I've decided to try out G+ Communities and figured a good way would be to create a community for TellDJ. All the latest updates about TellDJ will be posted there, as well as allowing you to get in touch and discuss any issues or ideas. This page is now the preferred way of discussing TellDJ (but you can still use Twitter if you prefer or the other methods described in the Backstage section of TellDJ.com) So if you're on G+, feel free to join the TellDJ Community page and get involved with TellDJ :)
Since it was 12/12/12, I decided to release the current version of TellDJ (version 0.9). It's almost complete, but now I need to field test it to ensure that it works well for you. Please download it and let me know how it's going for you. Whether it's working or not, please drop a comment so I know if anything needs changing. Get your ideas and suggestions in for version 1.0!
I made it free on the PC as a thank you for your support and enthusiasm for the original prototype. Hope you enjoy it :)
A few hours ago, I was tweeted about a bug that stopped any custom album or genre pronunciations from saving. This meant that if you edited any of those and tried to save them, they wouldn't persist after the Voice Recognition Lab was closed. I've managed to find a fix and you can now download the update (version 1.2.1) below:
Update if you already have TellDJ Rehearsal installed (don't uninstall current installation)
Full installation if you haven't installed TellDJ Rehearsal before
Apologies for any inconvenience. Please let me know how you're finding the latest version. There have been quite a few changes so it'd great to keep track of how they're affecting your experience.
As you've probably guessed from the title, version 1.2 has been released. The main new features include the ability to launch albums and genres, as well as being able to delete tracks, artists, albums, and genres from the Voice Recognition Lab (without affecting the actual audio file). There is also a new window that pops up when you update or reset your library which lets you list all words you want removed from the pronunciation.
The update will not affect your current pronunciations but after you install it, make sure you update your library. This will bring in all albums and genres and automatically assign them to the current tracks in the VRL. The only thing that's not possible is using the word removal feature on existing tracks. If you reset the library, then the word remover will remove all words, but you'll lose any custom pronunciations. Allowing existing VRL tracks to be affected by the word remover would take too much development time and I'd rather shift my focus on to the Windows Phone app now.
There is quite a big change in the way things work behind the scenes, so if you find any bugs, please let me know.
If you have TellDJ Rehearsal already installed, you can download the update from here. If you haven't installed TellDJ Rehearsal yet(?!), then you can download the full 1.2 version from here.
Thanks for all your emails and feedback. I am now shifting my focus on to the phone app, but do let me know if you run into any issues.
I've just launched (literally a moment ago) an album on my PC using TellDJ Rehearsal. Feels awesome :) Soon you will be too and, as requested in a comment on another post, genres are also included. The main reason these options weren't included in the initial version was because they were slowing the start up time.
I've got it working and carried out a couple of speed tests on my machine. After some tweaking, I've managed to load up 1 album every 1 millisecond or so. Assuming you have 700 albums, that's 700ms which is barely noticeable. Of course, the actual speeds will vary depending on your machine, but hopefully you won't notice any difference in the start up time from what you're currently experiencing. Not bad, eh? :D
Back to reality...
There's still a bit more work to do. Firstly, there are some tests I need to carry out to ensure nothing has been broken in the optimization process. I also need to update the VRL to now support the deleting and undeleting of albums, just like you can with individual tracks and artists.
This update really does shake things up in the background and might result in you losing your current custom pronunciations. However, as I mentioned on the Feedback page, I aim to release a tool that will let you backup your pronunciations and use them in the new version (if this update will delete the data).
So, with the backup tool, testing, and VRL updates, I expect to release the update from middle to late next week. Unless something major comes up in terms of bugs, things will be moving to the phone...
If you haven't got TellDJ Rehearsal yet, or are wondering what the heck's going on, head on over here.
Whilst I wait for my PC to restart, I figured I'd write a quick post explaining the current development situation. Well, 2 out of the 3 features you guys suggested have been implemented. I've talked about how the delete function will work in that previous link, so I'll explain how the word removal function works. When you click on 'Update' or 'Reset' library, a new window pops up. In this window, you can choose whether or not you want to remove any words from the default pronunciations created. Any words you do want to remove can be added to a list (the list is saved so you don't have to keep typing the words everytime you update or reset the library). For example, here is a list:
Feat
ft.
