beaTunes News

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

64 bit beaTunes Beta for Snow Leopard

beaTunes2 logoFor a while now, Apple has handed out developer seeds of its next generation operating system dubbed Snow Leopard. Its focus lies on making OS X a true 64 bit operating system. For us developers this means that the old 32 bit QuickTime API will probably not work anymore.

And because the regular beaTunes still has some dependencies to QuickTime and is also still compatible with OS X 10.4, you can't just run it on Snow Leopard.

But! I'm working on migrating beaTunes to 64 bit. Unfortunately, as a side effect, I will have to drop support for OS X 10.4.

If you are running Snow Leopard, feel free to check out this 64 bit Early Access version of beaTunes. It still has some visual problems (e.g. the toolbar has the wrong gradient), but it should more or less work.

beaTunes-2-0-8-osx-64.dmg

Feedback is very welcome!

Update: Seems like this build is working fine on Leopard 64 bit, but not yet in Snow Leopard. Analysis most likely leads to a program crash.

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beaTunes 2.0.8

beaTunes2 logobeaTunes 2.0.8 is out. Here's the short list of changes:

  • Fixed 'Analyze/Inspect New Songs'
  • Amazon requests are now signed
  • Deleted tracks are now moved to trash/recycling bin, if possible
  • Switched key notation to flats
  • Added clock hand to key

I'd like to give a little bit more detail about the last three items.

Before 2.0.8, deleted tracks were only removed from the iTunes database, but the actual files remained on the harddrive. 2.0.8 changes this - files are now deleted (or put in the trash/recycling bin). For more info on this and on how to delete files of duplicates that you removed with pre 2.0.8, see this posting.

The key notation was switched from sharps to flats, because many users using the Camelot wheel find it easier to refer to keys in this notation. Because the company that came up with the wheel, regards the number code their intellectual property, we can't simply display that number. But to make things a little easier, I added a little clock hand to the key color. This hand points in the same direction in which the key would be located on the Camelot wheel, thus making it easier to figure out what keys match harmonically.

keys with clock hands

Much of these enhancements are based on user input (Thank you!) - I really hope this improves the quality and usefulness of the software for harmonic mixing.

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Deleting orphaned Files

beaTunes2 logoAs most of you know, beaTunes has the ability to find and delete duplicates. Up to version 2.0.7, these duplicates were only deleted from the iTunes database, but the actual files were not removed. I changed this in 2.0.8 - whenever possible, files are now moved to the trash/recycling bin or are simply deleted, should trash or recycling bin not be available (e.g. on network drives). But if you have deleted duplicates with an old version of beaTunes, it might be difficult to identify the files that are not referenced by iTunes anymore.

To solve the dilemma, I wrote a little plugin, that compares the iTunes database with all the files in a folder, i.e. the music folder where you keep your mp3's etc. in.

Note that this only makes sense, when you let iTunes manage your music collection or all your music files are in one folder that contains nothing but those files!

To install the plugin, download deleteorphans-1.0.0.jar and place it in your plugin folder (see this posting to find out where that is). The next time you start beaTunes, there will be an additional entry in your Tools menu called Delete orphans. Click on it and enter the location of your music folder, which is usually called iTunes Music. This folder should contain nothing but your audio/video files!

The plugin now compares the iTunes library with the contents of that folder and presents a list of files it found in the folder (or its subfolders), but not in iTunes. Review the list carefully and make sure you only select those files that you actually want to delete, then delete them.

For those of you interested in how the plugin works, take a look at the sources.

This plugins has been updated!

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Monday, May 25, 2009

beaTunes 1.2.19 update

beaTunes2 logoFor all of you who still run beaTunes 1.2 - there is a minor update right here. The update offers nothing substantially new, but will make sure that the built-in Amazon related functionalities continue to work in the future.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Moving files to the Windows Recycling Bin in Java

beaTunes2 logoThis is a little random and has little to do with beaTunes. However, I thought I share...

As you may know, there is no way to move files to the Windows Recycling Bin in Java (instead of simply deleting them). It is however actually not very hard. All you need to do, is get a reference to a Shell object and use it to move your file. Now how do you get that Shell object? The easiest way is probably COM4J. The shell32 typelib id is 50a7e9b0-70ef-11d1-b75a-00a0c90564fe. Use it to generate some stubs. Then you simply write something like this:

final IShellDispatch shell = ClassFactory.createShell();
// you might want to make sure your parent path has back slashes!
final Folder fileFolder = shell.nameSpace(file.getParent());
final FolderItem fileItem = fileFolder.parseName(file.getName());
final Folder folder = shell.nameSpace(ShellSpecialFolderConstants.ssfBITBUCKET);
folder.moveHere(fileItem, null);

This assumes that file is the file you want to move to the trash.

That's it.

BTW: On OS X you can simply call AppleScript with something like tell application "Finder" to delete Posix File "<your filename here>" - it'll move your file to the trash.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Enjoy DSP coding? Heard of Replay Gain?

beaTunes2 logoHave you ever done any DSP coding? Well, if you have and you think you'd enjoy some DSP Java coding, let me know. I'm interested in adding a Replay Gain implementation to beaTunes and am looking for someone to code it up for me...

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

Parlez-vous français ?

beaTunes2 logoWell, do you speak French? If so, good for you. Because beaTunes is now available in French. That's right a French localization. Thanks to Ronald Armand Leroux, beaTunes 2.0.7 now has a French user interface on French computers.

Viva la France!

...and Canada, of course,

...and parts of Belgium,

...and, well you get the idea :-)

(and in case you didn't know, beaTunes also has a built-in German localization)

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Wednesday, May 6, 2009

beaTunes 2.0.6

beaTunes2 logoI just released beaTunes 2.0.6 - it contains mostly bug fixes. The most important one affects the missing file inspection - in some cases the entries were actually not deleted, but beaTunes didn't even show an error message. For info about other changes, please see NOTES.txt in the release.

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