Happy New Years!
Almost. It is 0810 here.
If you have not noticed yet, I created some voice announcements BDJ4 Voice Announcements on SourceForge for BDJ4 that you can use. The Nederlands voices were created with the help of 'marimo'. I tried using some MacOS voices the first time, but they weren't very good. The ones available for download now are better, but if you notice any announcement that could use improvement, please let me know.
I am still working on version 4.4.8 with the "re-organize" functionality for BDJ4. In the process of working on this, I have discovered that there were problems in Update Database supporting secondary music folders. These issues have been fixed. I will be able to start properly testing re-organize soon.
Supporting re-organize, fixing various bugs, and code cleanup is introducing a lot of internal changes to the underlying code. Due to all of these changes, I will need to re-test virtually all of BDJ4 and make sure everything is working. This is going to take a while.
Version 4.4.7 is quite solid. If you run into any bugs with version 4.4.7 that are causing you problems, let me know, and I can fix those before version 4.4.8 comes out.
For version 4.4.9, I will be looking into supporting youtube playlists. I think this can be done, but haven't done the research yet to verify that this will work. More internal code changes have already been made in preparation to support youtube playlists (or other external sources of music).
I can definitely use translators for BDJ4. If you have an interest in helping doing translations, or know someone that can help, please let me know. I am more interested in accurate, properly idiomatic and high quality translations rather than speed. I already have extremely poor quality machine translations for several languages.
Development Status 2024
Re: Development Status 2024
Version 4.4.8 has been released.
The database update function "re-organize" now works, and auto-organization is working.
There are many bug fixes also.
Version 4.4.8 has a lot of internal changes, so the possibility of something being broken is higher than usual. Version 4.4.7 will be left available for download for a long while, as it is a solid release.
I will work on getting the documentation up to date for version 4.4.8 next.
I will also be doing some research to see if supporting youtube playlists is possible.
The database update function "re-organize" now works, and auto-organization is working.
There are many bug fixes also.
Version 4.4.8 has a lot of internal changes, so the possibility of something being broken is higher than usual. Version 4.4.7 will be left available for download for a long while, as it is a solid release.
I will work on getting the documentation up to date for version 4.4.8 next.
I will also be doing some research to see if supporting youtube playlists is possible.
Re: Development Status 2024
I am not going to implement playing music from youtube.
I will work on finding bugs and cleaning up code.
There are a few other small items I have to think about that may get implemented.
I will work on finding bugs and cleaning up code.
There are a few other small items I have to think about that may get implemented.
Re: Development Status 2024
There was a rather unfortunate bug in the update database processing that was extant for a very long time. This sort of bug is really bad because anyone who tries out BDJ4 gets a bad impression. It may not have affected everyone, depending on what audio file tags were present in their MP3 files. This was fixed in version 4.4.10 and 4.4.10.1.
Release 4.5.0 is out. There were some situations where the configuration screen would crash (before starting), and those have been fixed.
For the future, there are various tasks to work on:
* There is some more internal code cleanup to do. This will pave the way to using alternative user interfaces (native Windows, native MacOS, SDL).
* Make BDJ4 visible to Linux and Windows so that media player controls can be used. I don't know if there is a similar API on MacOS.
* If possible, I want to implement audio players other than VLC. These could include Windows Legacy Media Player, Linux MPRIS, gstreamer (Windows, MacOS, Linux). I don't know how to access the new Windows MediaPlayer API. There might be other audio toolkits I can use. MPV is a dead end. I have code that works, but MPV doesn't behave well.
* See if certain aspects of the user interface can be improved.
Release 4.5.0 is out. There were some situations where the configuration screen would crash (before starting), and those have been fixed.
For the future, there are various tasks to work on:
* There is some more internal code cleanup to do. This will pave the way to using alternative user interfaces (native Windows, native MacOS, SDL).
* Make BDJ4 visible to Linux and Windows so that media player controls can be used. I don't know if there is a similar API on MacOS.
* If possible, I want to implement audio players other than VLC. These could include Windows Legacy Media Player, Linux MPRIS, gstreamer (Windows, MacOS, Linux). I don't know how to access the new Windows MediaPlayer API. There might be other audio toolkits I can use. MPV is a dead end. I have code that works, but MPV doesn't behave well.
* See if certain aspects of the user interface can be improved.
Re: Development Status 2024
Version 4.6.0 is out.
I am still undecided about whether to implement youtube support.
After discovering bugs in playlist management (fixed in 4.6.0), I want to start going through every user interface and make sure everything works as expected. If you know of any oddities or bugs, please let me know.
Player Alternatives:
Linux MPRIS is working. Most players with MPRIS interfaces do not have seek-in-song accessible (even VLC does not allow this), so I don't know how useful this interface is.
