Working on a project requiring the analysis (speech to text) and recording of up to 10 real-time audio (microphone) input streams simultaneously and separately. I'm most comfortable with Java, so my central question is if this is possible with Java Sound API (or other 3rd party lib). But development is just beginning so if there is a better tool for this job I'm open to suggestions.
Development platform is MBP OSX 10.8.
Regarding audio input, I'd assume a bunch of USB microphones, unless someone knows of an appropriate device that allows separate simultaneous addressing of inputs.
Java Sound API isn't the easiest to learn, but it is reasonably low-level and powerful. I've mixed more 10 tracks before, using .wav inputs, custom-made "Clips" (reading sound files from memory) and procedural FM synthesis, using software I was able to write as a Java programmer with intermediate skills and some basic knowledge about sound (but NOT an engineering degree level of sound knowledge).
I've not tried recording multiple lines, or recording at all for that matter except one "toy" program that takes an input wave and stores it for varispeed playback. That really wasn't much more complex than just uploading a .wav, so I don't know the answers to t your question. I do anticipate it will be worth a look at the TargetDataLine interface as a key tool.
There are various sound engines written in Java. A contributor at Java-Gaming.org ("nsigma") has done some fine work on a media tool/system called "Praxis". AH -- just found this link:
http://neilcsmith.net/software
He often answers questions on the "Sound" topic at Java-gaming.org, and has spoken of "JAudioLibs" (linked on the page above).
Related
Since I got no answer and not much feedback on this question: Android Flutter Analyze Audio Waveform
and found nothing online about what I'm looking for, I'll simply ask a broader question, since a comment on that answer told me to use native code and use a platform channel to connect it to flutter but when I asked some clarifications I got nothing.
So my question is If I can do operations in Java (which has been around since a much longer time, and thus has a way bigger documentation), and then use the outcome in Flutter.
More precisely, could I do these things in Java and Flutter:
1) Analyse Audio waveform and find peak points in specific frequencies, and use the timestamp to display them in flutter;
Edit 1:
What Are Peak Points?
This Is the waveform of different frequencies ranges (The Orange one is bass (80-255Hz)), and the Points circled in black are Peak Points. I should analyze the audio specter of a song and Find the peak points in certain frequencies. Then When I Find the Peaks I need to save the timestamps, for example, 16 seconds in and so on.
2) Edit 2:
I need to Edit some photos in a video, like a video collage, for which each frame of a 30 or 60fps video is an image.
3) Edit 3:
I need to add basic frame specific effects to the video, for example a blur that will change frame to frame, or a glare.
4) Adding Music to that video and save it to an mp4 or avi or any format.
5) Edit 4: Most Important thing, I don't want to this all in real time, but more like an After Effect like Render process, in which all the frames are rendered together. The Only thing that would be nice is a sort of progress bar telling the user that the Render is at frame, for example, 200 of 300, but I don't want to display any of the frames or the video, just to render it in background and then save it to an mp4 video that can be viewed after.
As You can see it's a difficult process to do in a language to which you hardly find a tutorial on how to play music due to its early state. But Uis and some other things in flutter are way easier to do and Flutter is also Multi-Platform. So I prefer to stick to Flutter language.
Edit 5:
I took a look at Qt and JUCE, and found out that Qt seems a valid alternative but it seems for what understood more like a "closed" system, I mean, for example I looked the multimedia library but for what I've understood, you can do basic stuff, for example play a video, but not collage frames and save it. (Don't know if I explained myself well). JUCE On the other side, looks better but it seems more for PC audio VST than for mobile applications including video rendering. And another thing is that these two are not free and open source like Flutter is.
Then There is Kivy, which could and could not be the best, because it is a Python port for Mobile Devices and I have a lot of experience with Python And I think it's one of the easier language to learn, but on the other side, it hasn't got that much UI power. and as you mentioned there could be problem using libraries on Android.
You stated I could use C++ or Java With Flutter, but with C++ you told that it's a difficult process. So My question turned out to be Could I write the process in java with a Normal Android Application And Then in some way use the functions in a Flutter App?
Edit 6:
I found a possivle alternative:
Kha (http://kha.tech/). But again found nothing on how to use it with Flutter. Could it be a good Idea?
I'm asking more of a confirmation on if I could use Java or any other language to do what I need in a Flutter Application. And If yes if it's complicated or not that much. (I'm a beginner sorta). But Some tutorial or links to kickstart the code would be helpful aswell!
Flutter at this time is great for building UIs but as you've mentioned, it doesn't have a lot of power or compatibility with libraries yet. A good part of the reason for that is that it doesn't have easy integration with c++, but I won't get into that now.
What you're asking is most likely possible but it's not going to be simple at all to do. First, it sounds like you're wanting to pull particular frames from a video, and display them - that's going to be an additional complication. And don't forget that on a mobile device you have somewhat limited processing power - things will have to be very asynchronous which can actually cause problems for flutter unless you're careful.
As to your points:
This is a very general ask. I'd advise looking up android audio processing libraries. I'm almost sure it's possible, but SO questions are not meant for asking advise on which framework to use. Try https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/.
Once again, fairly general and a bit unclear about what you're asking... Try sofwarerecs. I assume you're wanting to take several frames and make them into a video?
Some of those effects (i.e. zoom) you could definitely do with flutter using a Transform. But that would just be while playing in flutter rather then adding to the video files themselves. To do that, you'll have to use the video library in android/java code.
Once again, the video library should do this.
This should also be part of the video library.
I do know of one audio/video library off the top of my head called Processing that may do what you need, but not for sure. It does have an android sdk though. OpenCV would be another but only for video/image processing and I haven't used it directly with Java so I'm not sure how easy it is to use.
