GridStream Player 5.3

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GridStream Player 5.3

Postby Gridfan » Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:00 pm

GridStream Player™ is a custom player created for the purpose of easily tuning in to GridStream Productions™ Internet Radio. It is very minimalistic, simple to use (hopefully), and has several GridStream specific features that can enhance your enjoyment of tuning in. It is basically just a moveable loudness/VU meter.

Installation is simple, just go to the player.gridstream.org page, click the download link. Then just run the player. By default the player will inform you of any future updates, in addition this thread will also be updated with details about new updates of the player when available.

Requirements
  • Windows 6.x (Vista, 2008, Windows 7, 2008R2, Windows 8, 2012, Windows 10) or compatible. Windows 7 or later recommended.
  • DirectX 9+ compatible sound and graphics.
  • Internet connection (broadband advised).
  • 4MB+ available RAM (actual memory use depends on what features are used, skin, and OS version and components).
  • x86 CPU 100Mhz+ (or x64 CPU and OS with 32bit support) or better CPU. ~2MB or more available disk space.
  • Speakers/Headphones if you want to hear music, plus a sense of humor!
Features
  • Multitasking friendly, minimalistic, multi-monitor support, optimized for low CPU/resource/memory use.
  • Roaming profile compliant, Vista/7/8/10 admin or standard user compliant.
  • Should be able to take advantage of multi-core CPU's depending on the OS, several features of the player have their own threads.
  • All player windows have desktop clipping, moving them outside the screen will snap them to the edge when let go again.
  • Preferences window allowing you to customize several features of the player.
  • Automatic station info updating, ensure station info is up to date, periodic checks.
  • If player/vumeter is minimized then the vumeter is put in a reduced performance mode to conserve CPU cycles.
  • Stats window with details like days/hrs since the player was started and last connect/reconnect, and more. The position, size, and open state of window is remembered.
  • Info window, position, size, and open state are remembered. Song history that shows playtime, and when a song was started, the duration of a song, and the Max Headroom of a song.
  • Automatically (re-)tunes to the stream. Will also retry each server (if multiple relays) several times before trying the next, if they all fail the server list is re-fetched in case the servers have been changed.
  • Version check at player start (optional), with download prompt, manual check also possible with prompt/result. DirectVersionCheck support.
  • Player menu with link to Manual, link to station website, and more.
  • Mostly asynchronous, the player can be interacted with while it is still connecting/playing.
  • Simple installation, no additional dependencies or extra files needed.
  • Live RMS measurement of stream audio, headroom stats.
  • Stream support for the new web audio standard Ogg Opus.
  • Sticky Window, Mute Volume, 32Bit audio decoding/playback, automatic volume adjustment, and much more...
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Gridfan
Gridstream Developer
 
Posts: 5193
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2002 11:39 pm
Location: Trondheim, Norway

Additional Information

Postby Gridfan » Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:01 pm

Virus/Malware Scans for v5.3:
The installer, uninstaller, player executable and the dlls it makes use of (4 of them) are all checked and are clean. Below is a list of the check done by VirusTotal, some of the files have false positives but are clean.

The player is written using a programming language, and unsurprisingly malicious software are also written using a programming language, as is your anti-virus scanner and Operating System as well. Anti-virus and anti-malware software uses "signatures" or looks at parts of the executable (profiling) and will sometimes assume something nasty is there despite there not being anything, or something might be missing that they expected to always be there.

To use an analogy, just because the letter "d" is in the word "dangerous" does not mean that all words with the letter "d" is also the same word as "dangerous". Many virus scanners use heuristics to try and detect so far new or unknown viruses, unfortunately they guess wrong at times and we get false positives. Some antivirus tools even flag compressed files as suspicious.

The suggested way to handle a false positive is to notify those that make the anti-virus software, this might be possible in the software itself or a via a form on their website where you can submit a executable that need to be looked at closer. After they have done a re-evaluation of it they will (normally) update the signature database and the false positive should go away.

Courtesy of VirusTotal.com
User avatar
Gridfan
Gridstream Developer
 
Posts: 5193
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2002 11:39 pm
Location: Trondheim, Norway

GridStream Player v5.3 release

Postby Gridfan » Mon Feb 25, 2019 12:01 am

Unless there are issues that need fixing this will be the final release of the player.

