7.1.0 (2024-06-15)
- Behavior change: transcoding is now enabled by default even for local/low-latency streaming. The reason for this change is that HomeKit really doesn't provide a good distinction between local versus remote streaming, merely hinting at whether a HomeKit client is in a low-latency or high-latency environment. If you're on WiFi in a remote location and accessing your Protect cameras in the Home app, they would appear to HomeKit and HBUP as a low-latency connection rather. I believe these defaults are more sane and consistent as we move into the next generation of HBUP and Protect. You can, as always, adjust the defaults.
- Improvement: hardware-accelerated decoding has been reenabled for HKSV. I disabled this quite some time ago as it seemed to be finicky at times and lead to unnecessary recording errors, but things seem to have improvement somewhat on the Protect end of things and I've also added some safety checks to alleviate the issues. The benefits outweigh the potential downsides, particularly given how often HKSV events can be triggered in most environments.
- Improvement: further optimizations to snapshots to ensure we're even more responsive to HomeKit. HBUP now goes to more lengths to guarantee a short response time to snapshot requests by the Home app.
- Improvement: further optimizations and refinements of API-based livestreaming. I'm hoping to evolve this to be the default in future releases, but there's a little more testing and work I'd like to do first. Using API livestreaming has numerous advantages including substantially lower resource utilization on the Protect controller itself if you're already using HKSV and have timeshifting enabled (which it is by default). In addition, livestreams are now essentially instantaneous across the board, and more is coming. TL;DR: things are faster, better, and more streamlined...and still experimental.
- Improvement: HEVC (aka enhanced encoding in Protect-speak) based recording events are much better supported with far fewer grey/blank event snapshots in the HKSV timeline than in prior releases.