StreamCraft Live v0.17.4 — Shader pack support, official Essential support, and Block Glow

This update rolls up everything since v0.15.12. The headlines: StreamCraft screens are now certified to work with shader packs, playing with friends through Essential is now officially supported, and Display Blocks can cast a soft colored Block Glow onto the room. Streaming also got smarter (it only broadcasts when someone's watching), Windows virtual cameras work, and a batch of streaming fixes landed along the way.

Shader pack support (certified)

StreamCraft screens now render correctly under Iris shader packs, and Block Glow adapts to run alongside them. We tested against the four most popular packs and certified each one:

• Screens are certified on all four packs. If a display went invisible when you switched a pack on, the cause was almost always the pack's own version rather than StreamCraft. Update to a current build (Photon v1.3+, Solas 3.6+, BSL 10.1.2+, Complementary r5.7+) and screens render as they should.
• Block Glow works under packs (Beta). With a pack loaded, the glow draws as a bright emissive rim and lets the pack's own bloom carry it, instead of standing aside. BSL, Photon and Complementary look right (Photon is a touch grainy).
• Known limitation (Solas only): under Solas the glow rim renders dim, because Solas tone-maps the whole scene down. Screens themselves are also somewhat dimmer under Solas at night or indoors. BSL, Photon and Complementary are unaffected.
• Anything outside this list is untested, not blocked. Vanilla and Sodium-only setups are unchanged.

Essential support (official)

Playing StreamCraft with friends in your single-player world through Essential is now officially supported.

• Invite a friend into your world and multi-party video just works. The moment a friend joins, StreamCraft switches on (a free trial for new setups, or your existing license) so you can both see each other's webcam and screen shares on Display Blocks.
• It happens live, no rejoin needed. If a camera or screen share was already running when your friend joined, toggle it off and on once to start streaming it to them.
• If you already own a license, it's used automatically. Previously, playing with friends this way could come up with multi-party turned off even though you had a license; now it recognizes the license you own.
• Playing alone stays completely free and private, and never touches the network.

Block Glow (new)

• Displays can light the room. A soft colored glow spills onto the wall around a Display Block, tinted live by the colors at the edges of whatever is playing. A sunset scene washes the room orange; an ocean scene cools it blue. The glow tracks the video smoothly and won't strobe on hard cuts.
• Off by default, opt-in per block. Open a display's config screen and cycle Glow: OFF / Low / Medium / High next to Done. The setting saves per block and syncs to everyone who can see the screen, including your own self-view.
• It reads the actual picture, never the black bars on letterboxed content, and it respects the display's brightness and opacity. It's a visual effect only, so it lights the room without lighting the world: your mob farms are safe.
• Free for everyone, on every supported Minecraft version and both loaders. (Shader-pack behavior is covered above.)

Smarter streaming

• Your stream only broadcasts when someone's there to see it. Starting a stream shows your camera or screen on your own view and your own Display Blocks instantly (that part is always free and local), but it only broadcasts to the video service once another player is in range to watch. When the last viewer leaves, it stops after a short grace period.
• Solo streaming no longer spends trial minutes. On a trial, time is only used while someone is actually receiving your stream.

Virtual cameras (Windows)

• Virtual cameras now work as a video source. Cameras that register only with DirectShow (NVIDIA Broadcast, OBS Virtual Camera, Snap Camera) now appear in the device picker and stream just like a physical webcam. Until now only Media Foundation cameras were listed, so these were invisible.
• Physical webcams are unaffected, with no duplicate entries. Windows only; Mac and Linux camera support is unchanged.
• If a virtual camera doesn't show up, make sure its app is running before you open the StreamCraft menu, then reopen device selection.

Better YouTube restream audio

• Streaming to YouTube used to sound noticeably worse than the same stream on the web viewer, because desktop audio was squeezed through a thin encode before it left the game and then re-encoded twice more on the way out. StreamCraft now publishes desktop audio at full quality (and stops treating game audio like speech, which was quietly cutting quiet passages), and the YouTube side is encoded at a higher bitrate and the correct sample rate. Web viewers benefit too.

Fixes

• Screen shares no longer flash solid green or garble. A remote screen share could briefly show up as a solid green or distorted block as it scaled up in quality. Fixed.
• Self-view crops letterbox bars, matching what viewers see. When sharing a non-16:9 display on Mac, your own preview could show thin black bars that remote viewers never saw. Your view now crops them the same way.
• A second source turned on mid-stream now goes live. If you started screen share and then turned your camera on (or vice versa) while someone was already watching, the second source used to show only in your own preview and never reach other players. It now publishes immediately.
• Minecraft 1.20.1 connection compatibility. Corrected a version-handshake mismatch that could wrongly block a 1.20.1 build from connecting to StreamCraft servers on other Minecraft versions through a version-bridging proxy.

Upgrading

• No wire-protocol change since v0.15.11, so mixed versions can still connect, and there's no new terms prompt. Settings and licenses carry over.
• Block Glow needs both server and client on this build to sync the per-block setting.
• Power users: a shaderCompatMode setting in config/streamcraft-client.json accepts AUTO (default), ALWAYS (always draw the rim) or OFF (keep the classic additive glow even under a pack).