nessMediaCenter & nessViewer for Mac: pre-release with movie status info & faster forward playback

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Lorne has suggested the following enhancements for the (fullscreen) movie presentation started by the media center:
1) Display of the current movie position and the current playback speed when fast forward is selected.
2.) Higher playback speed to get more quickly to a specific position in longer movies.
3.) Continuous increase of the playback speed if "right hold" is pressed longer than 3 seconds.
4.) The resume of the last playback position after reopening an already watched movie.

From point 1 we were at the beginning not so very excited because in other applications (eg QuickTime Player or EyeTV) the status info hides a part of the movie for a few seconds. And in other media centers, the status info is too technical. But then Lorne's tenacity and good arguments convinced us and we have found a solution which on the one hand displays this information, but on the other hand hides only a very small part of the movie.

To be able to get faster forward in movie, we have increased the playback speed in the movie presentation up to 64x. However, even at 32x problems occurred. We therefore had to apply a trick to allow such a fast forward: with a playback speed of 32x and higher the movie is no longer playing, but the position moved forward by a timer every second for 1 minute (or 2 minutes for 64x).

The increase of the playback speed is now available in the presentation menu too, so that it can be used without remote control.

Point 4 is already implemented in our view by the use of iTunes routines - more about it can be found at "Tips & Tricks". As Lorne wrote us, however, the realization of the first two points is a sufficient solution.

We would like to thank Lorne for his good arguments, the tenacity and patience.

A pre-release version (last updated on 30.6. 12:45) of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer can now be downloaded. We will continue to test and - if no errors are found - offer the new 32 and 64-bit versions of nessMediaCenter and nessViewer.

The MAS (Mac App Store) version of nessMediaCenter will follow as soon as possible - at the moment we are still working on the release of the new iOS app "NV Remote II", which was once rejected by Apple's review team. We have now (as from the review team requested) recorded a video to demonstrate the functionality - this video can be watched on YouTube now.

Keywords: info, media center, Media Presentation, movie, Playback, speed, status