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DVArchive V3.2 Release Notes
Released July 12, 2006
Requirements You must have Java V1.4.2 or later installed and working.If you do not, you can go to www.javasoft.com and download the J2SE JRE version of the most current Java (don't download the JDK, J2EE or netbeans related downloads -- they are huge and don't help unless you are a Java developer).
Support All support is done via the FAQs and Forums at www.dvarchive.org.Please don't sent email -- I cannot reply/respond to individual emails.99% of all questions and problems can be resolved by looking over those resources.
Please use the FAQ and troubleshooting posts on the forum to pre-diagnose your problem before posting a question.It will almost always let you fix your problem immediatly and is considerate of everyones valuable time.
Upgrading from DVArchive V2.x Please see the notes about upgrading from V2.x at the end of CHANGELOG.txt included in the DVArchive download.
Donations In response to numerous folks asking for a way to show their appreciated for DVA, I have setup a donation PayPal account.Simply visit www.dvarchive.org. The "Donate" button is right on the main page.
DVA is and will remain free and while deeply appreciated, donations are entirely *optional* and at your discression.
Bugs Fixed since 3.1
* Update button in TV Listings should be re-enabled even when the TV listing update fails.In 3.1, it would sometimes remain disabled after a failed TV Guide update attempt.This is fixed.
* Fixed the problem where the TV listings would get corrupted by some odd changes in the provider lineups.This used to manifest itself with an error updating TV listings followed by a number (like 76, 325, etc).The only cure was to stop DVA, delete DVA_TV.xml and restart it.That has been fixed and shouldn't happen anymore.
* The TV listing (DVA_TV.xml) are now only written once after any download/update.Previously, they were being rewritten every few minutes (which was pointless, to say the least).
* The DVArchive.xml file was being written out frequently -- much more frequently than necessary.This had to do with two characteristics -- 1) DVA checked for a modified state and flushed it 20 seconds after the last modification and 2) DVA *always* thought that things had changed.#2 was not trivial -- many of the subsystems had taken a conservative view and when queried, always said they had something to save.So large chunks of the various storage subsystems were changed to track real changes.Now, after there is a real change, DVA will flush the changes to DVArchive.xml after 1 minute (that is, 1 minute after the last change, so if there is a change, 58 seconds go by and then there is another change, it's one more minute from that last change before the state is saved.DVA will always check the state of things and save it at exit so the only place you can "lose" something is if DVA is not properly shutdown (i.e. it's killed).
* On occasion, DVArchive could finish shutting down before the DVArchive.xml file was completely finished being written.In most cases, this was not a problem because DVA always writes first to a temp file and only upon completion does it rename the temp file to DVArchive.xml.However, it is still possible to result in a partially copied file and a corrupted DVArchive.xml DVArchive now waits until the DVArchive.xml file has been completely flushed before exiting.Between this and the change to minimize when DVA writes the DVArchive.xml, corrupted DVArchive.xml files should be exceedingly rare and possibly will never occur.
* In 3.x, you were able to select >1 option as the default action for shows in the "Local Guide" tab of the DVArchive Properties.This has been fixed and it properly behaves now (if you select an option, the previously selected option is unselected).
* When editing an existing "Copy Web Photo to ReplayTV" action, you could not change the DVR destination from whatever it was originally set as (All or a specific ReplayTV).This has been fixed.
* When searching TV Listings for shows, certain combination of characters could result in a silently failed search and in certain cases, hang DVA. For example, searching for *** (where * is a keyword delimiter) could cause this.This is now correctly handled (it still won't find anything, but you will get a message saying nothing matched).
* DVArchive would not always update the amount of storage available on a ReplayTV after changes occured on that device (like a newly recorded shows or shows being deleted).This is done after every significant change to a ReplayTV guide listing now and immediately reflected on the DVR Info (panel you see when clicking on a ReplayTVs name in the DVR Explorer).
* The Recalculate Time Offset feature in DVA (right click on a ReplayTV in the DVR Explorer) would occasionally not recalculate the time offset.This has been fixed.
