[Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Orecchiette is a simple app designed to record audio data on the N900. Both input and output audio streams can be recorded; so, it can be used to take voice notes, or to record audio from an FM radio app. And, it can combine both streams to record a phone call. And, several video input sources are now also supported.

Orecchiette is open-source software, released under the GPL version 2 (or greater). You can find the source code at Github:

https://github.com/jpietrzak8/Orecchiette

EDIT: Orecchiette 0.3.1 .deb file attached to this post. Also, you can retrieve the latest .deb directly from the package page.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Wow coppy one more useful app !

Is it able to record calls automatic? And it would be great if it can add a record butt with pause resume on call ui:)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Where is it :rolleyes:

We have .deb !

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Hmm, it appears that Orecchiette hasn't been made into a package yet. It may take a while; from what I've been reading on the Maemo IRC logs, things have been kind of hectic lately...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Thanks

I'm going to test this the next week.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Great, thanks! However, please do be prepared for bugs; I've only done a minimal amount of testing on the app so far. :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

There is some confussions, as OGG is indeed a container, but containers with vorbis audio inside have .ogg file extension, and are called "ogg" or "OGG" literally everywhere. Anyway, it's brillant codec by Xiph.org (the same organization, who gave us FLAC), and leading format of royalty-free, patent-free audio codecs. Furthermore, from technical point of view, it's a whole eternity better codec than mp3, and despite being "lossy" (as opposed to FLAC), it received so-called "transparent" codec mark - i.e., in plentora of blind tests, people were not able to distinguish it from lossless version of same recording (hit/miss ratio comparable to flipping a coin). All of that, while maintaining awesome ratio of decreasing file size.

Add to this fact, that it have pretty neat implementation for Maemo, and it seems like codec of choice for recording FM Radio, etc :) Of course, for conversations (call recording), speex (also by xipg.org) sounds even better.
---

Feature request - above obvious auto-recording of calls (SIP and GSM alike), which you're already considering for sure, it would be nice to have a (remembered) advanced configuration for codecs in use. IMO, most feasible way would be a text field, where user would put a string of text containing command-line parameters for codec, just passed transparently to used encoder (in addition to normal things defined by our application, like save path, etc).

This would save a 43456765434566 number of different option fields in GUI for every possible codec, while still keeping benefits of using GUI for generic options. It's worth to add, that this is behaviour used in most FOSS advanced recording/ripping/encoding programs even in desktop world - like Exact Audio Copy. For example, this is my "additional command line parameters" field in EAC, for creating best possible quality/size ratio (keeping being "transparently compressed" .ogg files of my music CDs collection:

...which doesn't interfere, but adds too, a Q=6 and tag-related settings from GUI. Would be pretty timefconsuming to completely GUI'dise all advanced parameters for all codecs available in Orecch', and keep them updating as new adv. features are added to encoders.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Well, I'm not ready to start packaging audio data into containers just yet. :) But I'll go ahead and see if I can add Vorbis to the list of encodings for Orecchiette.

Well, that would make sense, if I were using the command line to construct the GStreamer pipeline. However, by constructing and managing the plugins directly, Orecchiette has much better control over them. (Thus the ease with which it can pause, stop, or otherwise modify running pipelines -- of course, until the autobuilder comes back, you'll just have to trust me on this one.)

And honestly, I figure if a user knows enough about GStreamer plugins to specify a slew of advanced options, they're probably able to construct a custom pipeline for themselves... :) But in any case, I'll take a look at EAC and see if I can steal any of their ideas. :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

My complaint against recaller (other than it sometimes "forgets" to stop recording, which is easily resolved by starting and stopping another call, e.g. to check my remaining credit) is that there is a HUGE disproportion between the volume of my own voice and the other party's. Has this been/can this be addressed in orecchiette?

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

In fact, it has -- Recaller is using "source.hw0" to record voice data directly from the microphone source. However, after doing some research, I found that there are a number of different "source"s available; I'm currently using "source.voice", a wrapper over the hw0 input which does seem to have the input volume at the same level as the output (which I'm getting from "sink.hw0.monitor"). I haven't done a lot of testing yet (to be honest, I've only recorded one phone call), but it seems to work quite well.

I haven't yet been able to test against a bluetooth headset yet; I'm still using "source.hw1" to retrieve that data, so it'd probably need some work to increase the volume. (Or maybe "source.voice" will automatically switch to hw1?)

