Soba Player 0.3.2

Download: Soba-Player-0.3.2-arm64.dmg, open it and drag Soba Player to Applications. Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Installed 0.3.x versions update themselves.

What's new

• AirPlay: the full movie timeline now works for re-encoded video too, not only for copied video. Segments are cut from one continuous stream, so seeking on the TV lands on the same segment boundaries every time.
• AirPlay: 1080p remuxes up to 40 Mbit/s are streamed as is, without re-encoding.
• AirPlay: when the TV catches up with the prepared part, the player rebuilds a buffer ahead instead of feeding it at playback speed.
• About window: the update button shows the status itself and is clickable only when there is something to do: check, retry after an error, or restart into the new version.

Third-party software: the app bundles FFmpeg 8.1.3 under LGPL-2.1-or-later, built from the unmodified source attached here (ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz with its official signature) by build/ffmpeg/build.sh. License texts are inside the app in Contents/Resources/licenses.

Soba Player 0.3.1

Download: Soba-Player-0.3.1-arm64.dmg, open it and drag Soba Player to Applications. Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Installed 0.2.0 and 0.3.0 update themselves.

What's new

• Check for updates button in the About window, with the status: checking, up to date, downloading with progress, ready.
• When a new version is downloaded, the player shows a notice with a "Restart and update" button, plus a macOS notification. After an update the player tells which version it was updated to.

Third-party software: the app bundles FFmpeg 8.1.3 under LGPL-2.1-or-later, built from the unmodified source attached here (ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz with its official signature) by build/ffmpeg/build.sh. License texts are inside the app in Contents/Resources/licenses.

Soba Player 0.3.0

Download: Soba-Player-0.3.0-arm64.dmg, open it and drag Soba Player to Applications. Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Installed 0.2.0 updates itself on the next launch.

What's new

• AirPlay is much more stable. The TV now gets the whole movie as one playlist: it shows the real timeline and duration and can seek on its own. Long sessions no longer break every few minutes, and seeking from the Mac no longer freezes the TV. If the TV stream fails anyway, it restarts from the same position on the same TV.
• Subtitles on the TV during AirPlay: the subtitle track chosen in the player (embedded or a local file) is shown by the TV.
• Remote control window: while the video plays on the TV, the player window shows the title, the time, large play/pause and 10-second skip buttons and a "Play on this Mac" button.
• Sound options (Sound menu): even out loudness and boost dialogue, on the Mac and on the TV.
• The Mac stays awake while a video plays or while AirPlay is on.
• The seek bar shows how far the movie is downloaded ahead of the current position.
• Seeking on the Mac shows the last frame instead of a black screen.

Third-party software: the app bundles FFmpeg 8.1.3 under LGPL-2.1-or-later, built from the unmodified source attached here (ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz with its official signature) by build/ffmpeg/build.sh. License texts are inside the app in Contents/Resources/licenses.

Soba Player 0.2.0

Download: Soba-Player-0.2.0-arm64.dmg, open it and drag Soba Player to Applications. Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. Installed 0.1.0 updates itself on the next launch.

What's new

• AirPlay to Apple TV and AirPlay 2 smart TVs. Press the AirPlay button in the player bar and pick the TV: the TV streams the video from the Mac over the home network, the player window works as a remote (pause, seeking, audio track, next episode). Disconnecting continues playback on the Mac from the same position. Heavy files are re-encoded by the hardware encoder to fit Wi-Fi, HDR stays HDR. Subtitles on the TV are not supported yet.
• Disk cache limit (Settings): with the limit on, a file larger than the limit keeps only the part around the playback position, so a 70 GB movie plays with a few gigabytes of free space. Smaller files download completely as before.
• Download speed (Settings): automatic mode downloads at full speed until 10 minutes are buffered ahead, then at twice the video bitrate up to 30 minutes, then at the bitrate itself. Fixed limits of 30, 15, 10 and 5 MB/s are available too.
• Exact seeking: arrow keys and J/L jump exactly 10 and 30 seconds in MKV and other transcoded files; repeated presses no longer snap back to the same keyframe.
• Opening another torrent while a video plays stops the old video immediately and saves its position.
• Fixed a crash in the automatic speed mode on high-bitrate files.

Third-party software: the app bundles FFmpeg 8.1.3 under LGPL-2.1-or-later, built from the unmodified source attached here (ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz with its official signature) by build/ffmpeg/build.sh. License texts are inside the app in Contents/Resources/licenses.

Soba Player 0.1.0

First public release.

Download: Soba-Player-0.1.0-arm64.dmg, open it and drag Soba Player to Applications. Requires a Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 11 or later. The app is signed and notarized by Apple.

What it does: streams torrents and magnet links while they download, plays local MKV, AVI and other videos, audio track and subtitle selection, OpenSubtitles search, resume, playlists for multi-file torrents, English and Russian interface. Keyboard shortcuts are listed in the app menu.

Third-party software: the app bundles FFmpeg 8.1.3 under LGPL-2.1-or-later, built from the unmodified source attached here (ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz with its official signature) by build/ffmpeg/build.sh. License texts are inside the app in Contents/Resources/licenses.