Here are some teaser videos of the Loop Motion touch-less drum machine.
Loop Motion Sneak Peek
Announcing Loop Motion
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a developer unit of the Leap Motion device. This device will become available in Best Buy stores in May. In my initial brainstorming quite a few ideas came up, mostly around audio and sound…
Back in the mid-late 90’s a couple of friends and I spent a lot of time writing lyrics and making hip hop beats on our computers. Some of us ‘evolved’ from there and went onto hardware-only configurations. Back in the day the industry has relied on physical drum machines (like the legendary TR-909), but nowadays there are hardware/software solutions. There are arguments for using each, but either way you cut it, none of this is cheap.
How about a software solution which relies of inexpensive ‘hardware’, but it is ‘hardware’ that you never have to touch? Can we have a drum machine that is not a machine at all, but interacts with your hands just like one?
So currently I have a new software project underway called “Loop Motion”. It is passed the prototype stage, and now a working version is already in early production. Some of the features I hope to achieve are:
- Touch-less, velocity sensitive hand gestures for ‘beating’ on virtual drum pads
- Visualization of beats played
- Real-time recording of notes played by gestures
- Looped playback of the last recorded sequence while recording the next sequence
- Variable length bars and tempo control
- Load your own sound font or map notes to the virtual drum pads
- Multitrack support*
- Visualization of bars on tracks*
- Multiple instrument support*
- Effects*
*Items for future consideration, definitely not to be expected in version 1.0
This is a little different than any software project I’ve worked on these past twelve years, but I think it will be fun. Enjoy some photos for the meantime.
iCaption 2.2.0 Released
Another follow-up on the 2.x series includes mostly bug fixes, a more flexible timeline size and online translation search capabilities from allsubs.org.
- Added the ability to adjust the height of the subtitle timeline, taking further advantage of the multi-resolution waveform visualization algorithm, and allowing for finer-grained study of the audio track.
- Added a feature to search for translations of the currently loaded media.
- Fixed a sandbox connection denied issue after selecting a video, which may have occurred for users who have dictation input enabled in Mountain Lion, causing iCaption to not be able to load reference videos.
- Fixed a bug (from 2.0.0) with Adjust All Subtitles where the durations were incorrect.
- Fixed a bug (from 2.0.0) with automatic subtitle duration was not automatically setting the same duration that it was reporting.
- Fixed a bug when the subtitles list is filtered by a search, and clicking on a subtitle will show a preview from the unfiltered list.
iBodyFat 1.2.0 Released
What’s New in Version 1.2.0
– Added an average (mean) percentage column to the data table
– Added a line graph showing relative drops in body fat percentage, weight and BMI.
– Added the ability to modify the date that a measurement was taken in the data table (after the fact), in case you are adding backlogged information.
– Improved number formatting, alignment and spacing in the user interface.
– Updated multi resolution application icon for hi-res displays.
– Updated graphics and documentation.
Foods and Moods 1.1.0 Released
This release adds printing support, PDF export, mood ratings and many user interface improvements:
- Improved hi-res multiresolution icons.
- Added the ability to print or export to PDF, to allow you to show your log to your doctor or dietician.
- Added the ability to rate moods from 1-10.
- Added average (mean) rating of your logged moods to the summary.
- Added a prominent help button to the toolbar.
- Updated the Add Mood dialog with rating and the other fields.
- The summary view is now docked as a left panel instead of a toggled floating window.
- Fixed some bugs with calculating the summary.
- Moved the data filter (past 7 days, 30 days and all time) to the toolbar.
- The filter is now also for the meals and moods views, not just for the summary.
- Fixed a bug which caused multiple duplicates to be added to the available moods drop-down box. Previous computers which have duplicates will have the dupes removed after upgrading Foods and Moods and running it once.