* The Automatic Time Offset recalculation was broken.Previously, this was supposed to happen every 6 hours.Something in V3.0 broke this so it never happened at all (unless you manually recalcd).It is fixed and now correctly done after the stated number of hours (default 6, but you can change it).
* More work has been done to prevent the situation with the splitter bar on the DVA GUI that seperates the show info data (blue panel) from the show listings below it can't get into a state where you cannot see one panel or the other.This was possible before if you had resized the blue info Panel large and then later restarted DVA on a display that was smaller than the last time you ran it, leaving the splitter at the bottom of the display.
* Problems with the ability to put quotas on storage directories have been fixed.Previously, all but a small number of values for a quota on a directory resulted in that directory not allowing any new files, even if it was not even near the quota value.This is fixed.
* When viewing shows stored on another DVArchive instance, when you clicked on the show, you were not able to see how large the show was (in MB).You could for shows stored on the DVA you were using and on all ReplayTVs, but not other DVArchives.This has been fixed.NOTE: Both DVArchive instances must be running V3.2 (or later) for this fix to work.
* Fixed a minor problem when editing a the time field of a Shows properties that required you to enter seconds or it wouldn't validate.This has been fixed and you no longer need seconds (in fact, you can't put them in anyway).
* When viewing shows stored on DVArchive from the web server, you had the option to delete the show if it was stored on a ReplayTV, but not if it was stored on the DVArchive that the webserver was running on.This has been fixed and you can delete shows stored on DVArchive (assuming those shows are not in a read-only storage location or are not flagged read only).
* Under certain conditions when the DVA server was not running (either because it was set not to start or a permission or shared port error stopped it), DVA would still respond to UPnP discovery requests and send out heartbeats. This would cause other devices (mostly other DVAs) to then try to contact the originator, but as the server was not running, they could never succeed. This has been fixed and DVA will no longer send our alive or shutdown messages, either as part of startup or in response to a discovery request, unless the server is running.
* Photo folders would not show up sometimes or might occasionally appear as blank folders in the list of folders.This had to deal with how internally, new folders were added to the list.This has been fixed.
* Fixed a problem that prevented the "Move Down" button from working as expected on the Storage tab of the DVArchive Properties dialog.
* Often, when the TV Listings are updated, the list of possible dates shows on the TV Listings tab included old, obsolete dates that should have been purged and no longer have any listing date.Similarly, sometimes the selected date in the "Listing Date" dropdown would continue to show a now obsolete date after an update.This has been fixed.Any obsolete date(s) will be removed and if the previously selected Listing Date is no invalid, it will be updated to a valid one (usually, "today").If the selected date was valid before and after a listings update, then it will not be changed.
Changes and Enhancements since 3.1
* DVArchive will now work under Java V1.4.2 or later (i.e. Java 5 or Java 1.5) and should work on any future versions of Java as well (note: *should* -- you should check at the DVArchive forums (at http://www.dvarchive.org) before upgrading Java to insure there are no known problems).
* You can no longer set the style of TV listings DVA shows from the TV Properties dialog.It was redundant (there is a check box on the TV listings tab itself).
* An additional file filter has been added to the Import Photos file chooser. The new filter allows any files to be selected (vs just jpeg files).While the ReplayTV will not be able to view other formats (and if you try, your ReplayTV may crash), it will allow them to be safely stored on your ReplayTV (just not viewed).Using this filter (a drop down under the file name in the Import Photos dialog) will let you import them.
* You can set the period between automatic time offset recalculation on a per ReplayTV basis.Previously, autoamtic time offset recaulcation occured every 6 hours.You can now adjust this from 1 to 24 hours for each ReplayTV.
If you need to recalculate the time offset more frequently than every 6 hours, you should look at putting a NTP (Network Time Protocol) client on your computer (and more importantly, find out why your computers clock drifts so fast -- that is not good).
Attempts to recalcuate the time offset may not happen at exactly the time you calculate it to happen.The process for checking on updates is tied to the ReplayTV Guide listings update period (by default, every 20 minutes), so that alone can set you off by some.Also, if there are downloads in progress for that ReplayTV, the attempt to recalculate the offset will be deferred until all downloads for that ReplayTV are done (downloads could easily skew the time computations).
