Hydrogenaudio Forums > Introducing theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI)

wisodev

Dec 7 2006, 09:57

I just want to introduce my project called theFrontend. Currently it is at alpha stage of development.

Basic information (taken from my website):

QUOTE

theFrontend is an audio conversion software with graphical user interface for Windows. This is an Open Source and easy to use software for everyone. Easy usage with predefined presets for newbies and xml-based configuration files and command-line interface for advanced users. Full UNICODE support and no additional dependences on external DLL libraries for main program (some tools may require additional DLLs).

Supported input audio file extensions: WAV, MP1, MP2, MP3, MPC, MPP, MP+, MP4, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WV, APE, MAC, OFR, TTA. Supported output audio file extensions: WAV, MP3, MPC, AAC, M4A, MP4, OGG, FLAC, WV, APE, OFR, and TTA.

Supported are following command-line tools: SSRC, LAME, MPPENC, MPPDEC, FAAC, FAAD, OGGENC, OGGDEC, FLAC, WAVPACK, WVUNPACK, MAC, OFR, TTAENC, NEROAACDEC, NEROAACENC and many more in the future . The supported tools are free, available over the internet and most of them is Open Source.

The full project name is theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI). Project was started at 05 December 2005. The primary goal was to create user friendly GUI front-end for command-line audio conversion tools.

If someone is interested then please check my website and download binaries, installer or even sources of the theFrontend.

Website:
http://www.thefrontend.net/

Project at sourceforge.net:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/thefrontend/

Screenshots:

Thanks,
wisodev

Synthetic Soul

Dec 7 2006, 11:38

Firstly, thanks for providing this tool. I've downloaded, and am just about to have a quick play.

I see no mention of tags. Are tags transferred? If so, I think you should add it to the blurb.

wisodev

Dec 7 2006, 12:31

@Synthetic Soul

Tags are not transferred, but I was thinking about this feature. The problem is I am using only command-line tools while working with audio files. Nothing is done in program (theForntend is only a frontend, this is the basic concept of program) that might change contents of the file. So I need some tagging tool to transfer tags. This way I would extract tag from input file before conversion and add tag after conversion to output file.

Any suggestion from your side about command-line tagging tool? From my side I can without any difficulty this feature.

Thanks,
wisodev

edekba

Dec 7 2006, 12:34

didnt someone create a cl program called tag that dealt with tags? I forget.

PoisonDan

Dec 7 2006, 12:47

yup.....

Check Synthetic Soul's website....

yourtallness

Dec 7 2006, 12:51

No offense intended but, aren't there already a lot of front-ends out there?
I mean, foobar2000 and/or MediaCoder cater to most encoding/transcoding
needs as it is. Will this front-end offer something new?

wisodev

Dec 7 2006, 13:11

@yourtallness
Please try this program before suggesting anything, then we can discus about yours concerns. No offense from my side too.

Synthetic Soul

Dec 7 2006, 14:53

QUOTE (wisodev @ Dec 7 2006, 11:31)

Any suggestion from your side about command-line tagging tool? From my side I can without any difficulty this feature.

Tag can handle FLAC, Vorbis, APEv2 and ID3v1 tagging. Tycho's metamp3 looks good for writing ID3v2 (and ID3v1) tags. In fact, it has the --fit switch which is my preferred method of tagging with LAME: ID3v1 with ID3v2 only where necessary. The Nero AAC encoder has it's own separate tagger IIRC. I dunno, but with Vorbis, ID3 and APE tags covered that's all or most I think. Maybe there could be some way of linking a format to it's tagger? There's also the possibility of tagging while encoding, with apps like FLAC, LAME, WavPack, etc. Tag will read all the tag types listed above, so maybe it could be used as the reader? Just a few hastily-thrown-together thoughts.

QUOTE (yourtallness @ Dec 7 2006, 11:51)

No offense intended but, aren't there already a lot of front-ends out there?
I mean, foobar2000 and/or MediaCoder cater to most encoding/transcoding
needs as it is. Will this front-end offer something new?

Although foobar is also, theFrontend seems extremely extensible, so obscure encoders not already covered (e.g.: speex) can easily be added, new presets created, and most importantly shared (as they are XML they can even easily be posted to a forum thread). Many people still use MultiFrontend even though we have foobar and MediaEncoder...

wisodev

Dec 7 2006, 15:09

@Synthetic Soul

About tags:

The main problem with tagging using external command-line tools is preservation of characters in different code pages. Windows uses current code page of your locale (you can change this, but this is not usable for theFrontend purposes) and I need UTF-8 or even Unicode character to be send via command-line. The best solution would be using internal manipulation of tags done by theFrontend.

