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Release notes

Release notes for Obi 2.0 released on October 20, 2011.

Obi 2.0 presents a rich new feature set and enhancements, developed keeping in mind the requirements of masses as well as classes. The advancements of this release stem from both suggestions from DAISY community and constant brainstorming sessions of Obi’s team. The introductions and improvements range from implementing long awaited features like DAISY book import and configurable keyboard shortcuts to feature requests like advanced recording mode to internal performance improvements and rectification of known limitations.

New features and enhancements of Obi 2.0

  • Introducing DAISY 3 import along with structure import from DTBook.xml. The command New project from import is enhanced to import audio and structure from DAISY 3 book as well as structure only from DTBook.xml and XHTML file.
  • To increase adaptability of Obi, users are provided with a flexibility to redefine keyboard shortcuts for various operations in Obi.
  • A pop-up recording toolbar is introduced that will remain on screen even after minimizing Obi. It will facilitate the book narrator to read out the contents from scanned images while controlling recording at the same time.
  • Advance recording mode is introduced to make the recording process more efficient and expeditious, which enables the features - Start recording from cursor erasing the following audio, Always record directly from transport bar and Allow overwrite option.
  • The process of restoring project from backup has been automated.
  • The merge section function has been enhanced to merge multiple contiguous sections.
  • Users can now choose to fix the width of Content view or make it variable; fixing the width would result in minimal re-alignment even if the phrase exceeds the width of Content view, preserving the orientation to avoid disruption of workflow.
  • The time display control of Transport bar presents new set of options to watch elapsed or remaining time.
  • Export audio feature has been introduced that creates an external audio file from audio contained in a phrase or a section, enabling its external processing.
  • The DAISY 3 export function has been enhanced to provide better performance and flexibility by the way of providing the users with a choice to have exported audio files in either WAV or MP3 format, eliminating the need of encoding the audio files to MP3 explicitly.
  • DAISY 2.02 export now allows the users to export blank page phrases to a DTB, giving the flexibility to the publisher if the intended audience does not wish to hear the page numbers while listening the audio content of the book.
  • DAISY3 permits a page phrase to be the first phrase of the section, whereas DAISY 2.02 does not. This release of Obi comes with a workaround for adjusting page phrases during export operation without requiring any user intervention.
  • Enhanced Obi remembers the item last selected before closing the project. When the project is reopened, focus will be set on this bookmarked item.
  • Users can now choose to retain the initial silence (present at the beginning of the phrase) as the first phrase of the set of phrases resulting from the process of phrase detection.
  • Users can go to a location in audio content of an item using time.
  • The duration of some of the audio operations is now modifiable.

List of some major bug fixes in this release:

  • The command Clean unreferenced audio used to throw Open data provider stream exception.
  • Occasionally, an Arithmetic overflow exception used to occur while stopping the Fast forward or Rewind operations.
  • The command Normal speed with elapse back used to throw exception, when used after the Preview command.
  • When the Merge sections operation was undone, the hierarchy of sections used to get lost.
  • Altering the audio format (channel and sampling rate) in audio preferences used to have no effect on the audio format of the project.
  • Selecting a portion of waveform of a phrase and pressing down arrow used to result in an exception.
  • Performing Rewind when nothing was selected used to throw an exception sometimes.
  • The command Merge preceding phrase used to delete all the phrases of the section, in case the first phrase of the section was a blank phrase.
  • The Undo command used to make the Content view empty, if recording was started when nothing was selected.
  • Play all could not be stopped, if it was executed after performing Rewind or Fast forward on an empty section.

List of some major bugs fixed in Obi 2.0 Alpha & Beta releases

  • Import audio files operation used to reverse the order of the resultant phrases with respect to imported audio files.
  • Undo of a cut and paste operation on a portion of a waveform used to fail.
  • After performing the Import audio files operation with "Create one section for each audio file" option checked, if user performed undo followed by a redo, a "Redo stack empty" message used to appear with termination of the redo operation.
  • The undo operation rendered the Content view empty if it was performed after a split section command when all the phrases of the sections were empty.
  • The process of opening a project in Obi 2.0 was slower as compared to that of Obi 1.2.
  • Memory overload used to occur when the user pressed the Left and Right arrow keys very rapidly through more than 500 phrases in Content view.
  • After using the Preview command on the selected audio, pressing Space resulted in playback of the entire phrase, instead of the playback of the audio selection.
  • When the user used to press the Cancel button on the Phrase detection dialog, Obi used to take long time to terminate the process.
  • If the user used to change the used status using the Section properties dialog, Obi used to alter the status of the section without affecting the used status of its phrases.

Details about list of removed bugs is also available.

Download Obi 2.0

To download Obi 2.0, please visit the download page: download page

Known limitation

There are some limitations in this release. The team is working consciously towards resolving them. Please visit the known limitations page to know more about them.

Support

If you would like to discuss some Obi feature or report a bug, it can be done on Obi forum or you can send an email at obi.feedback@gmail.com. To verify if the bug has already been submitted, please see the list of reported bugs.