* The display of storage paths in the Storage tab of the DVArchive Properties dialog now has additional information about the path included in the listing.If the path is removable, mounted, has a quota, etc is there.If there is a quota, then the amount of remaining free space or amount of space the directory is OVER quota is displayed.For paths with no quota, the amount of space used in that path is displayed.Finally, the little light on the left now is indicative of whether the path can be written to or not. So for read only paths, paths marked to allow no new shows or non-existant paths, this is red.For all other paths (even unmounted removable paths), it's green.
* When a show cannot be successfully imported into DVAs local guide (after an import or a download), the error reporting has been enhanced to better explain what happened.Previously, you just received an error saying that the import failed and no more.This should help in diagnosing import/download problems a bit better.
* DVA will suspend attempts to scan the Local_Guide paths for files while a show is in the process of being imported into the Local_Guide (after a download or an import).While this wasn't fatal before, it did often result in pointless error messages appearing because one or more parts of the show hadn't finished copying at the moment paths were being refreshed.
* Support for WiRNS has been added.WiRNS systems will show up with a different type of icon and will show only options they are capable of.The WiRNS version currently in use as well as storage, if any, on the WiRNS machine will be displayed.Further, when setting up TV listings, if a WiRNS server is detected and you are turning the TV listing on, DVA will alert you that WiRNS is around and suggest you use it for listings.If you tell it you want to, it will then configure the TV listings properly to get info from WiRNS.
* CLARIFICATION: If you have multiple instances of DVArchive running and you wish to move a show from one instance to another, the only valid ways to do this are 1) to download the show from one DVA to another or 2) to Use the File->Import feature in DVA to import the show from the original DVA into the target DVA.
What is NOT supported is simply copying or moving the files from one DVA Local_Guide directory to another DVA Local_Guide directory (movement of show files within different Local_Guide directories of the *same* DVA instance have been and continue to be supported).
* To support computers with no keypads, some additional short cuts on the DVR Remote Control panel have been added.These are documented on the Shortcuts tab of the remote control, but in short, SHIFT+ENTER is equivilent to the Keypad ENTER key, SHIFT+PageUp is equivilent to the keypad + key and SHIFT+PageDown is equivilent to the keypad - key.
* The "OK" Button on the DVArchive Proprties dialog has been relabelled to "Save" to make clearer it's function.Similarly, the DVR Properties dialog also now uses "Save" instead of OK.
* To allow cut and paste operations into the DVR Remote Control panel, a "Manual Entry" field has been added to the "Keyboard" tab of the DVR Remote Control dialog.If you click on the field, then everything you type goes into that field (it is not immediatly sent to the ReplayTV, as it normally is).When you press Send, the contents of the field are sent and the keyboard then reverts to sending each key you type immediately to the ReplayTV (as things has worked in the past).The Clear button clears any current text from the field and then reverts back.This means each time you want to type (or paste) text in, you have to click on te field and as long as the field is active, all kestrokes go to it, not the ReplayTV.
* Many error/debug logging messages that previously displayed only the name of the DVR now include the IP address too.Not all messages have been updated, but the ones most common when something goes wrong on a network (machine crash, DHCP bug, etc) have been.
* DVA will respond to a UPNP Request to identify devices 1.5 seconds after it's received vs the old 8 second delay.This should make DVA discovery by XBMC work better.
* A number of items were added to attempt to let DVA more properly explain when something goes catastrophically wrong in it.While this shouldn't happen, of course, when it has in the past, often all you would see if a flash of the DVA Splash screen and then nothing.
Now, you'll at least get an error message explaining there was a failure and then cleaning update DVA properly (i.e. removing the lock file) and exiting.If you are running from a shell or command prompt, you'll also see a dump of the internal error which may be worth posting to the DVArchive.org forums for analysis (if you do that, do NOT edit it -- cut and paste the error message exactly as is from the console and explain what was happening when things failed).
