Universal Media Server

Universal Media Server or UMS is a cross-platform and open source software designed to provide users with a highly configurable and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compliant UPnP media server.

The application’s user interface is very similar with the one of the PS3 Media Server product. In order to deliver a great and powerful media server, the project uses open source software like FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, AviSynth, tsMuxeR, MediaInfo or VLC Media Player.

Being quite similar to the PS3 Media Server project, it supports streaming or transcoding of many different media formats with little to no configuration on all the supported platforms. However, it can be easily extended through plugins.

Supports a wide range of devices

Supported devices include Google Android, XBMC Media Center, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Panasonic, LG, Vizio and Philips TVs, AC Ryan PlayOn!HD, LG Smart TV Upgrader, Freecom MusicPal, Showtime, Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod, DirecTV HR, Boxee, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, and Philips Streamium.

In addition, it also supports Western Digital WD TV Live, Asus O!Play, D-Link DSM, Pioneer Kuro, Yamaha A/V receivers, Sony Blu-ray players, Freebox HD, Popcorn Hour, Sony A/V receivers, Xtreamer, Brite-view CinemaTube, Philips PFL, Philips Aurea, Realtek media players, Nokia N900, Sony network media players, OPPO Blu-ray players, and Samsung smartphones.

Under the hood and supported OSes

A quick look under the hood will give us a better idea about the main components of the application. For example, we can report that it is written entirely in the Java programming language, including the graphical user interface. It is supported on the Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The plugin architecture will allow the application to integrate with the Rhythmbox, Banshee and MediaMonkey music database, stream MythTV live streams and German TV channels, as well as to browse and listen to music from Subsonic and SoundCloud audio streaming services.

What is new in this release:

• General:
• Added and improved documentation for more renderer options to PS3.conf (CustomFFmpegOptions, OverrideFFmpegVideoFilter and KeepAspectRatio)
• Added support for configuring whether UMS can run just one or multiple instances
• Made the renderer setting KeepAspectRatio more reliable
• Renamed the renderer option OverrideVideoFilter to OverrideFFmpegVideoFilter
• Fixed incorrect aspect ratios being cached
• Fixed thumbnail seek position
• Fixed bugs with FFmpeg subtitle styles
• Renderers:
• Added support for nPlayer, skifta and TwonkyBeam on portable Apple devices (thanks, MattDetroit!)
• Added support for LG LM620 TVs (thanks, michal-sapsa!)
• Added support for Sony Bravia W7 series TVs (thanks, shtirlic!)
• Improved support for DirecTV HR
• Improved support for OPPO devices
• Improved support for Panasonic TVs
• Improved support for Samsung mobile devices
• Languages:
• Updated Czech translation
• Updated Spanish translation (thanks, AlfredoRamos!)
• External Components:
• Updated Apache commons-lang to 3.3.2, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated Logback to 1.1.2, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated Maven FindBugs Plugin to 2.5.4
• Updated Maven Git Commit ID Plugin to 2.1.9
• Updated MPlayer/MEncoder for Windows to SB55, which:
• Fixes DTS-ES to AC-3 transcoding
• Updated Netty to 3.9.1, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated slf4j to 1.7.7

What is new in version 4.0.0 Alpha 1:

• General:
• Added a web interface, available at localhost:9001
• Added a new transcoding option to allow H.264 video with AAC audio
• Added documentation for more renderer options to PS3.conf (CustomFFmpegOptions and OverrideVideoFilter)
• Added support for configuring whether UMS can run just one or multiple instances
• Changed the names of transcoding options in renderer config files for clarity
• Output surround audio (AC-3) instead of stereo (MP2) when using VLC (needs testing)
• Enabled subtitles in VLC (thanks, tdcosta100!)
• Made FFmpeg the default transcoding engine
• Improved the TextWrap function, which makes filenames fit better on certain renderers
• Fixed padding in FFmpeg for DVD video resolution
• Renderers:
• Added support for Google Chromecast
• Added support for nPlayer, skifta and TwonkyBeam on portable Apple devices (thanks, MattDetroit!)
• Added support for LG LM620 TVs (thanks, michal-sapsa!)
• Added support for Sony Bravia W7 series TVs (thanks, shtirlic!)
• Improved support for OPPO devices
• Improved support for Panasonic TX-L32V10E TVs
• Languages:
• Updated Spanish translation (thanks, AlfredoRamos!)
• External Components:
• Updated Apache commons-lang to 3.3.2, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated Logback to 1.1.2, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated Maven Git Commit ID Plugin to 2.1.9
• Updated Netty to 3.9.1, which:
• Fixes bugs
• Updated slf4j to 1.7.7