I think the modern Windows MediaPlayer API can be accessed (this would be an alternative player in addition to VLC), but there is a dearth of examples on how to program this interface (C++/WinRT). I may be able to get this working some day, but it will take a long time.
Using GStreamer (all platforms) as a player should be viable, and I will start poking into implementing this.
As always, if there is anything you want checked, any small features that should implemented, any improvements, please let me know.
I am still undecided about whether to implement youtube support.
After discovering bugs in playlist management (fixed in 4.6.0), I want to start going through every user interface and make sure everything works as expected. If you know of any oddities or bugs, please let me know.
Player Alternatives:
Linux MPRIS is working. Most players with MPRIS interfaces do not have seek-in-song accessible (even VLC does not allow this), so I don't know how useful this interface is.
I think the modern Windows MediaPlayer API can be accessed (this would be an alternative player in addition to VLC), but there is a dearth of examples on how to program this interface (C++/WinRT). I may be able to get this working some day, but it will take a long time.
Using GStreamer (all platforms) as a player should be viable, and I will start poking into implementing this.
As always, if there is anything you want checked, any small features that should implemented, any improvements, please let me know.
Re: Development Status 2024
I have identified an issue with song selection (automatic and sequenced playlists) and same-song marks. This is fairly minor, but I will work on getting this fixed and release version 4.6.2 when it is done.
I will also continue to work on documentation and try to improve the wiki.
I will also continue to work on documentation and try to improve the wiki.
Re: Development Status 2024
I am working on the alternate folder installer. Fixing issues and getting it to work on MacOS.
Progress is a bit slow.
And there are some other weird bugs popping up on Windows that need to be resolved (not present in 4.7.0).
Progress is a bit slow.
And there are some other weird bugs popping up on Windows that need to be resolved (not present in 4.7.0).
Re: Development Status 2024
Still working on the alternate folder installer. It requires a lot of testing (on all three platforms).
Found a couple of internal bugs in the process.
But making progess. A few more things to fix up, and version 4.8.0 should be ready.
Another week perhaps.
Windows is being annoying. Any time it finds a new small executable, it marks it as a virus.
And I have to submit the executable as a false positive.
If I make any small change to the BDJ4 launcher, it gets marked as malware.
Found a couple of internal bugs in the process.
But making progess. A few more things to fix up, and version 4.8.0 should be ready.
Another week perhaps.
Windows is being annoying. Any time it finds a new small executable, it marks it as a virus.
And I have to submit the executable as a false positive.
If I make any small change to the BDJ4 launcher, it gets marked as malware.
Re: Development Status 2024
4.8.0 is released, and the alternate folder installation is all working.
4.8.1 will have some minor bug fixes and a change to allow the quick-edit dialog to be configured. This type of configuration allows BDJ4 to be more useful in non-ballroom scenarios.
Tonight, I hope to check that the marquee song information blanking bug is resolved, and if not collect some debug information to resolve it.
4.8.1 will have some minor bug fixes and a change to allow the quick-edit dialog to be configured. This type of configuration allows BDJ4 to be more useful in non-ballroom scenarios.
Tonight, I hope to check that the marquee song information blanking bug is resolved, and if not collect some debug information to resolve it.
Re: Development Status 2024
4.8.1 is released with better handling of audio sinks (output).
At this time, I am going to pause my work on BDJ4 development.
This week, I am going to work on cleaning up my music collection. At the moment, most of my CDs and ballroom music are all mixed together, and I want to separate them out (I will be using the "alternate folders" (I wish I had a better name for that) functionality in BDJ4 to create separate databases. The classical music is already separate, it was easy, I just need to figure out my BDJ4 settings for viewing and working with classical music.
After the music is separated, I will be turning on auto-organize and re-organizing the audio files. I'll be making lots of backups in case there are bugs in the organization process. Of course, whatever bugs I find will get fixed.
As always, if there are any issues with BDJ4, little things that bug you, small features you want to see, let me know.
At this time, I am going to pause my work on BDJ4 development.
This week, I am going to work on cleaning up my music collection. At the moment, most of my CDs and ballroom music are all mixed together, and I want to separate them out (I will be using the "alternate folders" (I wish I had a better name for that) functionality in BDJ4 to create separate databases. The classical music is already separate, it was easy, I just need to figure out my BDJ4 settings for viewing and working with classical music.
After the music is separated, I will be turning on auto-organize and re-organizing the audio files. I'll be making lots of backups in case there are bugs in the organization process. Of course, whatever bugs I find will get fixed.
As always, if there are any issues with BDJ4, little things that bug you, small features you want to see, let me know.