Released July 12, 2006
Requirements You must have Java V1.4.2 or later installed and working.If you do not, you can go to www.javasoft.com and download the J2SE JRE version of the most current Java (don't download the JDK, J2EE or netbeans related downloads -- they are huge and don't help unless you are a Java developer).
Support All support is done via the FAQs and Forums at www.dvarchive.org.Please don't sent email -- I cannot reply/respond to individual emails.99% of all questions and problems can be resolved by looking over those resources.
Please use the FAQ and troubleshooting posts on the forum to pre-diagnose your problem before posting a question.It will almost always let you fix your problem immediatly and is considerate of everyones valuable time.
Upgrading from DVArchive V2.x Please see the notes about upgrading from V2.x at the end of CHANGELOG.txt included in the DVArchive download.
Donations In response to numerous folks asking for a way to show their appreciated for DVA, I have setup a donation PayPal account.Simply visit www.dvarchive.org. The "Donate" button is right on the main page.
DVA is and will remain free and while deeply appreciated, donations are entirely *optional* and at your discression.
Bugs Fixed since 3.1
* Update button in TV Listings should be re-enabled even when the TV listing update fails.In 3.1, it would sometimes remain disabled after a failed TV Guide update attempt.This is fixed.
* Fixed the problem where the TV listings would get corrupted by some odd changes in the provider lineups.This used to manifest itself with an error updating TV listings followed by a number (like 76, 325, etc).The only cure was to stop DVA, delete DVA_TV.xml and restart it.That has been fixed and shouldn't happen anymore.
* The TV listing (DVA_TV.xml) are now only written once after any download/update.Previously, they were being rewritten every few minutes (which was pointless, to say the least).
* The DVArchive.xml file was being written out frequently -- much more frequently than necessary.This had to do with two characteristics -- 1) DVA checked for a modified state and flushed it 20 seconds after the last modification and 2) DVA *always* thought that things had changed.#2 was not trivial -- many of the subsystems had taken a conservative view and when queried, always said they had something to save.So large chunks of the various storage subsystems were changed to track real changes.Now, after there is a real change, DVA will flush the changes to DVArchive.xml after 1 minute (that is, 1 minute after the last change, so if there is a change, 58 seconds go by and then there is another change, it's one more minute from that last change before the state is saved.DVA will always check the state of things and save it at exit so the only place you can "lose" something is if DVA is not properly shutdown (i.e. it's killed).
* On occasion, DVArchive could finish shutting down before the DVArchive.xml file was completely finished being written.In most cases, this was not a problem because DVA always writes first to a temp file and only upon completion does it rename the temp file to DVArchive.xml.However, it is still possible to result in a partially copied file and a corrupted DVArchive.xml DVArchive now waits until the DVArchive.xml file has been completely flushed before exiting.Between this and the change to minimize when DVA writes the DVArchive.xml, corrupted DVArchive.xml files should be exceedingly rare and possibly will never occur.
* In 3.x, you were able to select >1 option as the default action for shows in the "Local Guide" tab of the DVArchive Properties.This has been fixed and it properly behaves now (if you select an option, the previously selected option is unselected).
* When editing an existing "Copy Web Photo to ReplayTV" action, you could not change the DVR destination from whatever it was originally set as (All or a specific ReplayTV).This has been fixed.
* When searching TV Listings for shows, certain combination of characters could result in a silently failed search and in certain cases, hang DVA. For example, searching for *** (where * is a keyword delimiter) could cause this.This is now correctly handled (it still won't find anything, but you will get a message saying nothing matched).
* DVArchive would not always update the amount of storage available on a ReplayTV after changes occured on that device (like a newly recorded shows or shows being deleted).This is done after every significant change to a ReplayTV guide listing now and immediately reflected on the DVR Info (panel you see when clicking on a ReplayTVs name in the DVR Explorer).
* The Recalculate Time Offset feature in DVA (right click on a ReplayTV in the DVR Explorer) would occasionally not recalculate the time offset.This has been fixed.
