Windows, accelerate!

Today's Early Access release 3 almost didn't happen. First, the Security Update 2008-004/Safari 3.1.2 wrecked our Subversion server, then our hosting service had a power outage (which wouldn't have been all that bad) combined with a backup power failure (which turned out to be pretty bad). So with most of our infrastructure down the drain, things looked pretty bleak as of this morning.

Fortunately, since then, thing's have improved. Our Subversion server is back online (even our continuous integration system Continuum is running) and since you can read this blog entry, our hosting provider managed to get things going again.

But let's talk about more pleasant things. EA3 is out and it should be a blast for Windows users. Yep, that's right, we finally got to do something Big for You! The major improvement in EA3 is analysis speed. We changed our Windows decoding/decompression code to mirror what we have done a while ago on OS X using CoreAudio. This should lead to much quicker analysis (BPM and color) and an overall much more responsive system during analysis. And we'd love to get feedback about this! Let us know, whether the speedup is as great as we think it is... Also, let us know, if any files bomb, i.e. lead to crashes. Changing the decoder is always a tricky thing and in the past we have run into a number of issues with people's audio files. There is definitely some obscure stuff out there...

The other thing we got to improve is the typo inspector. Simply put: Expect fewer false positives.

So - here's the obligatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

Just so that there is no doubt about it: EA3 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA3 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA3 (Windows)

Note for EA2 users

EA3 does not change the database schema introduced in EA2. So if you had EA2 running successfully, EA3 will not try to migrate any data. If you never got EA2 to work, because of database issues, you are probably best of simply renaming or deleting the database folder (see EA2 post for exact names) and the file beaTunes2 Music Library.xml before running EA3. This will recreate the database and import old color/BPM etc. data.

beaTunes 2.0 Early Access 2

Thanks to all the brave people who downloaded EA1 and took it for a ride. Your feedback was very valuable for EA2, which is available as of today.

Changes include a workaround for a memory leak in Java 6 on Windows, lowered memory consumption while importing beaTunes 1 data, more responsive UI for big libraries, a new Duplicates Inspector, a new play/skip-ratio column etc. We have not changed the BPM algorithm or, for that matter, anything that has to do with analysis. Again, we are looking for feedback - please let us know what's great and what just doesn't work.

And here's the mandatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

To make this perfectly clear: EA2 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA2 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA2 (Windows)

Important Note for EA1 users

EA2 contains code that migrates the EA1 database to the new EA2 format. beaTunes will start iTunes (if it is not started already), then convert your database. Depending on the size of your database, this may take a long time, we've seen up to 30min, but it may be longer. You will not get any visual feedback until the conversion is completed, so please be patient, get a coffee and call a friend you haven't talked to in a while.

The conversion is a one-time process. If for some reason you have worked a lot with EA1 and need to be sure that the data is imported correctly, we recommend that you back up your database files before starting EA2. To do so, copy ~/Library/Application Support/beaTunes/Database or c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.beaTunes\database to a safe location.

One of the reasons why the conversion takes so long, is the fact that we changed the datatype of the primary keys in the biggest tables to achieve better overall performance.

Got balls and a huge library? Test our Early Access version!

In the past couple of months we have made an effort to make some progress with beaTunes 2. One of the most important goals is better scalability, i.e. the ability to efficiently manage larger libraries while consuming fewer system resources. As a consequence, we have rewritten most of beaTunes' guts. Today, we'd like to ask the brave among you to check out what we've achieved so far.

Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

To make this perfectly clear: EA1 isn't even a beta version.

Of course, the purpose of this release is to obtain feedback from real users. Please don't hesitate to contact us and let us know what does or does not work, is taking too long or does not fulfill your expectations in any other way.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA1 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA1 (Windows)

Enjoy!

beaTunes 1.2.11 is released

Alright, beaTunes isn't quite Firefox 3, but it too has a new release out. As the version number 1.2.11 indicates, this is mostly a maintenance release - no new features are introduced. We're saving those for beaTunes 2...

This is not to say that nothing has changed. We finally taught our iTunes Music Library.xml parser to deal with the malformed XML files exported by iTunes. Yes, you read that right: iTunes exports malformed XML. More specifically, the iTunes XML exporter does not safeguard against illegal UTF-8 or illegal XML characters. RFC-3629 clearly prohibits encoding character numbers between U+D800 and U+DFFF, which are reserved for use with the UTF-16 encoding form (as surrogate pairs) and do not directly represent characters. Unfortunately, users have told us again and again that their iTunes Music Library.xml contains such characters. The same is true for the non-characters U+FFFF and U+FFFE. They are contained in some libraries, but are clearly illegal in XML.

We assume that the bad characters stem from bad id3 tags - iTunes probably copies them without paying any attention to their legality. In any case, instead of choking, beaTunes will now silently ignore them.

UnsatisfiedLinkError: beaTunes, Leopard and Java 6

A little while ago, Apple finally released Java 6 for Leopard. Unfortunately, the 64bit Java 6 does not support QuickTime for Java anymore. Why? QuickTime for Java depends on Carbon, for which Apple is dropping support in 64bit environments.

What does this mean for beaTunes? In the long term we will move away from the QuickTime for Java API on OS X. We already utilize CoreAudio in parts of the application, which will not be affected by Apple's discontinued support for Carbon based APIs. We will replace the remaining code that is still using QuickTime.

Are users affected by this right now? Yes, unfortunately they are. As beaTunes works quite nicely with Java 6 on Windows, the current OS X version of beaTunes (1.2.9) will also start with Java 6, if it is installed. And this will fail due to the reasons mentioned above with an UnsatisfiedLinkError. To fix this, one needs to edit the file Contents/Info.plist in the beaTunes application bundle and replace the existing JVMVersion string with the value 1.5* (instead of 1.5+)

We will release an update next week, which contains this fix.

SynchStep is public!

A little while ago, we pointed you to SynchStep, which back then was still in private beta. As of yesterday, SynchStep is public.

From the press release:

"SynchStep is a fun and easy experimental way to plays songs from your music library that match your pace. That means when you're out struttin your stuff down "My Favorite Street", every step you take lands in-time with a drum hit, a bass slap, a piano chord. It's kind of like being in your own music video, where your your music becomes the soundtrack to your life. Ya, it's just like a your own music video, except you don't have to pay 3 hundo to some smug director and let his smarmy crew use your bathroom."

To support this special project, tagtraum industries has created a nifty little plugin for beaTunes, which automatically writes the BPM information into the comment field, so that it can be easily read by the SynchStep application on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can get a special version of beaTunes from the SynchStep site that has the plugin already installed.

For those of you interested in how to write a plugin for beaTunes, check out the source code and email us any question you might have.

Let the music follow You

As you all know, beaTunes has the ability to measure the tempo of your music. Many runners use it to create playlists with a certain BPM and then exercise to that tempo. But what if you did it the other way around? What if you were already walking or running and wanted to listen to music that matches your speed? Well, there is a new software for iPhone and iPod Touch called SynchStep that does just that.

Developer Greg Elliott has been tinkering with the concept of a personal soundtrack for a while. Early incarnations of the idea were custom built devices - the new iPhone approach does not need any additional hardware. It's all about the user:

"This device is not concerned with an optimal workout or improving the health of america. It is intended to de-optimize us, and do away with the notion of an 'optimal' walk or run. There is no program to follow, or pre-determined track; you begin walking and the computer follows you, adapting to you and your walking style without protest. It supports meandering, wasting time, and loitering."

The software is currently in private beta.