basswaves/kinema v0.16.0 on GitHub

What's new in 0.16.0

The review release

Most of this release came from one thorough review of the whole program: its screens, messages, settings, installers and the release itself, on Windows, Linux and Android. Its 72 findings were checked one by one, fixed, and tested again, many on real hardware. The goal was simple: Kinema should never say something that is not true, and should never stop working without saying why.

Safer

Sign-ins and keys are sealed. SIMKL and Trakt sign-ins, your TMDB and OMDb keys and your OpenSubtitles password are stored sealed by the system on Windows and Android. On Linux the Kinema folder and the library are readable only by you.
Library safety copies no longer hold your sign-ins or keys, and Android no longer lets the system back up Kinema's data. Restoring a safety copy means signing in again.
A file that only points to an address (a playlist or script named .mkv) is no longer followed.
Page lookups give up after 30 seconds, so one stuck answer no longer stops every later lookup. An .nfo over 1 MB is left unread.

New

The details panel says when the screen could not switch to a video's rate: what Kinema asked for, what it got, how many frames are left out, and what usually stands in the way (the receiver's 4K signal setting, the TV's deep colour setting, the cable). It also says when the graphics driver lowered the colour format to fit a rate.
It says when Windows blocks sending sound untouched, instead of calling the decoded sound fine, and Settings gives the right way to the "exclusive control" setting in Windows 11.
Android: a film whose sound this device cannot play says so and plays on. Sound in LPCM and some AAC/MPEG inside .m2ts files now plays.
Linux: when the system cannot decode a film's picture or sound, the player says so instead of showing nothing.
A mouse's side Back button and Alt+Left go back, like Escape.
TMDB's credit in its own words, with its logo, and every package carries the licence.

Changed

Big libraries open fast. A library of 5,000 titles took over ten seconds to show Home; now about a second, even on a slow PC. Posters are drawn from a screen-sized copy, and episode pictures are fetched only for episodes you have.
Step down is fairer. Only drops the graphics card caused count, a step that did not help is put back, and it comes back up after three clean films.
Better matching. A Show (US) and A Show (UK) stay apart, and a near name no longer wins just by being popular.
Text on a TV is never under 12 px. The Light look keeps the top bar readable over posters, Home's big title stops at three lines, and buttons use Kinema's own font.
After the mouse wheel moves the page, the next arrow key starts from what is on screen.
Windows: running the setup again updates in place, keeping shortcuts and default-player choices. Uninstalling also clears the built-in browser's cache.
The setup pages say what is true: the intros page says when ffmpeg is needed, and the sound page shows what your receiver takes untouched. The folder dialog says whether it wants the movies or the TV folder.
Android: the folder browser notices a permission you gave when you come back, and says which films "All files access" adds.
Settings keeps the chosen section in view in a small window. "What leaves your computer" lists the subtitle download host. Move to a new computer carries the subtitle size for any screen.

Fixed

A drive that stops answering no longer freezes the window. Kinema says so after 20 seconds, keys keep working, and quitting does not hang on it.
When progress cannot be saved, Kinema says so (disk full, folder not writable) and says when it works again. A read-only library gets one clear message at start.
A damaged, empty or unreadable file is called that, not "may have been moved or deleted", on Android too.
A first scan with no internet blames the connection, not your file names.
A file with no picture starts at once instead of waiting 15 seconds.
The clock: anything saved while the PC's clock ran a year ahead is set back to now, and a FAT drive's files are not read again when the clocks change for summer or winter.
Badges and panels say only what is known: no "UHD" below 4K, no Auro-3D guessed from a name, "Dialogue lifted" only when it was, nothing shown before mpv has answered.
Needs attention: searching no longer moves the ring to Ignore these, so a second OK cannot ignore files by accident.
Version choice never picks a tiny sample over the real film.
Linux: a file whose name is not valid text is listed under "could not read" instead of failing to play.
Smaller ones: one sound device listed twice in Your equipment, the season name in High contrast, Frame timing offered on Android where it does nothing, empty folders left by removing the rpm.

The full list is in the changelog.

Windows

Installer: download kinema-windows-x64-setup.exe
and run it. It installs for your Windows account only (no
administrator) and adds Kinema to the Start menu. Uninstall it
from Settings → Apps: it removes the program, its shortcuts and its
"Open with" entries, and asks before deleting your library and
settings.

Portable: or download kinema-windows-x64.zip,
extract it anywhere, and run kinema.exe. Nothing is written
outside the folder and your app data.

Windows 11. Needs the WebView2 runtime, which ships with
Windows 11; on a PC without it the installer fetches it from
Microsoft, and the ZIP needs it installed first.

Windows will ask once whether to run it

Kinema is not code-signed, so the first time you open it Windows
shows "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then
Run anyway; Windows remembers. To check that the file you
downloaded is the one that was published, run this in PowerShell
in the folder you downloaded it to:

Get-FileHash .\kinema-windows-x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256
Get-FileHash .\kinema-windows-x64.zip -Algorithm SHA256

Expected: 38265e02efb013a8b8acc006989781e34a4fa36ee1b791a1232c268589e38b2b for the installer,
88b60661ed2d1b5c95e5471005a4e325bb055046c65bd0d3d7c361f12c832870 for the ZIP.
The two must match exactly. Each file also has a .sha256 beside it.

Linux

Kinema uses your system's mpv and WebKitGTK; the packages install
them for you. For x86-64 PCs take the amd64 / x86_64 files,
for ARM the arm64 / aarch64 ones.

Ubuntu 24.04 or later, Debian 13:

sudo apt install ./kinema-linux-amd64.deb

Fedora:

sudo dnf install ./kinema-linux-x86_64.rpm

Anything else: unpack kinema-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
and run ./kinema; its README.txt names the two libraries (mpv
and WebKitGTK) to install. HDR on Wayland needs mpv 0.40 or later — Ubuntu 26.04,
Debian 13, Fedora 43 and Arch have it.

To check a download, put the file and its .sha256 in one folder
and run sha256sum -c <file>.sha256 there.

Android (early version)

For Android TV boxes, installed by hand (sideloaded): download
kinema-android.apk, copy it to the device and
open it (Android asks once to allow installs from that source).
It is an early version, tried on one TV box and the emulator; a
phone has not been tried. See the README for what has been tested
and what is still missing. Check the download with
sha256sum -c kinema-android.apk.sha256; the
certificate it is signed with is named in the README.

First run

Kinema asks where it will be watched and where your movies and TV
folders are, then scans — with a few skippable setup pages while it
does. Posters and descriptions come from TMDB through a key Kinema
carries, so there is nothing to sign up for; a free key of your own
can be entered in Settings instead.

The Windows ZIP bundles an unmodified LGPL build of libmpv, which
you may replace; on Linux the system's libmpv is used; Android uses
Google's Media3 (Apache-2.0) — see NOTICE.md.

Something not working, or it works on a device the README does not
list? Say so: bug report
or device report.