Server frontend / watchdog

I uploaded the project to GitHub with some changes after a big cleanup.
The code is still somewhat messy but I’m open to suggestions. This is still a beta.

Changes

Added to the new version:

  • Dynamic handling and editing of executables. Now they can be added or removed.
  • Added options to each executable:
    • Name for the tab
    • Autostart at launch
    • Autostart delay
    • Enable or disable console commands
    • Startup commands
    • Delay for each startup command
  • Added a “new file” button for creating new config files.
  • Edit an existing file pressing the Shift key while clicking the “edit file” button.

You can download the first release here:
CasparLauncher - v1.0-beta

Some features I still want to implement are console command history and older configuration versions (still figuring out how to deduce the version).

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Checking out casparcg.exe file information I can see there’s version metadata. For that you can use FileVersionInfo.FileVersion.

There is also a version AMCP command, see the wiki for details.

Great! I see that’s not a problem.
The actual issue would be guessing the actual config file version. One could assume that from the casparcg.exe version but, if you open another file from any other location and it’s based on older or newer versions, the editor woudn’t know which options to expose.
What I had in mind is to show the correct options according to the file version and warn about differences between config and server versions. And eventually convert what’s backward compatible to make that work.

Also, it would be nice to make an assistant-like configuration creator.

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Then the approach I proposed is way more preferable as it doesn’t require to run Server to know the version of the executable.

But from there I’ll try to keep working on what I proposed some time ago, which might be really helpful in providing validation for the different versions of Server.

Hey! Thanks for this launcher, I use it all the time in production and on my dev machine.

Just a quick opinion: having to hold shift to remove an executable was not intuitive.
I’m ashamed to say I had to clone the repo and check the code to find this modifier key.

That’s it. Thank you again.

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Thank you for the comment!
I know it’s hidden but I didn’t find a better way of exposing that without a ‘remove’ button laying around that you could accidentally press. Also I hate prompts.
Do you have any suggestion on how to solve that?

Permanent button with confirmation prompt should be the way, no?

New release! Many fixes and some nice UI changes. Some more to come.

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nice work.
thanks

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This just keeps getting better.
Thank you for your work!

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Hey @rrebuffo, nice work. This release is quite nice and I’m already using it into production. Nice work.

One thing I noticed though is regarding the config file, which seems to be updated when the launcher exits cleanly instead of whenever changes are made. On my first test I made some configurations and then I cold rebooted my machine. When the program launched again, it didn’t save any setting prior to rebooting.

My workaround was to make my settings and then exit the launcher using the tray icon. Then launching again.

If this can be improved it would make the launcher quite resilient against unexpected reboots like power outages.

Thank you for your work, it’s fantastic so far.

Noticed this today when jumping between test versions. I changed the config so every time you change a configuration it gets saved and when the launcher is asked to exit, it just exits. The problem is that many config options are not raising the change event.

Another one is to resize the window.
I’m looking into it.

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Scratch all that! I see now that I already changed this and still saves the config on exit. The events are raised but the executable config is not saved probably due to conflicting settings versions. This should be handled by .net when you upgrade the settings but for some reason it doesn’t want to do that. Deleting all versions of the settings in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\CasparLauncher\ solved that for me in all the instances.

Please let me know if it’s still a problem for you.

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Just posted a new release that addresses some changes in server 2.3 LTS and adds a couple of features to the config editor:

v1.0.2

Configuration Editor

  • Added new 2.3.x-LTS configuration options:
    • Flash producer toggle
    • FFmpeg thread limit and deinterlace.
    • Bluefish UHD support.
  • Better file error handling and display:
    • IO errors and illegible file errors prompts when opening a configuration file.
    • Status display when saving a file.
  • New Drag&Drop feature for channels and consumers:
    • Reorder channels by dragging them.
    • Move consumers between channels by dropping them in another channel.
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Very nice work. Thanks.
I miss the opportunity to name the screen.

If I do it manually in the config-file, it will be overwritten the next time I make a change in the launcher

screen
“name”
/screen

I don’t understand what you mean.
Are you talking about the tab (executables) names or the server’s screen consumer names?
Can you post a picture of the issue?

It’s on consumers screen:

image
image