Reported: on iPad Brave a shared video's audio still stopped when backgrounded, while youtube.com
keeps playing. Root cause: routing the element's audio through createMediaElementSource pulls it out
of the normal media pipeline the browser's background-playback feature (and iOS) hooks into, and iOS
then suspends the AudioContext on background — the opposite of the goal. YouTube uses a plain media
element + Media Session and lets the browser background it. So drop the Web Audio graph entirely and
keep only the Media Session metadata + play/pause handlers, leaving native background handling in
charge. Frontend-only.
Facebook's scraper rejected our self-hosted poster as "Corrupted Image": the poster is an
ffmpeg-produced JPEG (non-standard marker order) that browsers/iOS/Twitter decode fine but FB's
stricter processor won't. For a YouTube source, point og:image at the video's stable, non-expiring
`i.ytimg.com/vi/<id>/hqdefault.jpg` (a Google-encoded JPEG FB decodes reliably) built from the id in
the stored thumbnail — instead of the stored `sqp`-signed variant, which can expire. Non-YouTube
sources keep the poster fallback (fine everywhere but FB). Declares 480×360 so FB includes it on the
first async scrape. og.py only — no schema change.
A mirrored Shows library whose items have no genres stored `genres` as JSON
`null` — SQLAlchemy's JSONB persists a Python None as a JSON scalar, not SQL
NULL. /facets unnested it with jsonb_array_elements_text(), which raises
"cannot extract elements from a scalar", so a single bare library 500'd the
whole Plex module on open (the grid loads, the filter sidebar's facets call dies).
- Guard the /facets genre unnest with jsonb_typeof(genres)='array', mirroring
the guard people.py already applies to the same columns.
- Persist the JSONB tag columns (genres/directors/cast_names/collection_keys on
plex_items and plex_shows) with none_as_null=True, so an empty list round-trips
as SQL NULL and self-heals on the next sync — closing the trap for any future
unnest.
Verified against the real prod row (DumaTV show, genres = JSON null): the
unguarded query errors, the guarded one returns cleanly.
Internal-only epic (gates, tests, compiler strictness); no user-facing change, so
the release note is chores-only. Bundles: the siftlode check/publish gate
(tsc/eslint/prettier/knip/vitest/pytest) with a hard pre-publish gate + e2e
freshness guard, ESLint flat config + one-time Prettier pass, the backend pytest
harness (isolated test image), frontend vitest growth, the e2e scroll-restore fix,
and noUncheckedIndexedAccess (+ the zero-fallout compiler flags).
Cuts the release for the unshipped stack since 0.44.0: E3 feed view modes, the
Platform refactor (S1–S6b, internal), and the Plex cast-explore epic. VERSION
0.44.0 -> 0.45.0; user-facing releaseNotes entry.
Auth security round: SB3 (email tokens out of URL query → fragment), SA4 (server-side
session revocation + 'Log out other sessions'), SA3 (trusted-proxy X-Forwarded-For so
rate limits can't be bypassed via a forged header).
User-tested on prod: the flash fires (fullscreen → back to small) but the source
stays 360p — YouTube doesn't switch quality within the flash window and we can't set
it via the (dead) API, so the unlock has no effect. Give up on forcing windowed HD.
Restore PlayerModal to its 0.36.2 state (native-menu-yield + scroll-anywhere volume
kept). Also prune the failed HD-quality attempts from the release notes (the flash
and the transform-revert notes, plus the hollow 'higher quality' claim in 0.36.0) so
there's no user-facing trace of an effort that yielded nothing.
Completes the two-way Plex ↔ Siftlode watch-state sync: Phase B (Siftlode→Plex push, immediate)
and Phase C (incremental history/on-deck pull + daily full reconcile incl. un-watch). Also the
auto-advance watched-mark id-race fix.
Shared links didn't unfurl in Messenger: robots.txt disallowed /watch/ for ALL
user-agents, so facebookexternalhit honoured it and got a blocked (403) fetch —
the OG tags were correct but never read. Add an allow group for the link-preview
bots (facebookexternalhit, Twitterbot, Discordbot, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram,
LinkedIn, …) so they can fetch share pages; the wildcard still keeps /watch/ out
of search indexes. Release v0.32.1.
A download whose source title exceeded 255 chars (e.g. a recipe baked into a
Facebook video's title) failed with a StringDataRightTruncation: the worker
auto-fills an empty display_name from the title, which overflows the 255-char
column. Clip the title to 255 at every point it flows into display_name (worker
completion paths + enqueue); the full title is untouched on the asset. Pre-existing
latent bug, surfaced by an unusually long title.
