TestFarm 2.0 released

We just released TestFarm 2.0. Now on GitHub.

You can install it by running:

sudo pip install testfarm

In Debian/Ubuntu, if you installed python-stdeb first, it will be installed as a deb package you can remove as other debian packages.

This release is a major rewrite on the server side. You can expect it more reliable, more scalable and easier to install. It is also easier to maintain.
Most changes are at the server and the client-server interface. Client API is mostly the same and migration of existing clients should be quite straight forward.

Regarding CLAM, it would be nice if we can get a bunch of CLAM testfarm clients. Now clients are easier to setup. In order to setup one, please, contact us.

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CLAM at Debian!

CLAM finally made its way into the official Debian repositories. Many thanks to the maintainer, Taniguchi Takaki.

http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/clam
http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/clam-networkeditor
http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/clam-chordata

Ubuntu PPA for CLAM

For the convenience of Ubuntu users, we deployed a personal package archive (PPA) in launchpad.

https://launchpad.net/~dgarcia-ubuntu/+archive/ppa

Instructions available at the same page. It currently contains libraries, extension plugins, NetworkEditor and Chordata packages for maverick, and platforms i386 and amd64.

CLAM Chordata 1.0

The CLAM project is pleased to announce the first stable release of Chordata, which is released in parallel to the 1.4.0 release of the CLAM framework.

Chordata is a simple but powerful application that analyses the chords of any music file in your computer. You can use it to travel back and forward the song while watching insightful visualizations of the tonal features of the song. Key bindings and mouse interactions for song navigation are designed thinking in a musician with an instrument at hands.

Chordata in live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVmkIznjUPE
The tutorial: http://clam-project.org/wiki/Chordata_tutorial
Downloat it at http://clam-project.org

This application was developed by Pawel Bartkiewicz as his GSoC 2008 project, by using existing CLAM technologies under a more suited interface which is now Chordata. Please, enjoy it.

CLAM 1.4.0, 3D molluscs in the space

The CLAM project is delighted to announce the long awaited 1.4.0 release of CLAM, the C++ framework for audio and music, code name 3D molluscs in the space.

In summary, this long term release includes a lot of new spacialization modules for 3D audio; MIDI, OSC and guitar effects modules; architectural enhancements such as typed controls; nice usability features for the NetworkEditor interface; convenience tools and scripts to make CLAM experience better; enhanced building of LADSPA plugins and new support for LV2 and VST plugin building; a new easy to use application to explore songs chords called Chordata; many optimizations, bug fixing and code clean ups.

Many thanks to the people who contributed to this release, including but not limited to the GSoC 2008 students and all the crew at Barcelona Media’s Audio Group.

Some details follow:

• Chordata is a new CLAM application which offers a user friendly way to explore the chords of your favourite songs, using already existing technology in the CLAM framework but with a much simpler interface. Video
• The spacialization module and helper tools, contributed by Barcelona Media audio group, turn CLAM in tandem with Blender and Ardour, into a powerful 3D audio authoring and exhibition platform. Here you can see some related Videos.
• Typed controls extend CLAM with the ability to use whichever C++ type as the message for a control. So, not just floats, but also bools, enums, integers, or envelopes can be sent as asynchronous controls. Examples on boolean and MIDI controls are provided.
• NetworkEditor has been ported to the QGraphicsView framework. Dealing with heavy networks such the big ones used in Barcelona Media have pushed many usability enhancements into its interface: multi-wire dragging, wire highlighting, default port and control actions, network and in-canvas documentation… Video
• It also made necessary to provide a tool such clamrefactor.py to perform batch high level changes to clam network XML files such as renaming processing types, ports, or configuration parameters, changing configuration values, duplicating sets of processings, connecting them…
• Music Annotator application now is designed to aggregate several sources of descriptors and update them after edit. Descriptors are mapped to a work description schema that can be graphically defined. Also semantic web descriptor sources to access webservices such as MusicBrainz have been implemented.

You can download them from the download page. Source, windows, debian and ubuntu packages are available. Contributed binaries for other platforms are welcome.

See also: development screenshots, the CHANGELOG, the version migration guide and the new CLAM group on youtube.

CLAM at LAC 2009 and WWW 2009

Several nice CLAM related presentations has been given in conferences during last month. At the Linux Audio Conference in Parma, we presented an article on Blender-CLAM integration for real-time 3D audio (paper, slides, and video available at the link) and we also gave a workshop on CLAM app and plugin prototyping features. At the WWW2009 in Madrid, we presented an article on the new web services based extractors for Annotator and the data source aggreation interface also some videos of the presentation and demos are available featuring data sources aggregation and live chord extraction from youtube videos.

New Domain: clam-project.org

CLAM has moved to a new home: clam-project.org We also changed the wiki URL scheme.

