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May end of Month update
🕑 Added 2023-06-01 07:18:50 +0000 UTCNext image update
The Beta for May made it out on the Discord, and is in testing. I'll be pushing to release in the first to second week of June based on feedback. If you're new to the Patreon we release betas via Discord towards the end of the month with the goal of releasing at the end of the month or the beginning. Due to some vacations and giving it a bit of extra time, we'll be a bit later (1 week) than normal this month, but we will work to get back on track.
Video stability update
The biggest item we've spent the last two weeks or so on is tracking down an issue with video stability. We've reproduced the issues as far back as September, and are making good progress in not only figuring out the cause, but fixing other issues along the way. These other issues revealed a few other memory bugs which were slowing the frame down over time and affecting responsiveness. We started out by stripping layer after layer off to try to find the cause, then reversed course and built a new basic app with just video functionality...and are now adding things back. The good news is that the 'video only' test app works solid, so we know we can fix the problem. It's just taking work and time. I'm excited because it's forced us to analyze everything we do when playing videos so tightly that when we come out of this, we'll have a very performant and stable engine. Our goal is always to get to (and stay at) 100% reliability so that you can run this for months at a time.
Overlay and 'first run' flows
I had a great walkthrough with a Patron today that was new to Raspberry pi, and as they setup each step I was able to document issues and findings. This feedback will go into documentation and into some bug fixes in June to help with a number of bugs including blocking the ability of to upload a file to 'no folder' in the upload dialog. Also there are a number of potential crashes when using 'legacy' overlays, and once these hit Dynaframe ends up not being able to start...so that will get fixed ASAP when I'm back (the main way out of that is to reimage unless you're comfortable editing the appsettings.json...but that's not something that anyone should ever have to do. It'll get fixed.)
The thing I'm most excited about is we had a number of big fixes that have been requested for a while, including HEIC support and the ability to filter by filenames...coming out in the next build (and in the beta now). The other thing that I'm excited about is we're finally moving back into feature development, so some of the backlogged issues can finally start getting some traction again. June's going to be a very exciting month for Dynaframe!
One other quick note / tip
Remember that the 'experimental' tab will let you play not only youtube videos, but instagram reels and others. If you search youtube for 'living poster' you'll find some fun ones that you can put into the experimental tab:
The Jungle Book Living Poster - YouTube
MEG 2: THE TRENCH [Living poster] - YouTube
PIXELS Living Poster - YouTube (This ones my current favorite)
More to come in June!
Joe and the Dynaframe devteam
