RRipper / News: Recent posts

I know, nothing happened here for a long time. That was because I was very busy with college and stuff. But soon the next weeks I'll release a new version, which brings new features and an uncountable amount of bug fixes. This coming release, I finally put a lot of code from the main sourcefile into different subclasses. That makes the code a) a lot easier to understand , b) much easier to maintain and c) helps to prevent bug fixes.
So: Stay excited!! :)

This new release brings some new function and a whole bunch of bugfixes...:

- A documentation is now available, which gives a short overview over RRipper and most of the functions. This documentation is still very basic and needs some improvement/enhancement.
- A tray icon was added (can be dis-/enabled in the global preferences). When the mainwindow of RRipper is closed, it will be minimized to the system tray. To quit, use the menu point in the file menu or the shortcut Ctrl+Q.
- RRipper can be remotely controlled! At the moment only the following basic commands can be used:
RRipper --show Shows the mainwindow of RRipper (or brings it to the foreground)
RRipper --play Toggles the playing of RRipper
More commands will come in the next release...
- The intelligent playback got some improvement (and is officially not anymore "experimental")
- The Lyrics are not anymore searched on LyricsPlugin.com (due to a change of their database, this is not longer possible), but on LyricsVIP.com.
LyricsVIP.com has some disadvantaged. E.g. you have to search in exactly the same pattern as a song name is saved. A "the" or "The" is not anymore the same (small and capital letters matter now). Therefore RRipper is formatting the artist/title a little bit (first letter of every word capitalised, all the others in small letters).
In one of the next releases you can add some custom filters, that are used, when the default search doesn't find anything (not yet implemented).
- The lyrics can be displayed in an external window (button in lyrics tab). This is handy while using another program, but wanting the lyrics to be visible.
- The volume of mplayer can now be controlled out of RRipper (Slider in the upper right).
- ...... read more

The second release of RRipper 0.9.2 doesn't bring any new functions.

The first release searched for the qt headers in a fixed place. Some distributions store them in a different place.
This issue is now fixed, the second release finds the qt headers on every distribution (at least it should).

Thanks to peacenik for reporting this little bug!!

This new release brings a whole lot of changes.

I think the biggest change is the change from a text based ripper and player to a database based one. The station data is now saved in a SQLite-database. This makes the whole thing so much easier and better!
All your precious data will be kept!

For all the other changes and new functions, here a list:
- Change Artist/Title. This function just swaps the title and the artist. Some stations are sending these infos the other way round. This does NOT affect recordings made by streamripper! It only affects the display and lyric handling.
- Normal and Intelligent Playback. The intelligent playback is basically a recording with streamripper, saved in the temporary folder. If you like a song while listening, just hit the button "Save" in the Details-Tab and the song will be at the end copied to the saving location set for this station. The button can be hit at any time during the song playing. IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS FUNCTION IS STILL BETA!!
- The handling of the streamripper preferences is highly improved
- Now Shoutcast AND Icecast are available as directories
- The data of the directories is saved in a SQLite database. This is done, because it isn't very likely, that this data changes often. A click on Reload resets all saved data of this directory
- A filtering of the stations by the bitrate is now possible. Use for it the slider in the directory-Tab
- The get-lyrics-function was improved. It still is searching only LyricsPlugin.com, but others will come soon
- When you're playing a station and hit "Start Recording", the playing will be restartet as soon as possible.... read more

About 4 weeks ago, the last version of RRipper was released. The next release will probably take as well at least more than one or two weeks.
But I want to give here already a ahort preview of the new features/changes:
- Database-supported station management
- Sorting of the station list
- Completely rewritten error management (RRipper doesn't crash anymore by unexpected output of streamripper/mplayer)
- Improved mplayer handling
- No caching of mplayer by playing a currently recorded stream by streamripper (this created a delay in playing/recording in previous versions)
- Playing -> Click on "Start Recording" -> Stop and automatically restart playing after successfull start of recording
- Swap Artist and Title (some stations send them the "wrong" way; unfortunately this does only affect the displaying of the infos and the lyrics auto-fetch, it doesn't affect the actual files, because streamripper has its own handling of the metadata)
- Browse Shoutcast.com, Icecast.org - and save the lists permanent in a database (for a complete new reload, click the "Reload" button)
- Adding more lyrics resources, and improved lyrics handling
- Somewhen in the future (probably not in this release): Replace mplayer by gstreamer... read more

This new release includes some new features/improvements/bug fixes/etc.:
- Adding of lyrics function
- Including of global preferences in main window
- Slightly change of layout
- bug fixed: RRipper doesn't need anymore a lot of CPU while playing a stream without recording
- bugs fixed: Several errors in displaying status information and ID3 information are fixed
- Improved handling of mplayer while playing a stream
- complete revision of code -> RRipper much more reliable
- translation into German (you can switch between the languages in the "Global Preferences" Tab)
- ...... read more

A new release with some big of improvements. The function to browse the Shoutcast directory was improved, made clearly and faster.
As well a preferences dialog was added, where yoou can set some general preferences and the default streamripper preferences.
Because of these bigger changes I chose to give this release the version number 0.9.0 (instead of 0.8.4).

The next steps will be a translation of the program and to fiy some bugs with the displaying of information while recording/playing and in the stream list.
So check back soon for the next release :)... read more

This new release finally includes the function to browse the shoutcast directory. Streams can be added by a double click on the entry. Still very basic this function needs some improvement, so check back soon!

If you like this app and/or have a suggestion/bug/etc. I would appreciate if you would give a short feedback :-)

This new release of RRipper doesn't include any new functions, but the code was completly revised, functions were merged and simplyfied, the layout is slightly changed (for the better I hope) :)
This release is currently only available in English, I add the German translation as soon as I included two more important functions: 1) Browsing and adding of shoutcast streams and 2) adding a "General Preferences" function
The installation process consists at the moment of a simply "make". It doesn't check for dependencies, but just make sure you have "qt4", "streamripper" and "mplayer" installed (if there are any more important ones let me know). I will improve this process after the translation...... read more

Now, RRipper is available as well in English as in German!!
The next task I want to program is a better installation process. At the moment the installation ("qmake" and "make") creates only an executeable file in the same folder as the files. Check back the next days :-)

For some reasons, the translation doesn't work (at least it didn't for me), when you open RRipper with a click on the file. If you experience the same problem (only with the German language, the English is the default!!), try to start RRipper from the terminal.

First upload of RRipper today. It starts with Version 0.8, because I developed already for about half a year, first without the purpose to publish it. The decision felt recently :-)
There are still some things to do, especially a translation of the program (currently only in German), "translation" of the code into English and the adding of some more comments.
As well some of the functions though working need a revision and improvement.