Release v0.31.1.
Personal ordered lists of Plex items, kept in Siftlode's own DB (works for users
without a Plex account, like watch-state) — the "your own lists" counterpart to
shared collections. Plex-direction sync is a later phase (plex_rating_key
reserved).
Backend: migration 0048 (plex_playlists + plex_playlist_items with position),
PlexPlaylist/PlexPlaylistItem models, and per-user CRUD endpoints under
/api/plex/playlists (list [+?contains for the add dialog], create [seeded],
detail [ordered cards], rename, delete, add/remove item, reorder). _leaf_card
handles the movie/episode mix. Frontend: "Add to playlist" dialog from the movie
info page (all users), a Playlists section in PlexSidebar (list + create),
PlexPlaylistView (reorder up/down, remove, rename, delete, Play all), and
PlexPlayer gained an optional `queue` so play-through follows the list order
(prev/next + auto-advance). i18n en/hu/de. Verified end-to-end on localdev
(backend CRUD + the create→add→view→play-through UI flow).
Admins can curate Plex collections from a movie's info page ("Collections"
button → PlexCollectionEditor dialog): create a collection (seeded with the
movie), add/remove the movie to/from editable collections, delete a collection,
and "take over" an existing plain Plex collection (mark it editable). All writes
go to Plex (POST/PUT/DELETE via new PlexClient methods) and are reflected on
every client; a targeted single-collection re-sync (sync.resync_collection /
delete_collection_local) updates the local mirror without the full ~4-min sync.
Gating (per the design decisions): editing is ADMIN-ONLY (collections are shared
library-wide); only plain manual collections are editable — smart + external
auto-lists (IMDb/TMDb/…) are always read-only (can_edit = editable && !smart &&
source=="collection"). New admin endpoints under /api/plex/collections
(create/items add+remove/rename/delete/editable). Verified end-to-end incl. the
live Plex write API (create/add/rename/remove/delete all 200, self-cleaned) and
the editor UI (create + delete with confirm) on localdev.
Selecting a subtitle restarted the HLS session with `-map 0:s:{ord}`, assuming an
EMBEDDED stream. Films whose subs are external sidecar .srt files (Plex reports
them, but they aren't in the mkv) matched no stream; the master-playlist's
declared subtitle group then made ffmpeg fail → "Playback couldn't start".
Subtitles now go through a new GET /api/plex/subtitle/{rk}/{ord} → text/vtt
(external subs fetched from Plex via the stream key + SRT→VTT; embedded text subs
extracted with ffmpeg; image subs → 415), served as native <video><track> that
the browser overlays. So choosing/switching a subtitle is instant with NO session
restart, and stream.py drops all subtitle muxing (`-sn`, no master playlist).
Image-based subs (PGS/VobSub) are marked text=false and hidden in the picker.
Verified on prod's Nymphomaniac Vol. II: HU sidecar → 1693 WebVTT cues, no crash.
Posters/art were proxied at full resolution (many 1-7MB, some 9.5MB) into ≤176px
grid/info cells — heavy to fetch + decode, so fast scrolling lagged 1-2s even
with a warm cache (the cache removed the Plex round-trip, not the image weight).
Now PlexClient.image_bytes optionally hits Plex's /photo/:/transcode to resize
server-side; the /image endpoint requests thumb=400x600, art=1280x720 and keys
the cache by width (old full-size files orphaned, re-cached small). Measured:
a poster 5.5MB->50KB, art 8.1MB->137KB, at 400x600 (crisp on 2x DPR). Grid
scroll is near-instant and the disk cache shrinks ~8x.
A collections page fires 100+ concurrent poster requests. Both image proxies
(/image and /person-image) authenticated via current_user + Depends(get_db),
holding a pooled DB connection for the whole request — including the slow Plex/
CDN fetch. Under the burst, the 15-connection pool was exhausted → QueuePool
checkout timeouts → 502s → slow, partially-loaded grids on prod.
Fix: authenticate these two high-fan-out endpoints with a signed-session check
(no DB user-load), serve disk-cache hits with zero DB access, and on a cold miss
open a short session only to resolve the image key + Plex config, releasing it
BEFORE the fetch (image_bytes uses no DB). Also raise the pool (20 + 30 overflow)
as headroom above the sync-endpoint threadpool.
peter
peter