- Updated the documentation.
iCaption 2.1.0 Released
iCaption 2.1.0 is a natural evolution of the 2.0.0 release. While this is a point release, it boasts just as many improvements as the last major release but continues to play on the same theme of improved timeline based subtitle editing, which was revamped in version 2.0.0. The single biggest new feature is waveform visualization right in your subtitle timeline. It comes at zero loading time cost, but only sections you have played will be made available. There are also many small improvements among editing and previewing, and new options which put you in control of fine tuning and preview playback.
- Keeping bugs in check
- Fixed a memory leak in the time formatting code.
- Fixed selection still in timeline after deleting or clearing.
- Fixed a bug in 10.7 Lion and greater, where the encodings dialog was freezing when the “ask on load” preference was set.
- Added waveform visualization of the loaded video’s audio track.
- Waveform data is overlayed right over the subtitles in the same timeline view.
- Waveform samples are collected in real-time for the portion you are editing as you play the video, so there is no loading.
- The waveform visualization algorithm is highly optimized for speed and memory efficiency, even with a large video.
- Easy access for fine-tuned editing.
- Added keyboard shortcuts and menu items for start/end/maker area nudging/scrubbing.
- Added keyboard shortcuts and menu items for scrubbing video to previous and next frame.
- Added keyboard shortcut and menu item for toggling fullscreen video mode.
- Added the ability to scope the timeline to the area bounded by the markers (e.g. full zoom to the marked area).
- Adding a subtitle in between two others in the timeline will now be considered an implied insert; explicit insert is still available.
- Further preview and playback improvements
- Preview playback can now start from anywhere; there is a separate ‘Preview from Beginning’ which restarts from the beginning.
- During preview playback you may now click on any subtitle in the list to continue the preview from that spot.
- Updated the video playback controls, and added a progress meter.
- New categorized modeless preferences window allows you to try out the preferences in iCaption while keeping the preferences window open.
- Added a preference which allows opening subitile files to append to the current subtitle list.
- Added a preference to turn the waveform visualization on or off.
- Added a preference to set the start/end marker scrubbing amount in milliseconds, for fine tuning.
- Added a preference to set preview timer precision in milliseconds.
- Added preset optimization options for performance-affecting preferences.
- Support for 32-bit Snow Leopard while still supporting Mountain Lion.
- Translucency for the film cell-like application dock icon.
- Updated the documentation.
Enjoy!
-Jeffrey Bakker
iKeepActive Lite 1.1.2 Released
Added a new mechanism for tracking when scheduled activities are due in Mountain Lion.
– For earlier versions of OS X, the Applescript system is still used for tracking due activities.
– Rearranged the flow of information on the Summary View for ease of the new user.
– Added 4 more available activities.
– Quite possibly one of the last versions to support Snow Leopard and Lion, so get it while you can.
– Dropped support for 32-bit.
iCaption – Development Life After 2.0
Development on iCaption 2.0 stopped over a month ago, winding down to the final phases before the end of the release cycle. While this version is huge, with many great new features, there are some wish list items which just couldn’t make the cut.
The most notable and sought-after feature, by myself and from customers, is waveform visualization, which happens to be the next natural step after implementing the new timeline view. Waveform visualization didn’t make the 2.0 cut simply because it’s difficult; the development scope could have easily doubled the timeline feature scope size, were it to be in this release.
There are multiple points of difficulty with waveform visualization and left unaddressed the application, frankly, will feel like shit, which will in turn soil the user experience rather than enrich it. I’ve seen an audio application make me wait for what felt like a minute, to analyze a 4 minute song – an algorithm like that would never fly if you’re trying to subtitle a 120 minute long movie.
Algorithmically there’s analyzing each frame of a video’s audio track in a timely manner, keeping the application responsive while operating on the former (which may include background loading or streaming while also keeping the video available to the user) and waveform data cache management. The background thread is tricky because a QTMovie must detach from the main thread in order to become accessible from another thread, but that would cause the video to be unavailable to the user, whom will be interacting via the main thread. There’s also coming up with a reasonably fast approach to drawing tens or hundreds of thousands of audio samples on screen at any time without the user noticing pegs in the CPU (and it can’t simply use a pre-render for each draw because the waveform should squish/stretch and cull based on the current view of the timeline).
