beaTunes News

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Finding the Key

beaTunes LogoIn the past two weeks a bunch of things have changed on the analysis front. I got to test the new key analysis algorithm from EA10 and as a result completely rewrote it. Accuracy of the results should be much better now. I also introduced a second BPM detection algorithm called SimpleSoundEnergy, which is generally faster than the original one, but not quite as accurate. This is hopefully great for folks who quickly want to scan huge collections and don't care as much about accuracy.

Of course I fixed a bunch of little things that are too tedious to list here. But you might want to know, that I added a couple of new inspectors. The amazon album version inspector lets you easily remove the (Album Version) suffix that Amazon likes to append to their mp3 titles. The rarely used genre inspector let's you find genres that are hardly used and maybe should be replaced by other genres. Lastly, I added an inspection that finds dupes with different ratings and lets you adjust them.

And 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 (even though we make a reasonable effort)
  • 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: EA11 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

Note for EA10 users

There will be some updates to the database. Make sure the analysis queue is empty before starting EA11 for the first time. If that is not possible, please note that BPM tasks that are still in the queue will probably fail.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Fixes, Fixes, Fixes

beaTunes LogoWow - EA9 brought a couple of issues to light, which I hopefully have addressed in today's EA10. So expect a bunch of more or less obvious fixes. OutOfMemoryErrors are hopefully a thing of the past...

The biggest new item is the spanking new tonal key analysis. Finally, beaTunes now knows how to fill that key field it already supported for quite a while. However, the algorithm still needs some testing and tuning, so results may vary.

And 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 (even though we make a reasonable effort)
  • 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: EA10 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

Note for EA9 users

There will be some updates to the database.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Dealing with Leopard Java Update 2

beaTunes LogoThose of you who use beaTunes on Leopard and installed the recent Java Update 2 probably have noticed that a couple of buttons as well as table headers look a little odd (behavior described here). Margins have changed and somehow the table headers seem to be painted twice. The latest beaTunes update should fix all these problems.

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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Featuring: Savable Matchlists

beaTunes LogoYes, it's time again for a beaTunes Early Access release - this one's number 9.

The biggest new item is the ability to save Matchlists. Yep, that's right - you can now create Matchlists and re-run the same rules, seeds etc. to update the already created playlist. This is particularly useful, when you added a bunch of songs to your library since you created the Matchlist. Or you fine-tuned the used ruleset and want to apply these changes. Or... well, I guess you got the idea. To update a Matchlist, just CTRL/Right-click on the list icon and choose Update Matchlist.

Another major improvement for Matchlists is the selection of multiple seed songs. You don't anymore have to select all seed songs before you create the Matchlist. You can start with some easily selectable songs, open the Matchlist dialog, and then add some more songs, by simply dragging them into the dialog.

I also tried to undo the damage done to the user interface by Apple's Java 1.5.0_16 update, which left most button margins/insets in a rather unattractive state.

Alright, 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 (even though we make a reasonable effort)
  • 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: EA9 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

Note for EA8 users

There will be some updates to the database.

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