What is new in version 3.6.1:

• General:
• Made resuming more intuitive
• Fixed the aspect ratio of thumbnails by default (thanks, tdcosta100!)
• Fixed the buffer going nuts after automatic subtitle conversion (thanks, tdcosta100!)
• Fixed support for URLs in playlists
• Fixed error with thumbnails of resume files (thanks, tdcosta100!)
• Fixed the user interface when hiding advanced options
• Languages:
• Made more strings translatable
• Updated Czech translation
• Updated Russian translation (thanks, Tianuchka!)
• External Components:
• Updated FFmpeg to builds from 2014-05-05, which:
• Improves support for many containers and codecs
• Fixes bugs
• Updated h2database to 1.3.176, which:
• Improves stability
• Updated MPlayer/MEncoder for Windows to SB57, which:
• Adds AAC encoding support
• Improves H.265 support
• Improves support for many containers and codecs
• Improves speed
• Fixes bugs

What is new in version 3.5.0:

• General:
• Added a reminder at the end of the configuration wizard about optionally setting shared folders
• Added an option to run the configuration wizard on the next program start
• Added the ability to specify folders to ignore (folders_ignored in UMS.conf)
• Made the program icon look better in some situations (added more resolutions)
• Expanded filename prettifying
• Fixed OpenSubtitles support
• Improved stability of packing debug files
• Improved readme file
• Improved speed
• Cleaned some renderer configs
• Increased the safety of using -ac, -ab and -c:a in the CustomFFmpegOptions string in renderer configs
• Renderers:
• Improved support for DirecTV and Samsung phones when using FFmpeg
• Languages:
• Updated English
• External Components:
• Updated h2database to 1.3.175, which:
• Improves stability
• Updated Logback to 1.1.1
• Updated MPlayer/MEncoder for Windows to SB56, which:
• Improves DVD support
• Fixes encoding sometimes finishing too soon
• Improves stability
• Improves support for the following video codecs: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9
• Improves support for the following audio codecs: DTS
• Improves support for the following containers: Matroska, MOV, OGG
• Adds x265 encoding support
• Improves audio sync
• MPEG-4 adheres more strictly to spec limits
• Updated Netty to 3.9.0, which:
• Improves speed
• Fixes bugs
• Updated slf4j to 1.7.6, which:
• Improves stability

What is new in version 3.2.0:

• General:
• Added font cache generation for FFmpeg on startup
• Added the ability for users to set their own server name
• Added example virtual folders file in the profile directory
• The virtual folders file is now loaded from the profile directory instead of the installation directory
• Made seeking more accurate with FFmpeg
• When FFmpeg muxes, it always uses tsMuxeR
• Improved compatibility with videos with unusual colorspaces
• Improved compatibility when transcoding to H.264 via FFmpeg
• Improved compatibility with video with HE-AAC audio
• Improved compatibility when using tsMuxeR via FFmpeg
• Improved compatibility with high-resolution videos such as 3D-SBS and 3D-OU
• Fixed resume files causing a startup crash
• Fixed some settings causing a crash
• Fixed bug with FFmpeg subtitles
• Languages:
• Updated Spanish translation (thanks, AlfredoRamos!)
• External Components:
• Updated FFmpeg to builds from 2013-11-27, which:
• Adds support for HEVC (H.265)
• Improves seeking accuracy
• Improves AV sync
• Fixes memory leaks
• Optimizes AC-3 decoding
• Improves support for 60FPS videos
• Improves AVI support
• Silences meaningless errors
• Improves DTS support
• Supports seeking to non-keyframes in Matroska files
• Improves AC-3 support
• Fixes support for rare MP4 videos

Requirements:

• Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment