Because this is experimental, there may be issues we haven’t caught.  Please report all issues with this release – on Leopard or Snow Leopard – to support [at] multiplexapp [dot] com.

Thank you!

HOWEVER! Due to the success of the bundle, we’ve decided to work with the MacUpdate crew to extend the bundle’s availability just a little bit longer, in case you forgot since we sent the first email or were holding off and missed the deadline.

Grab your bundle quickly! The sneaky backdoor link to the promo that will be live for just a few more hours is at: http://mupromo.com/springbundle.php?ref=6602

Remember, even if you already have license for RipIt, Multiplex, or both, you can benefit from the other 9 apps… and you can share the extra licenses with a friend. We’ve assisted in the gifting of many many RipIt licenses during this promotion, and we’re thrilled to have it in the hands of so many new customers.

After Midnight EST on Sunday June 14th, this offer is 100% closed. We hope you get a chance to take advantage of the deal in time!

Again, that sneaky backdoor link is:

http://mupromo.com/springbundle.php?ref=6602

As I wrote in a post on my personal blog, the entire experience has been a lot of fun and a great learning experience for the IndyHall Labs team. Nate, Misha, and Chad at MacUpdate have been great to work with, and we look forward to opportunities to do this again.

This afternoon, the bundle sales passed 34,000 sold. With a little over 3 days left, we’re making some of our own predictions on what mark we’ll hit when the timer says zero.

Want to get in on the fun?

We’ll do it “Price is Right” style: the closest guess without going over wins!

What do you win, you ask? Let’s call it the IndyHall Labs Lifetime License. In short, you win one free copy of every IndyHall Labs app. At this point, that’s Multiplex & Twistori Desktop but we’re FAR from done! We’ll even let you gift to a friend if you’ve already got a copy. Not only that, but you”l get a free copy of EVERY app we ever produce from now until the end of time!

So place your bets, and spread the word!

This morning, we were very excited to share with the world that we’d joined our friends at RipIt App, along with 9 other top-notch software packages, as part of the MacUpdate Spring Bundle. This bundle contains over $500 in software for less than $50!

Unfortunately, despite our careful planning…the popularity of the bundle (nearly 4000 sold at the time of this post) has ground our licensing server to a halt!

We’re working REALLY hard to get things back up and running, and we assure you that if you’ve paid for the bundle, you WILL receive a download link for Multiplex in short order. In the mean time, we appreciate your patience, support, and most of all, your purchase of the MacUpdate 2009 Spring Bundle!

So what’s the big deal?

First and foremost – Set Management.  It was the biggest hurdle, and we think we’ve done right by it.  Open the info for a movie, click on the Discs tab, and you can drag other movies right in to it, which automatically adds the discs from the second movie to the first.  You can rename discs, drag-to-reorder them, drop discs from a set, etc.  When a movie has more than one disc, it is “badged” letting you know.  Please let us know how you feel about the new Set Management features!

We’ve got menus – lots of them – but strategically placed.  Movies and discs now have right-click (or “control-click”) context menus.  We’ve updated the top-level menus as well to be reflective of the app’s workings.  You can delete movies, reveal them in the Finder, and perform other appropriate actions on certain elements (rename, move, and other set-management features).

We’ve cleaned up the drawer a lot – there is a brand-new editor for the movie description, the new discs tab (obviously) and new, shiny play buttons that are no longer an afterthought – you want to play your media!

“Hide Unplayable Movies” is now a menu option in the “View” menu – this way you can show your entire collection, or only what’s immediately available for playing – your choice.  This makes switching external hard drives a little nicer, and can keep your box-art bigger and more beautiful.

There are more minor tweaks and UI updates than we can mention.  And oh are there bug fixes – some miniscule, some more major.  The Sample Data has been cleaned up for you to play with.  Animations are smoother.  The Up and Down arrows on your keyboard now navigate through your collection in “Stadium” view.  And there’s more than that – much more.

Please visit the feedback forums at http://forum.multiplexapp.com with any feedback.  With so many new features, we are sure there may be something we missed – please let us know ASAP and we’ll get it fixed.

A big thanks to the people that stepped up at the last minute and tried for hours to try to (and sometimes succeeded) break Multiplex, which let us clean up just a few last-minute bugs before release.  We really appreciate it.