On the API side, as far as I can tell the examples I’ve found for audio frequency level extraction which Apple provided seem to have no 64-bit support, forcing me to drop down and compile iCaption as 32-bit-only. This should in theory still work fine in the 64-bit Mountain Lion, but it’s unsettling at best to make your project have to “go there”. There may be some newer API but if it exists, I’m sure I’d have to drop Snow Leopard or even Lion support, as I’m seeing a trend for favouring Mountain Lion specific APIs. Worse case I would try to make one final Snow Leopard compatible release of iCaption before switching to the 10.8 SDK.
In ferocious spite of the above, I have already made enough serious headway with iCaption 2.1.0’s WIP to leave you all with a bit of a teaser.
Version 2.1.0 will be done when it’s done; don’t hold your breath.
iCaption 2.0.0 Released
The new major version bump to iCaption 2.0 is warranted, because this update is huge! I have taken into consideration the helpful input from customers, and have applied these ideas into a tangible, intuitive user experience. The main focus of this release is the new and powerful timeline editing which increases your workflow productivity, with a secondary focus on previewing, and tertiary improvements for an altogether better subtitle editing environment. Continue reading for the full feature list:
- Subtitle editing improvements, made possible by a new timeline view, which features the following:
- All subtitles are visualized in the timeline view.
- Selected subtitles will visualize overlapping to neighboring subtitles, in addition to the non-selected subtitles with overlapping times shown in red in the table view.
- Draggable start and end markers, which are used to add new subtitles or apply to existing subtitle start and end times.
- Markers can be moved individually, or panned together across the timeline.
- Show start and end marker position in real time while dragging.
- Scrub through the reference video by dragging the markers.
- Markers can also be nudged in either direction by a quarter of a second at a time.
- Zoom in and out of the timeline, changing the current scope of your view of the timeline.
- Panning the current scope relative to the timeline as a whole.
- Display of the scope start and the scope end times.
- Timeline panning and zooming are done with left mouse drag and right mouse drag respectively, complete with Shift and Control key modifiers to make it go faster or slower.
- Transferring times from the video position itself is no longer the workflow, but is still supported. (Since markers also do video scrubbing, transferring from marker position has the same effect)
- Subtitle previewing improvements:
- The preview is now layered right into the video view, rather than the hacky looking floating window. This also means that for now you can no longer detach the preview and move it around yourself.
- With certain file types the QTMovieLayer appears to have much smoother video scaling than previously.
- The preview font is much larger and has a black shadow under it.
- The preview timing is accurate to 250ms now instead of 300ms.
- Added the ability to play a selected video segment in a loop.
- All human readable times shown in the application are now easier to read (dropped the QuickTime formatting).
- Added a more prominent Help button on the toolbar.
- Main menu and toolbar updates.
- Updated the documentation.
- Updated the application icon.
Enjoy!
iKeepActive 1.2.2 Released
The latest version of iKeepActive (1.2.2) is now available in the Mac App Store now. The release focus is on Mountain Lion Fixes, but other features and improvements have also been added so updating is recommended for everyone on 64-bit Intel Macs.
– Added a new mechanism for tracking when scheduled activities are due in Mountain Lion.
– For earlier versions of OS X, the Applescript system is still used for tracking due activities.
– Added support for retiring scheduled activities. This allows you to remove an activity from your calendar while still keeping the history for tracking purposes. Retired activities can be re-scheduled.
– Rearranged the flow of information on the Summary View for ease of the new user.
– Added 4 more available activities.
– Quite possibly one of the last versions to support Snow Leopard and Lion, so get it while you can.
– Dropped support for 32-bit.
You must be logged in to post a comment.