About extensibility of theFrontend:

Currenlty there are some dependencies in source code about way the cl tools are handled. I will remove all this later and enable adding easily new formats and rules of handling them.

PS.
theFrontend works on Windows 95, 98 and any later Windows version, the compatibility is one of main goals, it works fine even under linux using wine.

Compact Dick

Dec 8 2006, 00:46

Very nice program, wisodev! You can't have too many good encoder frontends

Been using it for a few hours, and I will post feedback to this thread.

Andavari

Dec 8 2006, 03:51

I tried it out earlier today and liked it very much, very stable IMO for an alpha build - I was waiting for a crash or something and it never happened, good work!

Although I do miss automatic tagging, albeit I do still use Tag Frontend w/Tag for all that.

wisodev

Dec 8 2006, 14:43

@Andavari
The program is in alpha stage, but it was tested be me so much that beta would be good option too.

tgoose

Dec 8 2006, 18:24

I would be interested if this could run natively on Linux. I've no idea what that would involve since I don't know how many of the backends are open source/run on Linux...

wisodev

Dec 8 2006, 18:43

QUOTE (tgoose @ Dec 8 2006, 18:24)

I would be interested if this could run natively on Linux. I've no idea what that would involve since I don't know how many of the backends are open source/run on Linux...

Well theFrontend is written in C++ with MFC and I can't compile it natively for linux. But it runs well with WINE. The backends can be (or should be) also Win32 executables and it all works well (there are some issues with FAAC/FAAD but Nero command-line encoders/decoders are working good here) under linux. I have tested this under Debian, Suse and currently under Ubuntu linux distros.

pepoluan

Dec 8 2006, 19:03

Hey yeah I forgot about this. Any progress?

wisodev

Dec 9 2006, 14:15

QUOTE (pepoluan @ Dec 8 2006, 19:03)

Hey yeah I forgot about this. Any progress?

The program is under development and new version will come out soon with upgraded codecs configuration. I am planing to release package (installer) with some free encoders/decoders properly configured to use with theFrontend. I will post the news in this topic.

Thanks,
wisodev

indybrett

Dec 9 2006, 15:45

Sorry, I mis-read this. MediaCoder is the program that starts a webserver on port 19819, and also causes Kaspersky AV software to go nuts, claiming it contains a trojan download program.

wisodev

Nov 8 2007, 21:02

New version 0.0.0.2 is available for download.

Changelog:
- Added Nero AAC encoder support for .mp4 and .m4a output files.

Website:
http://www.thefrontend.net/

Project at sourceforge.net:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/thefrontend/

After very long break in development of the theFrontend I started again and new options and new formats will be added in near future.

dizzko

Nov 8 2007, 21:43

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. Best of luck to you.

wisodev

Nov 8 2007, 22:10

QUOTE (dizzko @ Nov 8 2007, 21:43)

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. Best of luck to you.

Is the placement of preset and format lists an usability problem or only a formal problem. I am pretty much used to this layout and so I do not find it confusing or unusable. It is trivial to change this anyway.

Thanks for feedback and I will think more about it

viktor

Nov 9 2007, 00:28

i have only one problem with this right now: it's win-only

dizzko

Nov 9 2007, 01:59

wisodev, I'm not sure whether to describe it as a formal or a usability problem. I just think it makes more sense the other way around. In any event, I don't mind too much whether it's switched one way or the other. I just figured I'd recommend. =)

Compact Dick

Nov 14 2007, 20:03

QUOTE (wisodev @ Nov 8 2007, 20:02)

After very long break in development of the theFrontend I started again and new options and new formats will be added in near future.

