Optimisarr 0.2.16 — good encodes stop failing the quality check

Optimisarr 0.2.16 fixes the last known cause of good encodes failing the quality check, catches broken sources before anything is encoded, and tells you when a sidecar needs updating. Update your sidecars too: the quality fix also runs inside them.

What's new

• Sidecars tell you when they're out of date. When a Mac or Windows sidecar is older than your server, its menu or tray shows Update available with a link to the release page, and its card under Settings → Workers says the same. Sidecars never update themselves; installing stays your choice.
• A clearer Dashboard. Total space saved leads, next to what's in progress and what needs you. A Saved per day chart covers the last 30 days, with a daily average and a readout for any day you point at, and Recent results lists each finished file's size before and after, its quality score and where it ran.
• A status strip on every page shows what the queue is doing (encoding here, On workers, paused, holding, waiting or idle) and why, with free working space and a Pause/Resume button, so you can pause from anywhere.

Smoother and safer

• No more false quality failures from drifting timestamps. Some encodes keep every frame of the original but stamp stretches of them a frame early. The quality check then compared each picture with its neighbour and failed good encodes with scores around 15–40. When an encode has exactly as many frames as the original, each sample is now compared frame for frame. Encodes that were failing now score in the 90s, and normal encodes score exactly as before.
• Quality samples line up exactly. On some titles, samples were cut a few milliseconds apart from the original, which could send a quality search back to the library's default quality.
• Broken sources are caught before encoding. A file whose picture stops well before its audio now fails straight away, naming Source video timeline, instead of after a full encode (and, on a worker, a full download and upload). The original is untouched.
• The sidebar shows what's really happening. It no longer says a sidecar is encoding after the sidecar has handed its work back. It names the stage (encoding, verifying, returning a result and so on) and where it's happening.
• Settings now uses the full page width like every other page, and the interface widens to fill large screens.

Before you update

• Update your Mac and Windows sidecars to 0.2.16. The frame-by-frame quality check also runs on sidecars. An older sidecar keeps measuring the old way, so some good encodes can still fail until it's updated. Your originals stay safe either way.
• One small database update runs automatically on start-up. It records each finished job's original size for the Dashboard, and fills it in once for jobs verified earlier. No action needed.

Good to know

• The Mac sidecar now bundles libvmaf 3.2.1, the same VMAF library as the server and the Windows sidecar. Quality scores don't change.
• The Windows installer is still an unsigned preview. Follow the code signing policy, and don't weaken Windows or company security settings to install it. The Mac app is signed and notarised by Apple.

See the full changelog for the complete technical record.