Blog moved

Because the German blog provider "blog.de" will close its service end of the year, we have now moved our blog: both nessMediaCenter as well as nessViewer have a new blog, which is now integrated into the respective web sites.

After a few days of work, we have managed to integrate the essential functionality of a blog (based on textpattern) - however comments are no longer supported.

If you want to subscribe to one of the new blogs, then click the RSS link of the new blog.

The new blog is also available at Feedburner:

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nessMediaCenter & nessViewer & Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan)

Meanwhile, we also have installed a pre-release version of Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) to check the compatibilty of our applications.

So far, we were pleased to discover only a very small problem: if a movie can not be played, then the corresponding message is not displayed correctly. What happens almost never (except an internet provider video or a video of a DLNA media server can not be played).
We have now solved this problem in another pre-release version of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer.

We also have improved the Mac App Store (MAS) pre-release version of nessMediaCenter to display an information message if the iPhoto or iTunes libraries can not be accessed because the libraries are stored e.g. on an external volume and the necessary access permissions are missing.

"Tips & Tricks" is now offering additional assistance and answers to questions that users asked us in recent times.

And we have adapted a few internet providers (e.g. DailyMotion).

In the coming days we will continue to test and then hopefully make the final versions available soon.

nessMediaCenter & nessViewer pre-release: improved iTunes Control

After the music playback of shared iTunes libraries, we now have improved the iTunes Control, among other things for larger iTunes libraries.

1.) After selecting iTunes from the media center main menu, a loading indicator (spinner) is displayed during loading and analyzing the iTunes library.
2.) In the iTunes Control, the playlists preview is generated faster and only if the playlist has been changed.
3.) For missing music covers, a standard cover is displayed so that the display on the right side is nicer and less "turbulent".
4.) The switch from iTunes Control to iTunes (level up) is now without delay.

The revised pre-release versions of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer can now be downloaded - we will continue to test and will probably make the final versions available soon.

nessMediaCenter & nessViewer pre-release: music playback of shared iTunes libraries in the media center

On Robert's request we took a look at the music playback of shared iTunes libraries by the iTunes control in the media center and have expanded a pre-relase version of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer.

For this playback, there are the following requirements:
1.) A library has been shared in iTunes on one computer (s. iTunes preferences and there "Sharing").
2.) In the shared library, there are playlists with unique names that contain only music.
3.) On another computer, the shared library has been integrated in iTunes.

The playlist names are important. "Music" as an example exists in this case (pt. 3) for example twice: the default local music playlist and the default music playlist of the shared library. The local default music playlist can be selected via the iTunes control of the media center, but not the default music playlist of the shared library (because its name is not unique and iTunes does not allow to rename the default music playlists).

Another requirement is that iTunes has loaded the shared library once after each launch - otherwise the playlists of the shared library are not available in the iTunes control.

Due to various dependencies (accessibility configuration, iTunes version etc.) we have created an external AppleScript application "iTunes Shared Lib Loader". After downloading and unzipping the file, this AppleScript application can be defined as a login item on each computer, so that after each computer startup it will automatically launch iTunes and then load the shared library.

In the ZIP file there are also screenshots for Mac OS X 10.6 and AppleScripts for iTunes 10 + 11 which must be previously saved as AppleScript application ("only executable"). We suggest to test the AppleScript before and to adapt it if necessary.

In the system preferences and there in the privacy settings (here version 10.10), the AppleScript application "iTunes Shared Lib Loader" must be allowed to control the computer (aka iTunes). Usually you will be asked the first time the AppleScript application is executed and then you can open the preferences by clicking a button.

The iTunes interface (here version 12) must look like this - the leftmost icon for selecting the shared libraries. The AppleScript application automatically selects the first shared library which is then loaded.

nessMediaCenter 1.7.1 available in the AppStore

After 27 days, the 64-bit version of nessMediaCenter is finally available in the Mac App Store (MAS).

Background of this delay was as reported a bug on an Apple web page, which was only fixed after several mails to the Apple support and Apple developers.

In addition to the movie status and faster forward, shutdown of the computer by selecting exit in the media center is now also optionally available in the AppStore version. For security reasons, an AppleScript must be manually installed  - instructions can be found now at Tips & Tricks.

nessMediaCenter & Mac App Store (MAS)

As previously reported, we uploaded the new nessMediaCenter version 1.7.1 to the "Mac App Store" (MAS) on 4. July. Fortunately, the Apple review team has reviewed this new version already on 11. July.

But unfortunately, this new version is still not available in the MAS. What happened?

After the upload, we tried to view the build details to ensure that nessMediaCenter is complete. In the past, it happened that XCode (the Apple development tool) had not uploaded all resources (eg the German user interface etc.).
These build informations are usually viewable in "iTunes Connect" (ITC), the management interface for AppStore applications. And as we had to find out, ITC is showing a completely blank web page instead of the expected build details.

So we reported this problem at 6. July to Apple. On 9. July we finally received the email that the Apple Developer Support can confirm this bug and that this bug has been reported to the Apple engineering team.

Despite repeated requests, so far nothing has changed and we can unfortunately still not check the uploaded (and reviewed by Apple) nessMediaCenter version 1.7.1. Since we think, that the risk of an incorrect version (for example the missing German user interface) is too large, our MAS customers must unfortunately be patient. And we can not tell how long this might take - an internet search showed that this bug might already exist since 24. June.

nessMediaCenter 1.7.1 & nessViewer 3.7.1 for Mac available

The new versions of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer are available since yesterday evening.

As reported earlier, the movie status is now displayed in the fullscreen presentation - of course not always and reduced to the essentials. And the playback speed can now be increased up to 64 times to get faster to a position in a longer movie.

In the 64-bit version of nessViewer, media from various applications can now be imported into a media show.

In addition, a few minor bugs has also been fixed - if you still find one, then please let us know.

The new 64-bit version of nessMediaCenter has been uploaded to the Mac App Store as well - according to our experience, the review & release by Apple will take a minimum of 10 days.