We are delighted to announce the release of the next version of UpStage, v.3.0.0, representing another big step forward for the software.

Huge thanks to our development team of Gloria, Quang and Wu for their fantastic work on this release, which will be officially launched on Wednesday 28 May at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Nürnberg.

Online sessions will be held next week to introduce you to the new version – click here for details and times.

As well as numerous enhancements for our artists, both the back-end and the front-end have been rewritten from scratch to enable more modern and controlled coding and bug tracking processes.

The code has been containerised into three separate instances which can all be run on the same virtual or physical machine, or across three separate machines for optimal network and CPU performance. The instances are:

• Application: runs the UpStage front and back end application code.
• Service: runs the Postgresql and Mongo databases, and MQTT service.
• Streaming: installs and configures Jitsi Videobridge directly in the instance.

The code is now consistent and clean, and updated to modern node dependencies. For those wishing to install their own UpStage, following the installation scripts in the correct order will completely configure UpStage and result in the three instances running correctly together. Visit the installation guide on Github for more information.

For artists using UpStage, there are a great many small fixes, enhancements and tweaks that contribute to improved overall usability. The most notable improvements are in streaming, which has been greatly stabilised. A significant new feature is the addition of a “stream refresh” button, visible to all players and audience whenever a player’s individual stream is added to the stage. This refresh button can be used to restart a stream by anyone who is not seeing or hearing it.

The media permissions system has also been revamped. This allows artists to decide how they want to share their media items with other players: free to use, use with acknowledgement, request permission, or not shared. The system now sends email notifications to players when someone has agreed to acknowledge or requested permission to use a media item, and provides any acknowledgement information that the media owner requires.

Some of the other improvements for artists include:

• multiframe object animation set by number rather than slider: this allows artists to precisely and finely determine the speed at which a multiframe object animates;
• enhanced sorting of media and stages lists in the Studio, making things easier to find;
• ability to make media items “dormant” rather than deleted, so that old media isn’t cluttering up the Studio but can still be available if required by replay recordings;
• Admins can save an email signature to be appended to emails sent from the platform;
• “Rehearsal” indicator on the live stage when it is set to rehearsal mode (i.e. not open to the public);
• workflow for selecting a cover image for a stage has been streamlined;
• the re-order media tool in Stage Management has been fixed, so that players can change the order of media thumbnails in the on-stage tools – very useful if you have a lot of media items on your stage;
• the refresh steam button can be used if for some reason a stream doesn’t completely load, or freezes or loses network connectivity. This reestablishes the Jitsi Videobridge connection without requiring a whole-page reload;
• two different live streaming options: individual stream and multi-speaker stream.

In total we have closed 109 issues since January this year, so there are too many improvements to list! and many of them are very small yet still important. We promise that you will find this version of UpStage more intuitive and user-friendly, in myriad ways!

Now we just need to update the user manual …