05-05-2008, 11:14 PM
Greetings all,
Well, it has been a wild and wooly month here at MachineCodex HQ. As the impending release date of AudioCodex 1.0 drew ever nearer, a lot of development focus had to shift away from completing some of the more programmatically complex aspects of the app, and instead focus on delivering a shiny, shrink-wrapped version that not only had to be as bug-free as possible, but also had to include more sophisticated licencing code than had been used throughout the Beta period.
In the rush to get as bug-free a version as possible out the door in time to beat the looming expiry of the 0.99 Beta, (a feat we almost managed, although in the end we were a few hours late, so apologies if this inconvenienced anyone), the time crunch eventually forced us to make the decision to temporarily freeze work on a few of the trickier elements that we really wanted to include in 1.0. Now that the dust from the release of V1.0 has begun to settle we are getting back to core coding, so I thought it might be good to let you all know something of our immediate plans.
First Things First - What's Next?
In terms of what's next for AudioCodex, our first steps will be to round out the current feature set, and complete the implementation of all existing gui features over the next two point releases. This will include items such as:
New Audio Effects Exporter update almost ready:
One of the main features that didn't quite make it into 1.0 is the ability to export audio with all effects applied; currently only loop-cropping and time-pitch shifting are processed into the exported file. Exporting of all effects is a feature that is of high-priority to us, but it has proven to be quite a complex beast to engineer, and there were still too many unresolved bugs in the current development version to risk unleashing it in our first release.
The good news is that we are currently in the final stages of development of a totally revised Export functionality, that includes the ability to include any / all effects, not just Time & Pitch. Other new exporter features will include export presets, one-step audio-extraction & time-pitch shifting from Quicktime sources, and the engine also opens up the way to allow us to provide a wider palette of editing commands including 'Crop', 'Flatten', and 'Apply'.
Shuffle Mode update coming soon:
One new feature that survived the cutoff and made it into V 1.0 is Shuffle mode. At present this is a primitive implementation of shuffle, it is really more like 'random' play in version 1.0. We will be releasing a much more evolved version of this feature in the next point-release; the updated Shuffle mechanism is a true 'no-repeat' shuffler. You will also be able to have the playlist visually rearrange itself into a shuffled ordering, and be able to reshuffle the order at any time.
The Road Ahead
All of the above, plus many other features and refinements will all be made available as free updates over the coming months. We intend to continue our regular cycle of point-release updates on a monthly basis for the time being. We will also be making more frequent 'pre-release' updates available to any licenced users who want to be able to test drive new and improved features in their early development stages.
Other new features which will be appearing soon include:
In general, from this point on we will probably increment the version number of most monthly releases by 0.1, allowing us to massage our way towards Version 2.0 in approximately 12 months time.
We also intend to continue to add new user-requested features as we have in the past, so keep posting your suggestions and ideas. While we can't promise to implement every idea proposed to us, many of the current features of AudioCodex 1.0 are available as a direct result of requests and suggestions from our users.
Cheers,
Mark Hill
MachineCodex Software
Well, it has been a wild and wooly month here at MachineCodex HQ. As the impending release date of AudioCodex 1.0 drew ever nearer, a lot of development focus had to shift away from completing some of the more programmatically complex aspects of the app, and instead focus on delivering a shiny, shrink-wrapped version that not only had to be as bug-free as possible, but also had to include more sophisticated licencing code than had been used throughout the Beta period.
In the rush to get as bug-free a version as possible out the door in time to beat the looming expiry of the 0.99 Beta, (a feat we almost managed, although in the end we were a few hours late, so apologies if this inconvenienced anyone), the time crunch eventually forced us to make the decision to temporarily freeze work on a few of the trickier elements that we really wanted to include in 1.0. Now that the dust from the release of V1.0 has begun to settle we are getting back to core coding, so I thought it might be good to let you all know something of our immediate plans.
First Things First - What's Next?
In terms of what's next for AudioCodex, our first steps will be to round out the current feature set, and complete the implementation of all existing gui features over the next two point releases. This will include items such as:
- restoring the ability to hide and re-display selected playlist columns across successive launches,
- allowing the main window panel layout and Inspector window size to also be restored across successive launches,
- polishing various menus and the Preferences window,
- restoring access to the floating visual window utility menu,
- fixing any other GUI glitches and imperfections that have thus far slipped through the net and
- adding a full onboard Help guide, as a complement to a fully updated version of the current online manual.
New Audio Effects Exporter update almost ready:
One of the main features that didn't quite make it into 1.0 is the ability to export audio with all effects applied; currently only loop-cropping and time-pitch shifting are processed into the exported file. Exporting of all effects is a feature that is of high-priority to us, but it has proven to be quite a complex beast to engineer, and there were still too many unresolved bugs in the current development version to risk unleashing it in our first release.
The good news is that we are currently in the final stages of development of a totally revised Export functionality, that includes the ability to include any / all effects, not just Time & Pitch. Other new exporter features will include export presets, one-step audio-extraction & time-pitch shifting from Quicktime sources, and the engine also opens up the way to allow us to provide a wider palette of editing commands including 'Crop', 'Flatten', and 'Apply'.
Shuffle Mode update coming soon:
One new feature that survived the cutoff and made it into V 1.0 is Shuffle mode. At present this is a primitive implementation of shuffle, it is really more like 'random' play in version 1.0. We will be releasing a much more evolved version of this feature in the next point-release; the updated Shuffle mechanism is a true 'no-repeat' shuffler. You will also be able to have the playlist visually rearrange itself into a shuffled ordering, and be able to reshuffle the order at any time.
The Road Ahead
All of the above, plus many other features and refinements will all be made available as free updates over the coming months. We intend to continue our regular cycle of point-release updates on a monthly basis for the time being. We will also be making more frequent 'pre-release' updates available to any licenced users who want to be able to test drive new and improved features in their early development stages.
Other new features which will be appearing soon include:
- Audio Device and Sample-Rate selection
- Group editing options for Album, Artist, Genre and Rating fields in playlists
- Access to QuickTime metadata
- Visualizer Groups & Presets
- New & Improved Visualizer modules
- Bundled AudioReactive visualizers will monitor true output, ( they currently reflect the default System input)
- 'Undo' while editing loops
- MP3 encoding
In general, from this point on we will probably increment the version number of most monthly releases by 0.1, allowing us to massage our way towards Version 2.0 in approximately 12 months time.
We also intend to continue to add new user-requested features as we have in the past, so keep posting your suggestions and ideas. While we can't promise to implement every idea proposed to us, many of the current features of AudioCodex 1.0 are available as a direct result of requests and suggestions from our users.
Cheers,
Mark Hill
MachineCodex Software