I am so happy to hear this! Good on you, wisodev

Junon

Nov 14 2007, 21:28

QUOTE (viktor @ Nov 9 2007, 00:28)

i have only one problem with this right now: it's win-only

I second this one. On Linux it's a serious problem getting any transcoding properly running with external encoders, especially in the cases of non-free formats. For me it's Nero AAC which causes serious issues, because practically any Linux transcoder only flawlessly works with FAAC instead. Support for Nero AAC has to be scripted externally in all applications I'm aware of, causing further problems concerning the tags' retention.

bilbo

Nov 15 2007, 17:13

wisodev, very nice program! Works well, quick, and easy to use. I would like to suggest that you consider the ability to convert from FLAC images+cue to mp3 separate tracks in your development.

wisodev

Nov 15 2007, 17:23

QUOTE (viktor @ Nov 9 2007, 00:28)

i have only one problem with this right now: it's win-only

QUOTE (Junon @ Nov 14 2007, 21:28)

QUOTE (viktor @ Nov 9 2007, 00:28)

i have only one problem with this right now: it's win-only

I second this one. On Linux it's a serious problem getting any transcoding properly running with external encoders, especially in the cases of non-free formats. For me it's Nero AAC which causes serious issues, because practically any Linux transcoder only flawlessly works with FAAC instead. Support for Nero AAC has to be scripted externally in all applications I'm aware of, causing further problems concerning the tags' retention.

Sorry no plans for linux/unix/macosx version (well you can ask microsoft if he will support this platforms in visual c++

)

Only way here is to use wine+theFrontend

QUOTE (bilbo @ Nov 15 2007, 17:13)

wisodev, very nice program! Works well, quick, and easy to use. I would like to suggest that you consider the ability to convert from FLAC images+cue to mp3 separate tracks in your development.

Can you recommend any command line tool that can do this?

carpman

Nov 16 2007, 20:33

QUOTE (wisodev @ Nov 8 2007, 22:10)

QUOTE (dizzko @ Nov 8 2007, 21:43)

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. Best of luck to you.

Is the placement of preset and format lists an usability problem or only a formal problem. I am pretty much used to this layout and so I do not find it confusing or unusable. It is trivial to change this anyway.

Thanks for feedback and I will think more about it

wisodev -- have been using theFrontend for 6 months or so - very nice program IMO (and recommended) - however, though I'm used to it now - I agree with dizzko about the dropdown order and it still occasionally catches me out -- I'll click on the preset dropdown when going to select the codec (format). It's not a huge deal but placing "the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right" makes sense to me from a usability point of view --e.g. I want an MP3 (first) at x bitrate (second).

Good to see development continues!

wisodev

Nov 16 2007, 20:58

QUOTE (carpman @ Nov 16 2007, 20:33)

QUOTE (wisodev @ Nov 8 2007, 22:10)

QUOTE (dizzko @ Nov 8 2007, 21:43)

wisodev, just a word regarding the form layout... It seems to me that you may have the "preset" and "encoder" lists in reverse order. Were it me, considering standards, I would place the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. Best of luck to you.

Is the placement of preset and format lists an usability problem or only a formal problem. I am pretty much used to this layout and so I do not find it confusing or unusable. It is trivial to change this anyway.

Thanks for feedback and I will think more about it

wisodev -- have been using theFrontend for 6 months or so - very nice program IMO (and recommended) - however, though I'm used to it now - I agree with dizzko about the dropdown order and it still occasionally catches me out -- I'll click on the preset dropdown when going to select the codec (format). It's not a huge deal but placing "the greater dominant factor to the left and the lesser dominant factor to the right" makes sense to me from a usability point of view --e.g. I want an MP3 (first) at x bitrate (second).

Good to see development continues!

I've already changed the dropdown order and committed changes to SVN

wisodev

Mar 16 2008, 13:36

theFrontend (Audio Conversion GUI) version 0.0.0.3 is available for download.

Changes in 0.0.0.3 (2008-03-16):
- Added AC3 (ATSC A/52) format support using Aften command-line encoder (decoding of AC3 files does not work).
- Added TAK (Tom's Lossless Audio Kompressor) format support (decoding of TAK files does not work).

Website:
http://www.thefrontend.net/

Project at sourceforge.net:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/thefrontend/

trev

Mar 16 2008, 16:46

not trying to be rude, but i use this similar program already:

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/multi.htm
(multi frontend)

just thought people interested in your program might be interested in this too, or that you might like to see what other "competition" there is.

wisodev

Mar 16 2008, 17:09

QUOTE (trev @ Mar 16 2008, 16:46)

not trying to be rude, but i use this similar program already:

http://members.home.nl/w.speek/multi.htm
(multi frontend)

just thought people interested in your program might be interested in this too, or that you might like to see what other "competition" there is.

Yep competition is always good

PS. Quote from: http://members.home.nl/w.speek/index.htm

QUOTE

Note: these programs are no longer maintained, because I've switched to GNU/Linux.