New in version 0.5: Improved waveform drawing and UI!

It’s been just couple days since v0.4 release. But I’ve been hard at work to improve the UX and features, so here is another new release for you.

New preview controls

Playback controls in the bottom now have volume slider and speed control.

Version v0.5 adds preview sound volume and playback speed controls. Volume is controlled with a standard slider and preview playback speed with a dropdown or keyboard with L/K, like in most video editors.

Hopefully you don’t have so much footage you need the 8.0x speed. But if you must, now you can!

Waveform display

The old waveform was normalized and scaled so that loudest parts of a track always reach the top of the display regardless of the absolute volume level. The scaling caused issues where the quiet parts would show nothing at all. Maybe I’m alone, but I think this sort of defeats the purpose of having a waveform display:

Old v0.4 waveforms. Quiet parts show nothing at all!

The new waveform actually shows something, which is a significant improvement!

Same video, now with inf times more useful waveform display!

Besides actually showing something, this new waveform is not normalized so it can be used for mixing. When the waveform gets close to the top, there is risk of clipping.

When changing the mix level, the bars respond! In this example 400% levels, makes even the quiet parts almost clip.

The new waveform also renders faster and is cached to an offscreen image buffer. Hopefully this is enough to make the playback and timeline scrolling smooth even on low end hardware. I’ll continue to monitor the situation and do my best to make sure the app is inclusive even to underpowered laptop users.

Conclusion

Other than that there were some minor quality of live improvements. Biggest of which is that transcript can now started even before the audio is fully loaded. So now you can open a long video, immediately press transcript and go get coffee or something. If everything goes smoothly the transcript should be ready and waiting for you.

So check out v0.5 in downloads page. I hope I continue to bring you new and impactful updates to the software at a good rate! Don’t forget to leave feedback and ask for new features, preferably through Discord, but email to santtu@smartmediacutter.com or the contact us page is also good.


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