Beatcleaver 1.3 is out, now with Time Stretching

would be dope if it was a vst.

Coz wrote:

asantoni wrote:Hey no worries, though I'm curious why it didn't gel with you so I can fix it or improve things.

Bear in mind I only tinkered with it for 10 minutes and this was a few weeks ago...

The first thing I didn't like was how every time you click on the waveform the loop starts playing. I think there was some kind of ruler above the waveform that would achieve what I wanted, but I found this a bit fiddly.

Also, the zooming was super smooth with the Magic Trackpad, but I found that as I was zooming in, the waveform would magnify towards both the left and right equally rather than to a fixed point. So to zoom into the start of a transient I was having to push two fingers vertically and then gradually push diagonally. It just didn't feel natural. Pinch to zoom may be a better solution?

Those were the things that stood out as not feeling quite there yet.

Hey Coz,

Thanks for the feedback! I think the Magic Trackpad behaves as an absolute pointing device (like a touch screen, as opposed to a mouse, which is relative), so I wonder if that's why it felt weird. It should be zooming right in the center of your view, always, but maybe it's not quite as tight as it should be. If I get a chance to borrow a Magic Trackpad, I'll grab it and see what I can do.

There is indeed a little "transport bar" above the waveform that lets you seek to where ever you want, and it can definitely be a bit jarring when just clicking on an unsliced waveform starts playing it. (I think the click-to-play behaviour feels better once you've sliced up a track, but I just haven't thought of a better way to do it.) Most other wave editors have kind of an "edit cursor" which gets placed when you click, but then that just ends up getting in your way when you want to preview different sections quickly. (At least, I haven't seen anyone pull it off, but maybe that's still a better way to go.)

This feedback was great though - My job is to minimize "surprise", so finding out what feels weird or surprising to you is a good critique of my design and lays out some of the problems that I should fix in the future.

Thanks!
Albert

medearis wrote:I just downloaded the trial a little bit ago and have been toying around with it for a few hours now. I just want to say that this program is a huge help for me. A lot of what I do comes from self-made sampling, which means that there are a lot of times where I end up with huge waves from long sessions. Editing these things in Logic has been ever so torturous (might just be me...) so, having BeatCleaver + Audacity on my Windows laptop works wonders.

Just wanted to say thank you for your work. I really hope the money you are getting from purchases has been enough to help ya keep moving forward! After I get a little more play-time with it, I'm sure I'll be buying it soon.

Thanks for the kind words! With the new editing features coming up in BeatCleaver 1.4, I hope you'll be able to do almost all of your sample editing in BeatCleaver. (I use Audacity sometimes too so I know what you're going through )

mr_debauch wrote:would be dope if it was a vst.

If the 1.4 release goes well, I'd like to make this my main priority.

One more important thing guys:

The next few days will be your last chance to grab BeatCleaver at the current price.

I wanted to give you guys a heads up on that because of all the feedback and help you've given me.

I hate to do this, but there's going to be a moderate price increase over the weekend to test the waters in advance of BeatCleaver 1.4 (after which there may be another price increase). This new version of BeatCleaver has been the single biggest investment of time I've put into any release, and I really think the way edit mode works takes things to a whole new level. At the same time, I'm faced with some tough realities about the music software market, and if I want to be able to continue developing and supporting BeatCleaver, I have to sell it a price that's sustainable.

(The way I look at it is, it's not good for anyone if I go out of business - you want great support and updates, and I want to keep developing BeatCleaver and offering all that stuff! Does that make sense?)

Anyways, if you don't scoop it up before the price bump over the weekend, you might still want to try and grab it before the 1.4 release. (The 1.4 upgrade will be free like usual. ETA is still a few weeks, but it's nearly ready for beta.)

Lastly, this image hides all the crazy tweaking and bugfixing I did to Edit Mode over the last few weeks, but here's what BeatCleaver 1.4 looks like today:


Thanks!
Albert
ducks in case of tomatoes

BeatCleaver is the sh1t! Really dig it.

Hey guys, one last update on my progress towards BeatCleaver 1.4 for you:



This one was a bit long but it covers a lot of new stuff that's coming in 1.4:
- BPM detection
- Slice to MIDI
- Graphics: New Icons, new (Bigger!) Transport Bar, and Loop Bar graphics, new AudioEdit graphics!
- Tempo/Pitch Quick Controls in the main window
- Cut/Copy/Paste
- Edit Hiding
- Duplicate and Reverse now work differently, more practical.
- Delete and Trim to Selection
- Normalization, background processing
- Shift click to slice / Ctrl-click to play

That's basically what the 1.4 release is going to look like. I'm just fixing up a few remaining bugs, then I'll get myself into release mode and wrap up development. I'm shooting for August 1st, but that will take a few miracles. The first week of August for the release is more realistic.

What do you guys think of the icons? Better or worse?

Adding that "Normalization" edit took a lot of work under-the-hood because it required the effect to be processed in the background, but the good news is that it paves the way for pitch bend and warping in a future release. When the foundation is solid, it makes it easier and quicker for me to add new features like that in the future. Thanks to all the feedback and ideas you guys have given me over the last year, I think I've been able to make this editing system a good foundation for lots of new features in the future.

Thanks again for all your feedback!
Albert

loving 1.4!!!!

sbtst6 wrote:loving 1.4!!!!

Yessir! Seriously lovin this and have been turning a bunch people on to it. Everyone seems to love it.

So, now, I really only have a couple small things for me until this this is prefect.

1. I'm not sure if there was a miscommunication or if this is really what sbtst6 and some other dudes wanted, but, I was expecting a TUNE control on the main window. I think the tempo and pitch is awesome, too, and would love for those to stay but maybe just right next to those have a tune adjustment, too. Sometimes (esp. for samples) it's nice to be able to tune up and down like in an mpc. (ya know, tuning up increases the tempo and vice versa.) I pretty much do this like 90% of time so I have to export slices and load them into a vst sampler to hear what it sounds like TUNED up and down. Which isn't really a huge deal but if it's not to hard to implement, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to be able to tune on the fly. I mean, this is a mpc forum right?

2. Love the trim to selection. By faaaaar gonna be the most used edit function for me. Would anyone else want either a shortcut key (or is there?) or a trim button on the main screen. If not, no big deal.

3. I really feel like there should be a chop to 3, 6, 9, & 12 slices. Definitely does not need to be on the main screen imo as its probably less common for most, but, should be options in the 'slice into' menu though.

Seriously though, EVERYTHING else is **** great! I really didn't wanna be an **** by shitting on it right after you released, but, just figured i'd share my thoughts while they're fresh!

Thanks again, man, you're killin' it!!!

asantoni wrote:but the good news is that it paves the way for pitch bend and warping in a future release.

HOLY SHIT!!

Dude, you add warping and you instantly have the best chopping app in the business. seriously. like, by far.

Hey guys, I just created a new BeatCleaver 1.4 release thread, going to continue the conversation over there....