v26.8.0

Release Notes

Added

• Add Streaming Engine dropdown to playback troubleshooter to support troubleshooting Next engine playback
• Next engine
  • Use overlay_qsv for hardware-accelerated watermarks and image subtitles
  • Support multiple watermarks (still only permanent and intermittent modes, not opacity expression)
  • Support image graphics elements that do not use an opacity expression

Changed

• Upgrade Mesa driver in docker from 25.2.8 to 26.0.3 to fix issues with hevc_vaapi encoder when using radeonsi driver

Fixed

• Bundle new ffmpeg 8.1.2 build on Windows that is patched to fix
  • Vulkan/CUDA interop (libplacebo tonemapping)
  • Unexpected slow performance with image subtitles
• Enable Vulkan/CUDA interop (libplacebo tonemapping) in Docker, using Legacy and Next streaming engines
• Fix regression from v26.6.0 that caused external (sidecar) subtitles from Jellyfin and Emby to go missing
  • All Jellyfin external subtitles were deleted by hourly maintenance, so they were missing from Troubleshooting > Playback and were never burned in
  • Jellyfin and Emby items with multiple external subtitles would keep only one of them after a scan
  • External subtitles will be restored automatically the next time each Jellyfin or Emby library is scanned
• Fix regression from v26.6.0 that broke MPEG-TS channels on Windows when the channel name or the ffmpeg path contains non-english characters (like Télévision)
  • Affected channels would connect but never send any data
  • MPEG-TS (Legacy) and channel preview were not affected
  • Custom MPEG-TS scripts can now use the ETV_CHANNEL_NAME, ETV_HLS_URL and ETV_FFMPEG_PATH environment variables, which are not affected by this issue; the {{ ChannelName }}, {{ HlsUrl }} and {{ FFmpegPath }} template variables continue to work but remain affected
• Next engine
  • Fix audio dropout/desync when using QSV accel and loudness normalization with certain content
  • Fix anamorphic content scaling (was incorrectly stretched with older builds)
  • Fix on-demand channel progress (channels would not save checkpoints and would always start at the same spot)