docs(release): the last three PRs — FFmpeg 9, the Arch soname trap, and the Linux buffer ceiling that was defeating A/V sync

2026-08-08 02:43:46 +02:00
parent 353091270d
commit fa2bcd9dbb
2 changed files with 39 additions and 3 deletions
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ Most people need to do nothing. Check this list if any of it applies to you.
 - **HDR and 10-bit streams left half the encoder idle.** A rule written from one old measurement disabled split-frame encoding for every 10-bit stream, capping high-refresh HDR at around 130 fps and making fast motion look wrong. Re-measured across two generations of NVIDIA cards, splitting won every test. Update the host.
 - **Your settings could silently reset to defaults.** A settings file saved from PowerShell carries an invisible marker that made the app quietly start over — and any other damaged settings, saved-hosts or profiles file did the same without a word. Both now load correctly, or say exactly what is wrong.
 - **The microphone works again on iPhone, iPad and Mac.** The clients had stopped sending any microphone audio at all — recorded but never reaching the stream, silently and with no error. Separately, game audio on Apple devices clicked and crackled on Wi-Fi that delivers packets in bursts, where every other client sounded clean on the same host. Update the client.
- **Sound is now placed against the picture instead of wherever buffering left it.** Hosts have always marked audio with the moment it was captured, and no app had ever read that mark — so lip-sync was an accident of how deep the audio buffer happened to sit, and it got *worse* as the picture got faster, because a quicker decoder shortens the video side and leaves sound exactly where it was. That is why shaving milliseconds off the audio path had never helped. Every app now measures the gap and steers the buffer to close it — but never so far that sound starts breaking up: on a jittery connection it keeps the buffer and leaves a small gap rather than take the dropout. Hosts also release audio at an even pace instead of in bursts, which mattered most on virtual machines. Update both sides.
+- **Sound is now placed against the picture instead of wherever buffering left it.** Hosts have always marked audio with the moment it was captured, and no app had ever read that mark — so lip-sync was an accident of how deep the audio buffer happened to sit, and it got *worse* as the picture got faster, because a quicker decoder shortens the video side and leaves sound exactly where it was. That is why shaving milliseconds off the audio path had never helped. Every app now measures the gap and steers the buffer to close it — but never so far that sound starts breaking up: on a jittery connection it keeps the buffer and leaves a small gap rather than take the dropout. Hosts also release audio at an even pace instead of in bursts, which mattered most on virtual machines. And on Linux the app was handing the sound system up to 170 ms of audio every cycle — filling the buffer's ceiling rather than what the system had actually asked for — which by itself put sound about a quarter-second behind and then blocked the new sync from draining it, because doing so would have risked breaking up. That is fixed, and it is what the first on-glass run of this work turned up. Update both sides.
 - **The host stopped pushing your whole desktop mix through Steam's voice channel** on PCs with Steam installed, where a mono or low-rate setting squeezed the entire game mix before encoding. Update the host.
 - **A host on a network that carries smaller packets than usual no longer streams a permanent black screen** — connected, every gauge green, and nothing on screen, with nothing in either log. The host now measures what the path really carries and warns with the actual diagnosis. Update the host; this works with every client already out there.
 - **Host discovery no longer goes permanently deaf.** A host missed on first launch is found without restarting the app — the usual trigger being the phone's local-network permission prompt, which the browse never recovered from — and every client now has a Refresh or Rescan control that really re-scans. Update the client.
@@ -66,7 +66,8 @@ Most people need to do nothing. Check this list if any of it applies to you.
 - **Streaming a desktop no longer shows a second, frozen cursor** sitting under the one you are moving. Linux and macOS.
 - **Automatic bitrate stops overshooting what your device can actually decode**, and a momentary stall no longer pins your stream at a low bitrate for minutes afterwards. Recovering from a brief freeze also stops making things worse. Update both sides.
 - **A leftover folder from an uninstalled Sunshine or Apollo is no longer treated as a conflict**, and a host that crashed mid-session gives your screen back the next time it starts.
- **Add-ons that read a launcher's database returned zero games on every Linux host**, indistinguishable from an empty library. Update the add-on.
+- **A routine system update can no longer brick the host on Arch and CachyOS.** FFmpeg 9 renamed every one of its libraries, and because the package asked only for "FFmpeg" rather than the versions it was built against, an ordinary update walked the host onto libraries it could not load — so it failed to start at all, before it could log anything, and retried forever. The package now states what it actually needs, so the update is refused rather than silently breaking your host, and it is built against FFmpeg 9. Update the host.
+- **Add-ons that read a launcher's database returned zero games on every Linux host**, indistinguishable from an empty library. On Windows, an add-on listing a launcher's registry entries got nothing back for the same silent reason. Update the add-on.
 - **Motion controls were wrong end to end, and are now measured against a real controller.** A pad presented to games as a DualShock 4 reported gyro forty times too fast; Apple clients sent acceleration upside-down and rotation on the wrong axes, so a turn arrived as a roll; a PlayStation pad on Android reported about 30% short. A controller that stopped sending motion — app backgrounded, pad swapped — also left the virtual pad spinning forever, and one that had never sent any claimed to be in free fall, which some games read as a wild tilt. See the note above about sensitivity. Update both sides; they are independent.
 - **A Bluetooth controller's gyro now reaches the host from an Android phone.** Previously only a PlayStation pad plugged in by USB had working motion there — a DualSense, DualShock 4, Switch Pro or 8BitDo on Bluetooth had buttons and sticks but a silently dead sensor. Android 12 and newer. And when your controller has a gyro but the session's virtual pad has nowhere to put it, the client now says so on screen and names the setting that fixes it.
 - **The game library works on any host address on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.** It only ever loaded on a home network: over Tailscale, WireGuard, or to a host with a public address, the library came up empty or errored — while streaming to that very same address worked perfectly, which is what made it so confusing. Cover art is also cached on disk now instead of being re-fetched every time. Update the client; the host is unchanged.