Anyway, lots more work to be done on this app. :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Thanks Estel.
I did meant .ogg Ogg Vorbis Audio File because it has almost the same audio quality as an .wav audio file and the file size is much smaller :D

Is it technically possible to audio and video record phonecalls at the same time

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

It is kind of too soon for new ideas, but during ''waiting for package'' time - great thing (from my point of view) would be adding to calls recording option an black list functionality for few contacts or phone numbers, so little ear won't record them.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

More pasta, great! :)
If you would like some feedback maybe posting temporary armel deb's and sources in the OP for the short term is an option.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Technically, if you're in a videocall with someone, sure. But I'm not entirely sure it would be a good idea on the N900. I was just recording another phone call a few minutes ago, and was surprised at just how warm my phone got during the call; the CPU was probably running all-out just to encode the audio data. I'd hate to see just how much pressure you'd place on the phone by trying to encode video as well. (I guess you could just store it raw, but you'd probably run out of space very quickly that way...)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Definitely a good idea. (A whitelist capability would seem good too). I haven't played with accessing contacts data before, so I'll have to do a little research, but it should be doable...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Hmm, I guess that would work. Can I attach deb files directly to a post? (Hmm, I guess I should just look at the screen -- it says I can do that right below where I'm typing. :) ) Let me give it a try...

EDIT: Ok, I've attached a .deb file to the first post. This is the first time I've tried to directly distribute .deb files before though, so I'm a bit nervous about whether it will work. :) If anyone does try to download and install it, please report any problems you find!

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

It is downloading and instaling with no problems. Time to do the testing :eek:

EDIT 1
Recorded (my self singing) in AAC format. In portrait mode the preferences screen is bit too wide, it's only cosmetic thing - but You may want to know it. I better wait with the phone calls till toworrow ;-)

You are flying with the apps Sir, congrats.

EDIT 2
Orecchiette did not recorded / saved phone call. The folder that I chosed for saved files was empty after call. I did try twice, first time ending call from another call, second time from N900.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I should mention that you'll need to set the option on the preferences window first; Orecchiette defaults to not recording phone calls...

But yeah, I do expect that the app is going to have a lot of problems for a while. I'm fairly sure that I'm not catching all the right DBus signals yet, and I'm sure the GStreamer pipeline needs tweaking. I'll keep working on it. :) (BTW, were you using a bluetooth headset by any chance?)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Of course I'd set the option to Record phone calls before answering a call. I clicked alsow No limit in records quantity, and choose AAC format. After few attempts, tgere was no files in catalogue. No bluetooth headset during testing.
It was late yesterday so I didn't try with other coding options (WAV, etc.) and I only was reciving calls. Today, I'll do more tests.

I was thinking about that white and black list option, might be nice to add an option for pop up question after each call - " Do You want to save this ..." (I was using whife N9 for testing)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Ah, I can already see the problem -- I've only been testing so far by placing calls, so I must have the DBus signal receiver set up wrong for receiving calls...

Yeah, actually, that does sound like a good idea; let me give it a shot!

Er, N9? I was planning on eventually seeing if I could migrate this to the N9, but I doubt Orecchiette would work unmodified on it right now... (I don't have an N9 to test against myself, so it'd be some effort to get it working.)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Eheh, just to call to my self on N900. But from N9 is the idea of pop up question with saving or not.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

This sounds like a great idea.

I can imagine having 3 options for each list of numbers:
A) Do not record
B) Record
C) Ask after each call

But then the logic would have to be different, since blacklist and whitelist would not be enough..
Also it might be useful to enable/disable recording just for unknown numbers.

I also have one feature request myself. It might be out of scope of this app, so no pressure there :) :
I'm using the recording function of N900 mainly for recording lectures and seminars and I miss an option to somehow synchronize my notes with the recording. So it would be nice if there was some kind of text input box while recording, so I could just post a quick note. I'm not sure if there is any standard for this, so it could just create a .txt file next to the audio file and with each note do something like:
By the way, thanks for this app, Copernicus, I'll try it when I have time.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Interesting! Actually, there is a standard for this, although for a different use: subtitles. I'm an Anime addict, and not a speaker of Japanese, so I've become somewhat familiar with the art of subtitling; there's been an enormous amount of progress made in recent years managing the synchronization of short lines of text with a running video. And I've even seen it done with audio as well. Let me see if GStreamer has any built-in support for subtitling, and see if I can mess around with it...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Hey, quick note for anybody using Orecchiette -- for audio playback, I've been using the default Gstreamer plugin "playbin2", a generic playback plugin that supports all sorts of audio and video. And, I'm embarrassed to say, I forgot to tell it to only play back audio...

So, in fact, if you want, right now you can play back a video using Orecchiette. It doesn't work very well (the title bar stays on the screen), but it's something to play with if you're bored. :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I think i might have been not clear enough - I meant that container is absolutely Off-topic here, as we need *just* audio in vorbis (which ends up in files with .ogg extension). The confusion arise, because .OGG is sometimes used as a container (but, nowadays, it's rather good habit to store audio-video containers as .ogv), but what interest us for Orecch' is, in any case "plain" .ogg file of vorbis-encoded audio.