* The Automatic Time Offset recalculation was broken.Previously, this was supposed to happen every 6 hours.Something in V3.0 broke this so it never happened at all (unless you manually recalcd).It is fixed and now correctly done after the stated number of hours (default 6, but you can change it).
* More work has been done to prevent the situation with the splitter bar on the DVA GUI that seperates the show info data (blue panel) from the show listings below it can't get into a state where you cannot see one panel or the other.This was possible before if you had resized the blue info Panel large and then later restarted DVA on a display that was smaller than the last time you ran it, leaving the splitter at the bottom of the display.
* Problems with the ability to put quotas on storage directories have been fixed.Previously, all but a small number of values for a quota on a directory resulted in that directory not allowing any new files, even if it was not even near the quota value.This is fixed.
* When viewing shows stored on another DVArchive instance, when you clicked on the show, you were not able to see how large the show was (in MB).You could for shows stored on the DVA you were using and on all ReplayTVs, but not other DVArchives.This has been fixed.NOTE: Both DVArchive instances must be running V3.2 (or later) for this fix to work.
* Fixed a minor problem when editing a the time field of a Shows properties that required you to enter seconds or it wouldn't validate.This has been fixed and you no longer need seconds (in fact, you can't put them in anyway).
* When viewing shows stored on DVArchive from the web server, you had the option to delete the show if it was stored on a ReplayTV, but not if it was stored on the DVArchive that the webserver was running on.This has been fixed and you can delete shows stored on DVArchive (assuming those shows are not in a read-only storage location or are not flagged read only).
* Under certain conditions when the DVA server was not running (either because it was set not to start or a permission or shared port error stopped it), DVA would still respond to UPnP discovery requests and send out heartbeats. This would cause other devices (mostly other DVAs) to then try to contact the originator, but as the server was not running, they could never succeed. This has been fixed and DVA will no longer send our alive or shutdown messages, either as part of startup or in response to a discovery request, unless the server is running.
* Photo folders would not show up sometimes or might occasionally appear as blank folders in the list of folders.This had to deal with how internally, new folders were added to the list.This has been fixed.
* Fixed a problem that prevented the "Move Down" button from working as expected on the Storage tab of the DVArchive Properties dialog.
* Often, when the TV Listings are updated, the list of possible dates shows on the TV Listings tab included old, obsolete dates that should have been purged and no longer have any listing date.Similarly, sometimes the selected date in the "Listing Date" dropdown would continue to show a now obsolete date after an update.This has been fixed.Any obsolete date(s) will be removed and if the previously selected Listing Date is no invalid, it will be updated to a valid one (usually, "today").If the selected date was valid before and after a listings update, then it will not be changed.
Changes and Enhancements since 3.1
* DVArchive will now work under Java V1.4.2 or later (i.e. Java 5 or Java 1.5) and should work on any future versions of Java as well (note: *should* -- you should check at the DVArchive forums (at http://www.dvarchive.org) before upgrading Java to insure there are no known problems).
* You can no longer set the style of TV listings DVA shows from the TV Properties dialog.It was redundant (there is a check box on the TV listings tab itself).
* An additional file filter has been added to the Import Photos file chooser. The new filter allows any files to be selected (vs just jpeg files).While the ReplayTV will not be able to view other formats (and if you try, your ReplayTV may crash), it will allow them to be safely stored on your ReplayTV (just not viewed).Using this filter (a drop down under the file name in the Import Photos dialog) will let you import them.
* You can set the period between automatic time offset recalculation on a per ReplayTV basis.Previously, autoamtic time offset recaulcation occured every 6 hours.You can now adjust this from 1 to 24 hours for each ReplayTV.
If you need to recalculate the time offset more frequently than every 6 hours, you should look at putting a NTP (Network Time Protocol) client on your computer (and more importantly, find out why your computers clock drifts so fast -- that is not good).
Attempts to recalcuate the time offset may not happen at exactly the time you calculate it to happen.The process for checking on updates is tied to the ReplayTV Guide listings update period (by default, every 20 minutes), so that alone can set you off by some.Also, if there are downloads in progress for that ReplayTV, the attempt to recalculate the offset will be deferred until all downloads for that ReplayTV are done (downloads could easily skew the time computations).
