Hey all! This update has a couple of new things I'm excited to share as well as some fixes for bugs some of you have reported. Namely, the "blank screen" issue (more details below).
Also, the results from the poll last December are in! I'll be sharing more about this in upcoming posts but, in brief, the most requested feature was having the ability to convert files from one format to another directly within Stacher.
The Second most requested feature was a Metadata Editor to edit/embed metadata in files directly in Stacher.
You should expect those features to start making an appearance in Stacher sometime this year, but more on that in later posts.
For now, what's new in 7.1.6 →
Bookmarks
Bookmarks allow you to add "points of interest" within a media file by adding a marker on the seek track of the player.
A "Quick Bookmark" is simply a plain white marker while a "Custom Bookmark" is a color of your choosing along with an optional Title and Description that will be displayed when you hover over the bookmark.
You can even search for media that contains a bookmark with certain text by using the "bookmark:" prefix when searching in the Stacher Library.
Here is an example of adding a custom bookmark to easily find the Title Sequence in this video:
There is a lot more to Bookmarks that's covered in this feature preview post from a few weeks ago, so go check that out if you're interested in seeing more on how this feature works!
Notes
The notes tab in Stacher's Library has also been updated so that it can be toggled between Read and Edit mode. In Read mode, the note will render links as hyperlinks and timestamps as links that will seek to a certain part of the media. For example, if you write in your note:
Nasa's Moon Landing happens at 43:29
The "43:29" would be a clickable link that would allow you to quickly seek to that part of the video. This is similar to bookmarks but, instead of visual representation on the seek bar, it's descriptive in your notes tab.
"For My Eyes Only"
Sometimes you may want to import/store personal content in your Stacher Library, but you don't want it to be immediately visible with other content in your Library. You can now "lock" a media file behind a PIN to access it via the library. When you do this, the media thumbnails will be blurred within the Library.
Note that this does not encrypt your media on your hard drive in any capacity. Rather, this locks access via the Stacher Library so that personal media is accidentally made available along with other media. Your PIN is not recoverable because it's stored with one way encryption but, if you lose your pin, your media is not lost! (Assuming you know where it's located on your hard drive)
Stacher.io Homepage + Package Checksum
Although not directly bundled with 7.1.6, Stacher's official homepage has had a bit of a makeover! The main changes that may be of interest are the checksum for each build that can now be found at the bottom of the page, in the Downloads section. A checksum can help validate your downloaded installation packages to ensure they haven't been tampered with. As always, I highly recommend to download Stacher from the official https://stacher.io homepage. There are many sites out there re-hosting Stacher in some capacity, even older version of Stacher, and I cannot verify that those who are re-hosting haven't tampered with the binary in some way.
Blank Screen Issue
Some users have reported issues where, after extended use, Stacher's main window goes "blank" but appears to still be running processes as normal in the background. I have made a couple of performance improvements that should (I hope) resolve this.
In addition, I have added some "recovery" mechanisms that will allow Stacher to detect when the rendering process is not functioning as expected. When detected, Stacher will automatically attempt to recover itself from any failed state.
If anyone is still experiencing "blank screen" issues after updating to version 7.1.6+, please let me know!
Everything Else
Hotkeys were added to the Library media player
Up/Down arrows will control volume
M key will toggle mute
K will toggle play/pause
~ key will add a quick bookmark (checkout the bookmarks feature preview post for more info on this)
If you have a lot of configurations, the configuration switcher in the bottom right corner used to overflow your screen (potentially). This update will limit the size of the configuration switcher and has an added scrollbar to scroll instead.
You can mark content in your library as "age restricted" that will essentially blur thumbnails. You can toggle this on and off in the Library tab of the Settings window
An issue was fixed where some hotkeys in the media player were "stealing" focus from text inputs.
An issue was fixed where some items in Stacher and Stacher's Library were not draggable. You should be able to drag and drop items from Stacher and the Library to other applications by click and dragging the thumbnail.
Fixed an issue with generated previews continuously playing in the Card View of the Library even when you aren't hovering on the thumbnail. (Generated previews can be enabled/disabled in the Library tab of the settings window)
Library settings are now available in the Settings Search window (CTRL+P on windows/linux and COMMAND+P on macos)
The complete changelog for Stacher is always available at https://changelog.stacher.io