Hm, but I wasn't talking about advanced parameters for gstreamer, I just mean't parameters given to encoder (vorbis or whatever). But I may be talking nonsense here, as I'm not familiar with gstreamer too - so, let me ask you a question:
How do you encode captured audio into <whatever>? Are there some build-in encoders in gstreamer and you're using it, or you just pass result of whole pipeline to Vorbis encoder? If the latter, it's where I mean those advanced parameters should be passed.

If, OTOH, gstreamer handles everything (inc. encoding), I'm sure it also passes commands to encoder via gstreamer plugins (correct me if I'm wrong), and I would be pretty surprised, if gstreamer wouldn't allow to pass some additional parameters to encoder.

I think it would be very useful feature - for example, I'm quite experienced with codecs, formats, and audio parameters, but I don't have a clue about gstreamer, let alone being able to construct it's pipeline (for anything). That's why I would like Orecch' to handle all those things (and dbus, and so goes on), but let me pass some parameters to encoder itself.

AIUI, video that we get (and send) during video call, is already compressed for sending through internet (either by us if talking about what we send, or by another party, so we receive compressed one already). So a way to just plain save what we got (and final result of what we send, just before sending it into vast plains of net), could be all we need.

But, I agree, that it doesn't sounds like priority functionality in Orecch'.

/Estel

// Edit

Hey, thanks a lot for putting me into credits :o:o:o Even more thanks, for putting SPX as default encoding options - this small, brilliant codec really deserves it. NFC why someone could get idea that "it doesn't work well on windows", btw? Leaving alone fact, that windows is hardly a mark for quality (well, ext* also doesn't work "well" in windows ;) ), Speex works well on my windows machine since day 1 (of Speex public releases). I can hardly even imagine, how some recorder audio file may "not work well" on some OS...

// Edit 2

Would it be possible, to allow choosing quality (either 8 kHz or 16 kHz, IIRC) for speex?

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Yes, GStreamer is a complete audio/video management package; it has "elements" available to handle every step of audio processing, from retrieving raw data, processing it, encoding it, and storing it; or the other way around, pulling encoded data out of a file (or other source), decoding, processing, and displaying it.

If you want, you can call each of these elements directly from the command line. You can use a "pipe" mechanism to direct the output of one element into the input of another, thus the term "pipleline". :) This is, in fact, how Recaller is using GStreamer. Used in this manner, you can pass command-line arguments directly to each element.

You can also construct elements within your own code; this is how I'm doing it. Used in this way, you can receive signals to get updates on how the element is working, or send commands to change its behavior. I have access to all the same parameters, I just need to make those parameters available to you (in some form).

I'll see about adding controls as I go. I could probably re-use Pierogi's "endless panel" mechanism here to provide every last detail of every last element, if you'd like... :)

Ah, true; that would make things a lot simpler...

Yeah, if I'm going to dip my toes into the world of video, I think I'd prefer to start an entirely different pasta for it. :)

Actually sending that parameter to the "speexenc" element is trivial. Coming up with a decent user interface for it is probably a little more effort, but I'll come up with something... :) Thanks!

Edit: There are a lot of Speex parameters in this element. :) They have 8, 16, and 32 kHz modes available (along with an "Auto" mode, which apparently chooses the mode that most closely matches the audio source). And, they've also got a separate "Quality" parameter, with an integer value ranging from 0 to 10. Anyway, I'll see if I can make these parameters available...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I haven't been here for a few days and when I come back what do I see? Copernicus, you are unstopable!

I want to start developing. Are there any guides that you followed to get started? Something that gives the big picture? I'm good about following details, I just don't know how to take the first bite.

I'll install this later and test. Thank you!

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Well, hmm. How big of a picture are we talking here? :)

For me, the one thing that has been my best guide for developing on the N900 has to be the Qt SDK. As an SDK, it isn't perfect, and has a lot more rough edges than you'll find in commercial SDKs, but man is it just chock full of useful stuff. Documentation, example code, the works.

(I should note that Qt 4.7 was the last version that had explicit support for Maemo. I think Qt 4.8 can still build Maemo executables, but you'll probably want to stay away from Qt 5.0 and greater...)

Another enormous advantage for developing on the N900 -- there's a huge library of high-quality open-source code available. You can learn a lot by just grabbing an app that you like, opening up its source code, and working your way through it. :)

I should say, if you don't already have a background in writing code, it might be helpful to first work your way through an "introduction to programming" book or website. Having at least a general idea of what a line of code can and cannot do can be a great help in understanding what folks are doing in their code, and why...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I just tested 0.0.1 version and did not recorded a received call even though Record Phone Call and "no limit..." options ticked. i tried using the default output format (.spx).
Thanks.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Yeah, sorry, it seems that the DBus signals I'm using aren't quite the right ones for receiving calls. I'm working on it. :)

Also, turns out I've got the encoder selection messed up, so it isn't actually recording in Speex when you choose SPX. :( I'm working on that too...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Thanks a lot for patiently explaining how gstreamer works, it's much easier to understand now :) And yes, your approach sounds much better in the middle and long run.

