More Mixxx Videos

There's been some cool new Mixxx videos posted on YouTube this month. First up is Trinity's Indamixx handheld again, this time demonstrating a beatmix on the device:


For more information on the device, check out the official site.

Next up is a video from one of our developers, Jan Jockush, demonstrating all the hard work he put into the Mixman DM2 on Linux:



Looks like it's working pretty well!

Minor Website Revamp

If anyone reads our developer's mailing list, you might know I'm not a huge fan of SourceForge. We've been planning for months to move away from it, and today we've taken a big step in that direction. Our website is now located at: www.mixxx.org

We've also started using our new logo, created by Paul Bloch of OpenArtist. He's quite talented, and is working on a more thorough overhaul of the Mixxx website to be launched sometime in the upcoming months.

Among the new changes to the website are our new forums, and our new (and faster) Mixxx Wiki. We're looking forward to helping the community grow on the new forums.

Lastly, we're going to be using our Launchpad page's bug tracker from now on. It's much easier to use, and isn't cluttered with 10 megabytes worth of flash ads like the old one. :)

Enjoy!

Mixxx 1.6.0 Beta2 Released!

We're proud to announce that the second beta of Mixxx 1.6.0 has been released!

Among the changes since 1.6.0 beta1:

• Fixed crashes due to vinyl emulation mode
• Improved compatibility with JACK (some users were experiencing choppiness)
• Players should now only pull from the play queue if in NEXT mode
• Search functionality:
• Search box now selects all text when clicked (easier to make a new search now)
• When the search box is cleared, the library view will scroll back to it's previous position.
• Search now properly filters directories out
• Library stuff:
• Double-clicking on a song now sends the song to the first stopped player.
• Right-click menu cleaned up, much nicer now
• Library directory rescans on startup when it's been modified (*doesn't work when subdirectories are modified yet)
• Library view now shows directories first
• Columns in the library view are proportioned intelligently now
• Renamed the "Playlist" menu to "Library"
• Added "Rescan Library" menu item.
• Can select multiple songs (hold shift) and send them to the play queue or a playlist
• Playlist support:
• Can create, import, delete, and rename playlists
• Added "Playlists" to library drop-down box
• Can right-click to send a playlist to the play queue.
• Fixed some bugs in the track properties dialog, and set default values
• Fixed a soundcard channel selection bug when the second device had more channels than the first.
• Added BPM Schemes (need to make some presets still)
• Minor speed optimization
• OS X/Leopard package for Intel users!
• A few build system (dependency checking) fixes
• MIDI LED control on Linux
• A few MIDI tweaks here and there
• Right-clicking on a knob/slider no longer moves with your mouse (it just centers the value)
• Using your mouse's scroll wheel now changes the values of sliders and knobs (this is cool for laptop users with the little scroll bar at the side of their trackpads)
• DirectSound is now the default API on Windows
• Cleaned up the vinyl control preferences

We've also been working tirelessly on some other big features that haven't made it into a release yet:

• Shoutcast support (and indirectly, recording support)
• MixxxScript

We're having some trouble sorting out this JACK/Ubuntu bug. A huge number of people can't get JACK to appear in our Sound API selection box on Ubuntu, and this is due to Ubuntu's PortAudio package not being able to find the JACK package when it's being built (I think). I've been unable to fix this, but someone from Ubuntu Studio told me that they'd have this fixed for Hardy. However, if someone wants to take a crack at fixing it (because I think there's still a good chance it'll be broken in Hardy if someone doesn't fix it very soon), the details of the problem are available here.

Once again, you can pick up Mixxx 1.6.0 beta 2 on our downloads page, and be sure to report any bugs you find in our bug tracker. Your feedback from beta 1 helped us identify the big issues people were having, and helped us make this release even better - thank you!

Feature Preview: Shoutcast Broadcasting

One of our newer contributors, Wesley Stessens, has been hard at work on Shoutcast/Icecast broadcasting support for Mixxx.


It turns out Shoutcast support was a little bit more complicated than we had been expecting, but Wesley's done a great job of tackling all the problems that have come up. Wesley also wrote a modular Ogg Vorbis encoder for the Shoutcast code, which we hope to reuse in our recording code in the future.

As a sub-project, adding Shoutcast support to Mixxx has been interesting because it's one of the nice modular projects we listed as a "Weekend Project" on our Wiki. When Wesley came along and said he was interested in coding Shoutcast support, I had already sketched out what work needed to be done and was able to help him get started writing code for Mixxx right away. If anyone's interested in adding a particular feature to Mixxx, come join our IRC channel (#mixxx on chat.freenode.net) and talk to one of us developers. We'd be more than happy to help you get started writing code.

People who want to use Mixxx for live broadcasting will appreciate not having to use crazy routing through JACK in order to broadcast now. For example, our friends over at Radio Olympus have been looking for new live broadcasting software, and we hope Mixxx will soon be a candidate to replace their existing software. Be sure to check out their newly relaunched online radio station, broadcasting live from the UK.

Depending on how much work we can get done this weekend, Shoutcast support may or may not make it into 1.6.0 Beta2. However, Shoutcasting should make it into the final 1.6.0 release. (There's at least one more surprise coming for Beta2 though...)