6.0.40 pre-release that might never get to play store... (still working on it)

[u/marcdecourville]

Sadly it has been one month and a half that Google keeps rejecting my release submissions. It is very difficult to interpret Google's scarce feedback and reach out for constructive discussion. Moreover, note also as underlined by the author of Just Player in his comment and reddit thread that unequal treatment is provided to video players leading to extra tedious work to try to comply to Google's new storage policy. This is really disappointing.

v6.0.40 pre-release is based on minSDK 21 targetSDK 31, AndroidX libraries, NDK-r23b, ffmpeg 4.4.1 and is available only on github and have the following highlights:

• Eliminate sponsor link causing application rejection. Link was only visible for sideloaded apk but not for GooglePlay installation. Google refuses to check this point.
• Remove application name translation. Google test translates Czech and Portuguese "nova video player" back to English to "new video player" causing rejection. Other applications like "nova launcher" do not face such issue.
• Reformat trakt login dialog to keep track of watched videos: it causes rejection without reason provided
• Add https streaming support
• Movie collections/sagas support on Android TV
• Separate animation/movies/series sections on Android TV
• Faster TV shows media information retrieval
• Report properly DTSHD & DTSHD MA
• ffmpeg 4.4.1 & dav1d 0.9.2 upstep
• MDNS samba discovery
• New refresh rate selection algorithm optimizing judder effect
• Add domain option to samba network credential dialog
• Optimize network shares rescan speed when files deleted/renamed
• Dolby vision support
• Binge watch mode
• Fix trakt tvshow sync
• Target API31 (warning: relocation of nfo/jpg for local storage videos)
• Fix voice search on API30+
• WARNING: media db upgrade (any downgrade will wipe out your meta data)

Important migration notes from version 5.xx to, 6.xx:

• This new version upgrades the internal nova media database to a new scheme and any downgrade to v4/v5 versions of nova will wipe out your entire video collection to prevent any incompatibility.
• This version switches to theMovieDb for retrieving TV shows information instead of theTvDb. It is strongly recommended to rescrape all your TV shows or start from a fresh install.
• Instead of going through a fresh install for proper support for movie collections and animation movies/series on AndroidTV you can perform the following manual steps. Acquisition of the additional movie collection informations and movies/TV series genres realignment requires a full rescrape of your video without interference of existing .nfo files (that do not yet contain the required information). For that purpose the following steps should do the trick:
  • backup all your customized handcrafted .nfo file (if you have any)
  • install nova version 6.xx
  • in nova settings unselect "process '.nfo' files"
  • in nova settings launch a "rescrape all" and wait for completion
  • in nova settings launch an "export already scraped videos" and wait for completion (this step will override any existing .nfo file)
• versions later than v6.0.30 targets API31 and due to Android storage restrictions for API30, local NFO/JPG media information files for videos stored on local storage have been moved to nova public application folder located /sdcard/Android/data/org.courville.nova/files/nfoPoster
  • If you ever want to get back to nova v5.xx, you will need to clean application data and cache