* The display of storage paths in the Storage tab of the DVArchive Properties dialog now has additional information about the path included in the listing.If the path is removable, mounted, has a quota, etc is there.If there is a quota, then the amount of remaining free space or amount of space the directory is OVER quota is displayed.For paths with no quota, the amount of space used in that path is displayed.Finally, the little light on the left now is indicative of whether the path can be written to or not. So for read only paths, paths marked to allow no new shows or non-existant paths, this is red.For all other paths (even unmounted removable paths), it's green.
* When a show cannot be successfully imported into DVAs local guide (after an import or a download), the error reporting has been enhanced to better explain what happened.Previously, you just received an error saying that the import failed and no more.This should help in diagnosing import/download problems a bit better.
* DVA will suspend attempts to scan the Local_Guide paths for files while a show is in the process of being imported into the Local_Guide (after a download or an import).While this wasn't fatal before, it did often result in pointless error messages appearing because one or more parts of the show hadn't finished copying at the moment paths were being refreshed.
* Support for WiRNS has been added.WiRNS systems will show up with a different type of icon and will show only options they are capable of.The WiRNS version currently in use as well as storage, if any, on the WiRNS machine will be displayed.Further, when setting up TV listings, if a WiRNS server is detected and you are turning the TV listing on, DVA will alert you that WiRNS is around and suggest you use it for listings.If you tell it you want to, it will then configure the TV listings properly to get info from WiRNS.
* CLARIFICATION: If you have multiple instances of DVArchive running and you wish to move a show from one instance to another, the only valid ways to do this are 1) to download the show from one DVA to another or 2) to Use the File->Import feature in DVA to import the show from the original DVA into the target DVA.
What is NOT supported is simply copying or moving the files from one DVA Local_Guide directory to another DVA Local_Guide directory (movement of show files within different Local_Guide directories of the *same* DVA instance have been and continue to be supported).
* To support computers with no keypads, some additional short cuts on the DVR Remote Control panel have been added.These are documented on the Shortcuts tab of the remote control, but in short, SHIFT+ENTER is equivilent to the Keypad ENTER key, SHIFT+PageUp is equivilent to the keypad + key and SHIFT+PageDown is equivilent to the keypad - key.
* The "OK" Button on the DVArchive Proprties dialog has been relabelled to "Save" to make clearer it's function.Similarly, the DVR Properties dialog also now uses "Save" instead of OK.
* To allow cut and paste operations into the DVR Remote Control panel, a "Manual Entry" field has been added to the "Keyboard" tab of the DVR Remote Control dialog.If you click on the field, then everything you type goes into that field (it is not immediatly sent to the ReplayTV, as it normally is).When you press Send, the contents of the field are sent and the keyboard then reverts to sending each key you type immediately to the ReplayTV (as things has worked in the past).The Clear button clears any current text from the field and then reverts back.This means each time you want to type (or paste) text in, you have to click on te field and as long as the field is active, all kestrokes go to it, not the ReplayTV.
* Many error/debug logging messages that previously displayed only the name of the DVR now include the IP address too.Not all messages have been updated, but the ones most common when something goes wrong on a network (machine crash, DHCP bug, etc) have been.
* DVA will respond to a UPNP Request to identify devices 1.5 seconds after it's received vs the old 8 second delay.This should make DVA discovery by XBMC work better.
* A number of items were added to attempt to let DVA more properly explain when something goes catastrophically wrong in it.While this shouldn't happen, of course, when it has in the past, often all you would see if a flash of the DVA Splash screen and then nothing.
Now, you'll at least get an error message explaining there was a failure and then cleaning update DVA properly (i.e. removing the lock file) and exiting.If you are running from a shell or command prompt, you'll also see a dump of the internal error which may be worth posting to the DVArchive.org forums for analysis (if you do that, do NOT edit it -- cut and paste the error message exactly as is from the console and explain what was happening when things failed).