Home: http://clam-project.org/
Planet: http://clam-project.org/planet
Wiki: http://clam-project.org/wiki
Testfarm: http://clam-project.org/testfarm

And last but not least we moved the subversion server to the new domain and we changed some repository names. You can easily migrate existing subversion sandboxes by using the following command:

‘svn switch –relocate [old-svn-root] [new-svn-root] [sandbox]

You can get the svn-root with ‘svn info [sandbox]’ and the new locations for the repositories are:
clam: http://clam-project.org/clam
clam-test-data: http://clam-project.org/clam_data
clam-oldapps: http://clam-project.org/clam_oldapps
clam-web: http://clam-project.org/clam_web
efficiencyguardian: http://clam-project.org/efficiencyguardian

Thousands thanks to the MTG and the IUA for hosting CLAM resources for so long after not being an official MTG project. And special thanks to Jordi Funollet, the MTG sysop, who has helped us to do the migration and responded to all our weird support petitions during those three years 😉

The CLAM Team.

CLAM 1.3.0, the Shooting Flying Plugins release

The CLAM team enraptured to announce the 1.3.0 release of CLAM, the C++ framework for audio and music,
code name The Shooting of the Flying Plugins release.

Highlights of this release are:

• NetworkEditor automatically generates and compiles a LADSPA plugin containing the network you are editing. CLAM also provides a new simple API to code that by hand yourself.
• More FAUST integration into network editor: edit faust code, compile, reload, view the svg diagrams (Natanael Olaiz GSoC)
• Lots of usability enhancements on the NetworkEditor: cut&paste, context menus to connect ports, keyboard shortcuts, default double click actions, and a processing tree filter (Natanael Olaiz GSoC)
• Annotator has also enhanced its functionality (Wang Jun GSoC):
  • You can build a project that aggregates content from several extractors
  • Extractors may have a config file
  • Extractors can write back data (useful if the extractor is a database of webservice and needs to upload modifications)
• New ProgressControl widget and paired AudioFileMemoryLoader processing to support seeking (Pawel Bartkiewicz GSoC)
• A bunch of new 3D spatialization processings from CI Barcelona Media audio research group.
• Scripts and graphical front-end to generate a native CLAM plugin project from scratch.
• Experimental Python bindings (still just-for-hackers install procedure)
• TickExtractor example is compiling again (many thanks to Amaury Hazan from MTG-UPF)
• Development deployment for Windows native compilation using MinGW (Wang Jun GSoC)

And a lot of small nice features and fixes you will appreciate for sure.
Source and binary packages for different platforms are available at the CLAM download page.

See also: development screenshots, the CHANGELOG, and the version migration guide.

We are very excited on what next releases promise us. Some ongoing work:

• Generating other types of network based plugins and programs (LV2, JACK, VST…),
• Subnetworks (Natanael Olaiz GSoC)
• Improved OSC support, 3D scene descriptors parametrization receivers processings and Blender exporter to the spatialization processing choreographer. (Natanael Olaiz GSoC – related blogging)
• Typed controls (Francisco Tufro GSoC)
• A new musician-oriented standalone chord extraction application (Pawel Bartkiewicz GSoC)

CLAM in GSoC 2008!

We are glad to announce that 2008 summer is also going to be a Summer of Code for CLAM. Google just announced the list of mentoring organizations for GSoC 2008 and CLAM is in it!

Now we seek smart students who enjoy coding free software so that they can earn some bucks for the summer. Last year, GSoC 2007 was a very fun and productive experience and we are willing to repeat it. Take a look at the CLAM GSoC 2008 wiki page for more information on how to apply and some sample ideas for projects.

We are waiting for you!

CLAM 1.2, the GSoCket plugged-in release

We are jubilous to announce CLAM 1.2 “GSoCket plugged-in release”. We had to wait for some months to make this release as we had to redeploy the multiplatform release infrastructure. Thus, the feature buffer of this release is pretty full. It incorporates both, the results of the Summer of Code students work and the involvement of David and Pau with the crew at Barcelona Media Foundation Audio Research Line.

We want to thank the involvement of GSoC students Hernan Hordiales, Bennet Kolasinsky, Greg Kellum, Andreas Calvo, Roman Goj and Abe Kazemzadeh, Google Inc, and Barcelona Media audio lab members for their precious involvement in CLAM.

A summarized list of changes follows. See also the CHANGES files for details, or the development screenshots for a visual guided tour. As usual binary packages for Windows, MacOSX and several flavors of Linux are available to download.

Summary of changes:

The most exciting feature is the new plugin system (acalvo) which enables third party algorithms to be distributed separately
from the core binaries. LADSPA plugins support has been enhanced and a first iteration on FAUST integration. The wiki contains how-to’s that cover most of that.

Most of the GSoC work come as plugins: a SMS Synthesizer (gkellum), a Voice synthesis/analysis (akazem) and some some cool guitar effects (hordia). Also not included as plugins but in the main repository several enhancements have been done on the SMS transformations (hordia) and the tonal analysis (rgoj).

Some interesting work has been done on the Barcelona Media Audio Lab on having a system to simulate 3D room acoustics which can be reproduced on several exhibition systems. Some precomputed room databases are available to try. Check the wiki NetworkEditor Tutorial for more information.

Regarding the applications, Network Editor incorporates new usability enhancements, a new on-line Tutorial and a new Spectrogram like view. The Annotator received Bennet Kolasinsky attention improving its the flexibility of its interface, the practical effects are multiple segmentation and low-level descriptors panes and that we are pretty close to visualization and auralization plugins.

Enjoy.