Chameleon MediaCenter

Chameleon MediaCenter v3.2 Now Available

CMC v3.2 is now available, and includes some great new features and tons of bug fixes! CLICK HERE to read the full What’s New post, or read on to get the overview.

Probably my favorite new feature are Hotkeys that allow you to jump around inside CMC and perform common actions very quickly with a single button press. If you have a programmable remote, you can add your favorites to any available buttons you may have.

These Hotkeys can even be used to launch External Links, including Win10 Apps like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Ring, Steam, and new with v3.2, SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun. This turns CMC into a true HTPC hub, connecting all your various HTPC apps together and allowing you to quickly switch to any app with the touch of a button.

See Hotkey details here: Getting Started, section 10) Advanced Universal Remote Programming – CMC Hotkeys

The main focus for v3.2 was on improving the Music Library, and it is better than ever. To start things off, we added SmartSync changes-only syncing capability to make importing changes to your music collection as quick as possible. Next we added support for multiple Genres and Artist per song. We also gave CMC the capability to extract embedded artwork from your music files if the folder.jpg image is missing.

But that’s not all, we also created a brand new feature: Music Genre Mapping. If your music collection is anything like mine, you have way too many music genres. But changing your music genres per song or album takes a lot of work, and permanently alters your files, which isn’t a good idea. Instead, the Music Genre Mapper allows you to easily map any genre to any other genre (i.e. map Classic Rock, Rock Hits, and Live Rock to be included with Rock). This mapping is non-destructive – none of your metadata is changed. Plus, you can easily toggle Genre Mapping on/off to instantly revert back to original genre assignments or show mapped genres as you desire.

One important bug fix for the Music Library is related to playing genres. Previously, playing a genre would play all songs of every album that contained at least one song that matched the selected genre. When playing a genre with v3.2, CMC now will only add songs that match the selected genre to the Now Playing playlist. Combined with the new Music Genre Mapping feature, playing music by genre has never been better or easier.

The Music Library also got some important bug fixes, so if you’ve had trouble with previous versions of CMC’s Music Library, definitely give v3.2 another try.

Even though the primary focus for v3.2 was the Music Library, the Movie Library wasn’t ignored and has some important updates. We’ve added support for PotPlayer, which is a free media player that is extremely popular in Korea. If you’ve never used PotPlayer before, you may want to give it a try, it’s surprisingly good.

We’ve also added support for M2TS video files. These files are typically used to encode video for Blu-ray discs, though some users like to extract these files out and play them directly. Note that CMC v3.2 will only import M2TS files that are not in a BDMV folder, as that represents a Blu-ray Folder and is still treated as a full disc.

One of our users had a great idea to allow custom backgrounds for each Media Type, and CMC v3.2 delivers. You can now have a custom background for each Media Type filter: All Media Types, Movies, TV Series, Music, Documentaries, and Other Media Types. With custom backgrounds you can tell at a glance what Media Type filter is currently applied. TIP: you need to switch to each Media Type to be able to change the background for it.

Speaking of Media Types, CME users can now enjoy faster browsing of TV Series when using the default CMC Cover Profile with the Box Set views. In previous versions, these perspective covers were created on the fly in CMC, a process that noticeably slowed down navigation. CME v1.3 (included with CMC v3.2) will now create pre-rendered boxset.png images that allow CMC to quickly load the images for instant display and faster TV Series browsing.

That’s not the only change for CME v1.3 – for the first time ever, CME exports stand-alone TV Series (which are TV Series that do not have a DVD/Blu-ray title assigned as a parent). This is perfect for users that have TV Series Episodes as converted media, which are assigned in My Movies Collection Management to each episode’s file location. CMC has also been updated to show these discless stand-alone TV Series, which will display using the new enhanced TV Series / Seasons views.

Besides these and other great new features, CMC v3.2 has 16 important bug fixes – the most ever in a single release – helping make this the best CMC release yet. Check out the Downloads page for the full changelog.

CMC v3.2 is a free upgrade for all users. For current users, if you’ve granted firewall access then CMC will let you auto-update to the new version the next time you run your current version, otherwise you can download the new version manually.

Leave a Comment