the release tries to fix some minor issues with VLC seeking unnecessarily.

New beta Windows installer available from: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.0_Beta_Setup_[2015_04_21].exe
(If you are using the Git version of Syncplay, just update to Git HEAD)

Portable Windows executable version available from: https://syncplay.pl/syncplay-1.3.0-beta-portable-2015-04-21.zip

If any OSX Python developers can get the menu bar to show up in OSX then please make a pull request of the necessary changes.

As usual, if you are having problems or want to give feedback then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue, or you could tweet us @syncplay.

In addition to managed rooms (the new name for ‘controlled rooms’), the second beta includes a major new feature that allows for viewers to indicate that they are ready to watch. Please let us know what you think by e-mailing dev@syncplay.pl

To accommodate this change, the interface has also been re-worked. Check out the “Window” menu item if you want to bring playback controls back into the main window.

New beta Windows installer available from: https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.0_Beta_Setup_[2015_01_25].exe
Portable Windows version is available from: https://syncplay.pl/syncplay-v1.3.0-beta2-portable.zip
(If you are using the Git version of Syncplay, just update to Git HEAD)

Note (2015-01-25): The public servers will not be updated to support 1.3.0 until tomorrow, so you’ll need to run your own server to try out these features.

Minor changes:

• Some VLC bugfixes
• Allows for longer offsets (to support chapter offsets with VLC)
• Changes default program to run syncplay (python to python2) in *nix
• Adds “load media stream URL” menu item to main GUI.

Syncplay 1.3.0 has support for Controlled Rooms, includes translations into Russian and German, has better support for mpv, VLC and *BSD, and various GUI improvements.

Controlled rooms allows you to create ‘rooms’ where only those with the right password can seek, pause and unpause. See https://syncplay.pl/guide/client/#advanced for more details.

See https://syncplay.pl/changelog/ for the full list of changes. Thanks to all who contributed (inc. BrokeRU, DerGenaue  and nilsding for their translations and nilsding again for initial *BSD support)!

Want to test it out? Linux/OSX/*BSD users should simply use the git HEAD. For those wanting a Windows installer, you can get it from https://syncplay.pl/Syncplay_1.3.0_Beta_Setup_[2014-12-06].exe (Note: URL will change as new if new beta is released).

If you are having problems or want to give feedback (or indeed ask to help Syncplay support more languages) then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net). Github users can also create an issue, or you could tweet us @syncplay.

The next version of the beta should also have the ‘Are you ready?’ feature.

p.s. There are two known bugs with Syncplay 1.3.0 on OSX. One is that menu bars don’t show up (so you can only create a controlled room in –no-gui mode) and the other is that there are problems opening files by dragging it into Syncplay. If you’re an OSX developer feel free to fix it and give us a pull request”

Syncplay 1.2.9a is available from https://github.com/Uriziel/syncplay/releases/tag/1.2.9a

It is the same as 1.2.9, but addresses some compatibility issues with more recent versions of mpv and fixes the label of the pause button.

Highlights of Syncplay 1.2.9:

• Improvements config window with greater access to control Syncplay functionality (e.g. OSD messages and rewind/slowdown thresholds).
• Loads of fixes and tweaks, to make Syncplay run better, especially for VLC users.
• VLC and mpv stay open after all files have finished playing, so so you do not have to re-open the player. (This was already the case for MPC-HC)
•  If a user pauses while the leave message is displayed, it now states both that someone left and that someone paused. (Really useful if someone has “Pause when user leaves” enabled!)

See https://syncplay.pl/changelog/ for the full list of changes. Thanks to all who contributed!

There are new OSX instructions thanks to patricksnape . If you are having problems then please e-mail us (dev@syncplay.pl) or chat with us on IRC (#syncplay on chat.freenode.net