v5.3 2019-02-24 Bifröst Edition
  • Recording (stream dumping) removed, there was several bugs that had snuck in recently, and it did not handle stream re-connects properly either. See GSP FAQ on the forums for alternatives.
  • Startmenu tile icon for Windows 8/8.1/10 has been added.
  • Player stats for uptime, FPS, system timer resolution removed. Stats window is also shorter now, and have been made less wide.
  • Settings from old versions will be deleted and new defaults will be used, new settings uses JSON and this should in theory be the last time the settings format will ever need a full reset.
  • Showname and info/location should now update properly, also improved the way the info is retrieved from the server.
  • When available the album name is shown in the Info window for the current title.
  • Song artist and title failed to show in program title for the first song, this should now be working as intended.
  • The GridStream Webplayer lets you choose stream/codec, it's only fair that GridStream Player should also have this feature. New stream cycle button added to Prefs window.
  • Downloading the installer via the built in dowloader will force the file name of the installer, ignoring accidental clicks in the file requester that can cause the wrong file to be overwritten. Now only the file path will be used.
  • Old popup menu replaced fully with the tray icon popup menu, removed no longer used artwork from installer.
  • Popup menu options have been expanded. Info, Stats, Prefs windows can now be opened from the tray icon menu.
  • Improved the way the player fetches info and connects the first time, it should now connect faster.
  • Sometimes settings would be saved if they had not been changed, now they should only be saved if changed, this avoids wasteful disk writes.
  • Changed the default of Preset1 to be 100% and Preset2 to be 50%.
  • Current Auto volume now set to 0dB instead of -12dB when starting the player.
  • Changed the Auto volume to use only previous track for volume calculation and only at the end of/start of a track, code wastly simplified, this should also eliminate the "inexplicable volume reduction" bug, no clue which gremlin caused that, but I'm keeping my eyes open just in case.
  • Removed "detailed info" option from prefs, moved these details from Info window to debug window.
  • Tweaked the way the show name is fetched and displayed, and when it is displayed.
  • Fetching the pre-cached song history and transitioning to the local caching could cause the duration to be really messed up on the most recent track, rewrote the duration handling and improved universal time support.
  • If for some reason tray icons can't be loaded a error is shown and the tray icon is disabled.
  • The version check code in v5.2 was broken, by mistake incomplete v5.3 alpha code was compiled into the v5.2 release, a memory allocation check always reported a failure instead of success. Version check code has now been properly rewritten.
  • Webserver misconfiguration prevented the new version.json check from working, this only affected v5.2 which changed data interchange format from xml to json.
  • High DPI support was kinda derpy, now each window behave properly when dragged from one monitor to another with different DPI. The blurry/fuzzy text rendering should also have been eliminated as a result of this.
  • While re-coding the UI the windows also got a small makeover, the way windows are handled have been improved as well.
  • Simplified the version numbering, from now on there will be only two numbers shown, a product version like "5.3" (version.release), the file version has changed too, it will use a datestamp build number as it's file version. The manual will only show the product version and release.
  • Opening popup menu using double click/tap has been removed, now only the menu button and right click works, on touch devices this should automatically be mapped by the OS and triggered as hold or double tap.
  • Documentation lacked info about how Alt+F4 could be used to close the active window of the player, and Alt+F4 on the VUMeter quitting the player.
  • VUMeter changed, Red is 0 dBFS to -6 dBFS, Yellow is -6 to -23, Light Green is -23 to -60, Slate Green is -60 to -100. VUMeter should also scale better now with different DPIs.
  • Made the image loading "smarter" for custom UI graphics, images are now cached in memory instead of reloaded from disk, this should make things update faster when moving windows between monitors with a diffent DPI (like the Prefs window).
  • Fixed a bug with the cycling of the list of alternate streams, the list could end up resetting instead of trying the next alternate stream.
  • The 10 sec delay between trying each entry in the alternate stream list has been removed, this is now instant, a 10 sec delay is set to the end of the entre list instead before the list is reset.
  • Support for PNG and JPG artwork similar to GridStream Webplayer, but will only show artwork for the current track. Artwork is only downloaded while the Info window is open, option added to toggle artwork downloading on or off.
  • Revamped the Info window to display stuff like show name and location, and artwork, also changed the way history is shown.
  • Get Artwork opion added to preferences, defaults to enabled.
  • The last song in the history did not show duration, with the improved streaminfo this is now possible.
  • Device migration should now be supported so that the player does not freeze when headphones are unplugged and speakers are activated (not tested).
  • URLs are no longer hardcoded in the executable, player.json now provide the "hardcoded" urls and these can now be edited without recompiling the executable.
  • All versions of the player older than 5.3 should be considered deprecated and are no longer supported, older players will most likely fail to work with the GridStream servers.
  • Removed workaround for old 16bit audio drivers, this may cause the player to fail to run with some older device drivers. Got rid of a lot of old code tied to this.
  • The play/pause media button on a keyboard can be used to mute and unmute the player if a player window is currently active.
  • Global play/pause hotkey option added in prefs, if enabled then the play/pause media button on a keyboard can be used from within games to mute and unmute the player even if the player is not the currently active window. This would allow using the player as a in-game radio in AO/SWL/GTA V.
  • Merged the three preset buttons in the program taskbar thumbnail into one, this allows cycling through the presets and also shows the currently set preset.
  • The progress bar and text in the downloader window is now only updated each 500ms instead of continuously while downloading.
  • Version update check and station info now support fallback urls.
User avatar
Gridfan
Gridstream Developer
 
Posts: 5193
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2002 11:39 pm
Location: Trondheim, Norway


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