Yes, yes, yes! Please do such fine-grain control for tuning things is a tweaker heaven, and if Pierogi's implementation could be re-used (meaning less work for you), it just sounds great.


Heh, speex evolved much since I've last checked it docs. I don't know how well auto mode work in practice (for example, if background noise doesn't cheat it to use wider frequency than necessary for main target), but if it's OK, it sounds like good default choice?

And yes, I was just to report than upon recording with speex, I got .aac with .spx extension :) Good that you're already aware of it.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Just a quick udpate: I've put a .deb file for Orecchiette 0.0.2 onto the first post. The main change this time is that I've added an "Input and Output Combined" option to the audio stream selector. I was hoping that Orecchiette would be able to automatically detect when a phone call was occurring, but it looks like that's going to take more research than I had anticipated. Until I manage to do that, you can still record phone calls by choosing the "combined" option and just pressing the "record" button yourself to start the recording. (You'll still be able to use the Pause and Stop buttons to control the recording.)

In other news, I fixed the bug in the encoding selection UI. Unfortunately, now that I'm actually testing all the different encoding options, I'm finding that I'm only getting good results from AAC and WAV; the Flac and Speex options are resulting in corrupted data files. I've gone ahead and disabled those two until I can figure out what's going wrong...

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Thank you very much, Copernicus. I don't want to hijack this thread, so I just wanted to thank you and say that yes, I know how to code, but it's the big picture that I find confusing. Maybe I need patience.

I'll probably start a thread in the Development section within the next few days asking more specific questions, as I don't want to hijack this thread.

I'll take a look at the Qt SDK, thank you. And now... to install Orecchiette (and the last version of Lanterne). Thanks! :)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Not had much time to play with Orecchiette, it's not the sort of thing I would personally use all the time.

However one quick comment would be that it maybe handy to use UTC style timestamps for filenames.
This way I wouldn't have to play each file to know what I recorded and when.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Actually, I was going to suggest something similar as sixwheeledbeast. Recaller does that although it does it in a silly way (phone number first, which means makes mess in sorting by name). I was going to suggest the format YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-phoneno.aac (where the 'phoneno' part is skipped if phone number not available) or, even better, make it configurable via a format string.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Yeah, I went ahead and just did the simple Recording_# mechanism because Recaller's file naming scheme just looked way too awkward, and I wasn't coming up with anything that was much better. :)

I think the "configurable" option is best, as filenames with this level of complexity are never going to work for everybody. Let me see what I can do...

Also, using GStreamer, I should have access to the "tag" information inside the header of each audio file. (Tags are the info you see when you play an audio file in Media Player or other media applications, such as "Title", "Artist", etc.) I'm hoping I can shove meta-data such as "phone number" into the tags, and therefore avoid using it in the file name.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Phantastic! ;)

Another feature request I was thinking about. This is a n "all-purpose audio recording app", right? Not just to record phone calls. So... how about a feature to manipulate the recording. Nothing fancy: cut and splice would do nicely to start with. Oh, and a very basic "oscilloscope" style visualization á la Sound Recorder in Windows XP would be nice but I know I am asking too much ;)

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

I played around with Orecchiette for a while and found few things maybe worth noting. First I could not get the AAC recording to work. It onle recorded two clicks and nothing else. Only after I tested the wav recording I got the AAC to work. Then I shut down the app and restarted it. Same problem, but this time I did not even record with WAV, I only chose it and switched it back AAC and got it working. So I think that the chosen codec at startup is somehow empy, but it shows AAC, and after real selection is made, codec is chosen and the app starts to use it.

Other thing I noticed is that if I adjust the output volume to zero (muted) the output is no longer recorded. The output volume does not have other effects on the recording only the mute.

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

While idea with tags is great in itself, please allow to still put phone number into filename (via configurable string) - for some people, like me, who mostly browse recorded files via terminal, it makes life much easier.

/Estel

// Edit

I'm not sure i Kossuth's description was clear enough - the point is, that changing volume via hardware volume rockers doesn't affect volume during recording (as expected, it would be silly to have it otherwise), but once we bash those volume rockers 'till output volume hits 0, recording get muted too, suddenly. It's probably related to how Maemo handle silenced phone? IDK if there is a way to go around it?

Re: [Announce] Orecchiette - an all-purpose audio recording app
 

Hmm, I think that's actually straying a bit away from "recording" and more towards "editing". :) I'll take a look at it; but I think I'd prefer to place something like that into a different pasta...

Actually, I think I saw something like that in the "Babyphone" app. I'm kinda nervous about how much more pressure it would place on the CPU, though... I'll take a look. :)