Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Eheh, just to call to my self on N900. But from N9 is the idea of pop up question with saving or not.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

This sounds like a great idea.

I can imagine having 3 options for each list of numbers:
A) Do not record
B) Record
C) Ask after each call

But then the logic would have to be different, since blacklist and whitelist would not be enough..
Also it might be useful to enable/disable recording just for unknown numbers.

I also have one feature request myself. It might be out of scope of this app, so no pressure there :) :
I'm using the recording function of N900 mainly for recording lectures and seminars and I miss an option to somehow synchronize my notes with the recording. So it would be nice if there was some kind of text input box while recording, so I could just post a quick note. I'm not sure if there is any standard for this, so it could just create a .txt file next to the audio file and with each note do something like:
By the way, thanks for this app, Copernicus, I'll try it when I have time.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Interesting! Actually, there is a standard for this, although for a different use: subtitles. I'm an Anime addict, and not a speaker of Japanese, so I've become somewhat familiar with the art of subtitling; there's been an enormous amount of progress made in recent years managing the synchronization of short lines of text with a running video. And I've even seen it done with audio as well. Let me see if GStreamer has any built-in support for subtitling, and see if I can mess around with it...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Hey, quick note for anybody using Orecchiette -- for audio playback, I've been using the default Gstreamer plugin "playbin2", a generic playback plugin that supports all sorts of audio and video. And, I'm embarrassed to say, I forgot to tell it to only play back audio...

So, in fact, if you want, right now you can play back a video using Orecchiette. It doesn't work very well (the title bar stays on the screen), but it's something to play with if you're bored. :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I think i might have been not clear enough - I meant that container is absolutely Off-topic here, as we need *just* audio in vorbis (which ends up in files with .ogg extension). The confusion arise, because .OGG is sometimes used as a container (but, nowadays, it's rather good habit to store audio-video containers as .ogv), but what interest us for Orecch' is, in any case "plain" .ogg file of vorbis-encoded audio.

Hm, but I wasn't talking about advanced parameters for gstreamer, I just mean't parameters given to encoder (vorbis or whatever). But I may be talking nonsense here, as I'm not familiar with gstreamer too - so, let me ask you a question:
How do you encode captured audio into <whatever>? Are there some build-in encoders in gstreamer and you're using it, or you just pass result of whole pipeline to Vorbis encoder? If the latter, it's where I mean those advanced parameters should be passed.

If, OTOH, gstreamer handles everything (inc. encoding), I'm sure it also passes commands to encoder via gstreamer plugins (correct me if I'm wrong), and I would be pretty surprised, if gstreamer wouldn't allow to pass some additional parameters to encoder.

I think it would be very useful feature - for example, I'm quite experienced with codecs, formats, and audio parameters, but I don't have a clue about gstreamer, let alone being able to construct it's pipeline (for anything). That's why I would like Orecch' to handle all those things (and dbus, and so goes on), but let me pass some parameters to encoder itself.

AIUI, video that we get (and send) during video call, is already compressed for sending through internet (either by us if talking about what we send, or by another party, so we receive compressed one already). So a way to just plain save what we got (and final result of what we send, just before sending it into vast plains of net), could be all we need.

But, I agree, that it doesn't sounds like priority functionality in Orecch'.

/Estel

// Edit

Hey, thanks a lot for putting me into credits :o:o:o Even more thanks, for putting SPX as default encoding options - this small, brilliant codec really deserves it. NFC why someone could get idea that "it doesn't work well on windows", btw? Leaving alone fact, that windows is hardly a mark for quality (well, ext* also doesn't work "well" in windows ;) ), Speex works well on my windows machine since day 1 (of Speex public releases). I can hardly even imagine, how some recorder audio file may "not work well" on some OS...

// Edit 2

Would it be possible, to allow choosing quality (either 8 kHz or 16 kHz, IIRC) for speex?

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Yes, GStreamer is a complete audio/video management package; it has "elements" available to handle every step of audio processing, from retrieving raw data, processing it, encoding it, and storing it; or the other way around, pulling encoded data out of a file (or other source), decoding, processing, and displaying it.

If you want, you can call each of these elements directly from the command line. You can use a "pipe" mechanism to direct the output of one element into the input of another, thus the term "pipleline". :) This is, in fact, how Recaller is using GStreamer. Used in this manner, you can pass command-line arguments directly to each element.

You can also construct elements within your own code; this is how I'm doing it. Used in this way, you can receive signals to get updates on how the element is working, or send commands to change its behavior. I have access to all the same parameters, I just need to make those parameters available to you (in some form).

I'll see about adding controls as I go. I could probably re-use Pierogi's "endless panel" mechanism here to provide every last detail of every last element, if you'd like... :)

Ah, true; that would make things a lot simpler...

Yeah, if I'm going to dip my toes into the world of video, I think I'd prefer to start an entirely different pasta for it. :)

Actually sending that parameter to the "speexenc" element is trivial. Coming up with a decent user interface for it is probably a little more effort, but I'll come up with something... :) Thanks!

Edit: There are a lot of Speex parameters in this element. :) They have 8, 16, and 32 kHz modes available (along with an "Auto" mode, which apparently chooses the mode that most closely matches the audio source). And, they've also got a separate "Quality" parameter, with an integer value ranging from 0 to 10. Anyway, I'll see if I can make these parameters available...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I haven't been here for a few days and when I come back what do I see? Copernicus, you are unstopable!

I want to start developing. Are there any guides that you followed to get started? Something that gives the big picture? I'm good about following details, I just don't know how to take the first bite.

I'll install this later and test. Thank you!

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Well, hmm. How big of a picture are we talking here? :)

For me, the one thing that has been my best guide for developing on the N900 has to be the Qt SDK. As an SDK, it isn't perfect, and has a lot more rough edges than you'll find in commercial SDKs, but man is it just chock full of useful stuff. Documentation, example code, the works.

(I should note that Qt 4.7 was the last version that had explicit support for Maemo. I think Qt 4.8 can still build Maemo executables, but you'll probably want to stay away from Qt 5.0 and greater...)

Another enormous advantage for developing on the N900 -- there's a huge library of high-quality open-source code available. You can learn a lot by just grabbing an app that you like, opening up its source code, and working your way through it. :)

I should say, if you don't already have a background in writing code, it might be helpful to first work your way through an "introduction to programming" book or website. Having at least a general idea of what a line of code can and cannot do can be a great help in understanding what folks are doing in their code, and why...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I just tested 0.0.1 version and did not recorded a received call even though Record Phone Call and "no limit..." options ticked. i tried using the default output format (.spx).
Thanks.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Yeah, sorry, it seems that the DBus signals I'm using aren't quite the right ones for receiving calls. I'm working on it. :)

Also, turns out I've got the encoder selection messed up, so it isn't actually recording in Speex when you choose SPX. :( I'm working on that too...