ExPliciT
Remix
Remastered
Now as you can see, it doesn't matter if the letters are uppercase or lowercase. Also, no special characters need to be included such as "Feat." (with a full-stop). Don't worry, if you forget about not adding any special characters, TellDJ Rehearsal will remove it for you like it does with the pronunciations. Now let's say I want to add a song called
ArtistCalledFeaturing - Best Song Ever (remastered REMIX)
The default pronunciation will now be
"ArtistCalledFeaturing" and "BestSongEver".
The reason for this is because the word remover only removes whole words. This is good because you wouldn't want to remove the 'ft' from 'daft punk', but you would want to remove it from 'daft punk ft. another artist'.
Of course, you can copy and paste the list of words, so it's easy to share lists with others and in other languages.
The only downside is that it won't go back on your current pronunciations unless you reset the library. However, you can just leave your current pronunciations and use 'Update' which will only affect any new tracks introduced from then on.
Now on to the hardest part - Album/Genre launching in an efficient way :D
I just encoutered some trouble getting an artist to launch and ended up fixing th recognition within a couple seconds, using the Voice Recognition Lab. For those who haven't used it, or want an example of one of the things it can do, I figured I'd write what I did.
I wanted to launch all tracks by Akon, so I said "Artist Akon". Unfortunately, it didn't recognise it and so I opened up the Voice Recognition Lab, went to the 'Test Centre' and tried it there. Sure enough, nothing came up. I then pronounced it 'Ah-kon' (The 'A' being pronounced in the same way as saying 'Apple' in English) and it worked. So, to fix this, I went to the 'Artists' tab, typed in 'Akon' and changed the pronunciation column to 'Aikon' which is more phonetically correct. Clicked Save, fired up TellDJ Rehearsal, said "Artist Akon" (as I'd normally pronounce it) and all his tracks started playing. Simple :)
If you haven't tried out TellDJ Rehearsal yet, click here.
I released version 1.1 of TellDJ Rehearsal yesterday and everything seems to be working well. I hope you like the new request methods that was suggested to me on Twitter. I've started using the auto-off feature myself as standard. (Click on the icon then carry on doing what I was doing whilst saying the name of the track). Well, now that 1.1 is out the door, this is what I plan for the next update:
There's only been one unfixed bug that remains which is to do with certain key combinations not working and so I will look into that. However, my main focus is once again based on your feedback:
Delete tracks from the VRL - Good news! I've just finished implementing the deletion feature :D It goes a couple steps further than just deleting tracks. You can also delete artists in such a way that you only remove the artist name but keep their tracks. This is useful if you never want to use 'Artist <artist name>' for that particular artist. However, there is now a button to delete all tracks by a particular artist. This will, as the description suggests, let you quickly remove an artist and their tracks from the TellDJ Rehearsal library. Remember, deleting anything from the TDJ Rehearsal library won't affect your actual MP3 files or your Zune collection. I decided to go one step further to make it even more convenient. There is now a 'Deleted' tab which displays all tracks that have been deleted. You can then undelete any track that you want to bring back into the collection. This means you don't have to reset the entire library, which would bring back every deleted track, just to undelete a few.
Bulk remove common words (e.g. 'featuring', 'ft', 'feat.' etc...) - This was suggested to me and I aim to get it in for the next update. I'm considering implementing this in such a way that you can either type in a list of words that you want removed, or you can download a text file that contains the words for you. This text file would be useful in a community sense because it means everyone can contribute and edit it for various languages.
The big one - Launch albums and genres - This has been requested a few times and I aim to get in for version 1.2. It was left out of the original for performance reasons. Judging from the feedback, the tracks, artists and playlists are generally getting good recognition, so I'm going to focus on adding albums and genres in an efficient way.
There's no estimated time for version 1.2. The deletion aspect is pretty much done, so it's now just the other two. If things go smoothly and, in programming, they rarely do, I'll be looking for another Sunday launch. (Yes, this upcoming Sunday). I'll keep you guys and girls in the loop anyway over the course of the week, or when I manage to finish one of the other suggestions.
Usual place to keep up to date and be notified about any updates is this blog and Twitter. Don't forget, you can also visit the Backstage section to see if any bugs you come across have been reported. If not, then please get in touch and let me know so I can look into fixing them.