We still strongly believe that Multiplex shines when it comes to managing your uncompressed DVD rips.  It’s why we built it.  Future improvements to Multiplex include a built-in player and on-the-fly encoder to push your movies out to your other devices, like your home theater.

However, repeatedly we heard that people wanted a single point of management for their movies, including those compressed down with applications like Handbrake.  So we took heed, and spent over a month getting the feature right.  We didn’t want it to be a tossed in feature.  Instead, we added a lot of the Multiplex magic to your non-DVD media.

We started by making adding your media easy.  It’s trivial really – drag and drop it right on to Multiplex, on to the Multiplex icon in your dock, or use the File menu to select your media.   But we added support for auto-recognizing when your media isn’t available, saving all that fun metadata, opening the movies in their appropriate players, and tracking your files automatically as you move them – so you don’t have to.

There are limitations – non-DVD media will not work in our future in-app player or on-the-fly encoder.  But no matter.  All of the desktop client support that Multiplex lends your DVDs are now available to your non-DVD movies.

Please hop over to the forums if you have any issues to report, as this is a new feature – and JUST being released into the wild.

We hope you enjoy Multiplex!

Well, no more my friends.  Don’t have any movies loaded?  Not to worry, you can try out Multiplex anyway, using our built-in sample data.  We’ve even gone ahead and made sure the data is clean.  We’re nice like that.

Go ahead – play with the sample data, mess with it, delete stuff, whatever.  Next time you launch Multiplex, the sample data will refresh, and you can begin to play anew.  So don’t worry about screwing up your pretty sample data, it’ll be all kinds of there for you next time you launch.

We hope you enjoy the new release of Multiplex.  Be sure to buy a copy now, while it’s still sporting a fancy $10 discount!

Multiplex (Beta)

Here’s what we released, and what “Beta” means to us.

What we have for you is a rock-solid, beautifully imagined, wonderfully engineered ode to all that is the Apple OS X platform.  We’ve scoured over every pixel, thought and rethought, coded and recoded, laid out and re-laid out every bit of this application.  That said, it’s not feature complete for 1.0, so we’re going to keep this in beta for now.

But we’re tired of keeping Multiplex under wraps.  With so many people making backup copies of movies on their computers, or ripping their DVDs for extended battery life on a business trip, or setting up a home media server with full-quality DVD exports, we figured it was time that there was an application made to manage all the information and metadata that went along with it.

So what do you get?  First and foremost, the underlying engine of the app is the real power source.  We have huge plans for it.  We’ve put into the engine all the underpinnings that will be required in the future to power all kinds of fun.  (Check out the roadmap on the home page.)

On top of the engine we have the user interface.  The UI is meant to be visually stunning, yet easy to understand and use.  We hope you feel the same way.  We’ll be taking feedback and user input, and implementing any changes and fixes that will help us achieve that goal.

Finally, and most importantly – search.  In Multiplex we’ve put in a dead-simple search engine that will within a few keystrokes (often times 1-2) bring – front and center – the movie you’re trying to find in your collection.  It’s instant, it’s animated, and it’s the most important feature in Multiplex.

So that’s it.  Have a collection of DVDs (or ripped DVDs), or plan to?  Perhaps you were putting it off because there was no easy way to manage all of your DVDs?  Download Multiplex and launch it.  Multiplex will do the hard work of finding your movies for you, and you’re off to the races.

We hope you love Multiplex.  We have many feature enhancements coming – as well as new functionality – before we’re comfortable calling Multiplex a 1.0 product.  We’ll be releasing frequent auto-updates to Multiplex, constantly improving the application and engine.  Check out the roadmap on the home page.  As we complete the features outlined there, they’ll be “checked off” and we’ll push a new update.  Once all the items are checked off, 1.0 will be released.

DEAL TIME

In light of the fact that we’re still in a beta period, we’re offering not only a free trial, but a decent discount on the final initial price of $35.  Grab your copy now for $24.99 – 1.0 will of course be a free upgrade, but you can start organizing your library now.

Be sure to send all of your feedback – good or bad.  Please join the conversation on our forums and don’t be afraid to express yourselves.  We live to make you happy by making you happy with your software.

Enjoy Multiplex.