For how you'd actually go about implementing this along with flutter... you're going to need to use Platform Channels. I mentioned them in the comment to your other answer but figured you could look that up yourself. The documentation does do a much better job of explaining how that works and how to set it up than I can. But the TLDR is that essentially, what they allow you to do is to send serialized data from native code (java/kotlin/swift etc) to flutter code (dart) and vice-versa, which gets translated into similar data structures in the target language. You can set up various 'channels' upon which the data flows, and within those channels set up 'methods' which get called at either end, or simply send events back and forth.
The complication I mentioned at the beginning is that sending images back and forth across the channels between flutter and dart isn't all that optimal. You most likely won't get a smooth 24/30/60fps of images being sent from java to dart, and it might slow down the rest of the flutter ui significantly. So what you'll want to use for the actual viewport is instead a Texture, which simply displays data from the android side. You'll have to figure out how to write to a texture from android yourself, but there's lots of information available for that. Controls, the visualization of the audio, etc can be done directly in flutter with data that is retrieved from native.
What you'll have is essentially a remote control written in dart/flutter, which sends various commands to a audio/video processing library & wrapper code in Java.
If all that sounds complicated, that's because it is. And as much as flutter is very nice to build UIs in, I have doubts as to whether it's going to be worth the extra complications if you're only targeting android.
Not really related to the answer but rather some friendly advice:
There is one other thing I'll mention - I don't know your level of proficiency with programming and with different languages, but video/audio processing and such are generally not done in java but rather in actual native code (i.e. c/c++). As such, there are actually two levels of abstraction you're going to have to be dealing with here (to some degree as it will probably be abstracted somewhat or a lot depending on the library you're using) - c/c++ to java and java to dart.
You may want to cut out the middlemen and work more directly with native - in that case I'd recommend at least taking a look at Qt or JUCE as they may be more suitable than flutter for your particular use case. There's also Kivy (uses python) which may work well as there's a ton of image/video/audio processing libraries for Python somehow... although they may not all work on android and still have the c++ => python translation to some degree. You'll have to look into licensing etc though - Qt has a broad enough OS licence for most android apps, but JUCE you'd have to pay for unless you're doing open source. I'd have to recommend Qt slightly more than the others as it actually has native decoding of video frames etc, although you'd probably want to incorporate OpenCV or something for the more complicated effects you are talking about. But it would probably be on the same level of complicated as simply writing in java code, but with a slightly different UI style & easier integration with c++ libraries.
I'm trying to get the data that the soundcard is outputting. Unfortunately, from my understanding of the Java Sound API, SourceDataLine does not support the read method, and there is no way to listen for raw data. I want to stick to Java for this, rather than C++, so if anyone knows how to listen for audio output on the soundcard that would be great.
Thanks very much!
Sorry if this post is confusing, just woke up.
I've researched this a while, and determined any implementation using only java sound will not work with any reliability on multiple audio cards.
There are a few solutions though. Hopefully one of these helps you.
Bite the bullet, write some C++ code to allow this functionality on different operating systems.
Use Java Sound to capture audio from a virtual audio recorder adapter which loops back the system audio output.
Create a loopback yourself using cables to feed a sound output port into a sound input port.
I recommend option 1 if you're developing this for a professional application as installation will be cleaner.
Go with option 2 if you've a short amount of time, and you expect to spend more time with your users, or your users are tech savvy.
Use option 3 if this is just a hobby, or some one-off project for a client.
I have made a few simple apps on android, and thought it was time for something a bit more complex. So, i thought I'd try something that's already out there, but build it from scratch.
The idea is to create an app that allows user to play piano by pressing virtual keys on the display. But I'm not sure how to go about synthesizing the sound of each note, is it best to have copies of of each note stored on file, or is there a more dynamic way of synthesising notes and chords on the fly.
I have worked with C++ so NDK stuff is also okay.
Thanks for any help.
Sound playback (handing off buffers) pretty much has to be done from the Android java apis
Synthesis could be done in native or java, whichever it preferred.
Short (uncompressed) samples could be played back repeatedly, but you probably also want an attack transient. Perhaps you could have an attack, a sustain, and release, repeating the sustain as long as the key is down. Ideally each sample should be an integral number of periods of its fundamental component long so that you don't get a transient when you change between the attack to sustain or sustain to decay.
I'm sure you can find code somewhere for an FM or other synthesizer... this you might well want to implement in a native library that hands off buffers to java code to pass to the audio apis.
What is too bad is that android already has an internal midi synthesizer, but apparently lacks a dynamic interface to it, so it can only play midi files.
By far the easiest solution would be to record the sound of each note on the piano and play it back when the key is pressed. Many professional virtual piano instruments work this way, recording every note on the piano being played at multiple velocities. Obviously this can take many gigabytes of disk space, but for a mobile phone app, you might get away with a single MP3 recording of each note in an octave.
Actually algorithmically synthesizing the sound of a piano is very difficult to do, and until fairly recently, very few have done it convincingly (pianoteq is one of the best current implementations).
does any one know how to capture voice and send it through a network then play it on another computer in java
I did some research on this about 10 years ago at a research lab so I might be a bit out of date! At the time there was no standard for the whole process. You have to use the Java sound API to record and playback, then any network protocol you want to send it.
If it is just for a person to listen to, then use something with good compression - something like the media streaming in the Java Media Framework. If you want to use speech recognition on the data you'll probably need something higher quality and closer to the raw data, and it might be worth looking at the Java Speech API.
I want to build a community website with videoconferencing functionality integrated. I would prefer to provide this from within the browser, so I'm looking for a Java- or Flash-based solution.
Also, it would be nice to spare bandwidth by having the clients stream their audio and video data without using a central server (like the way Skype works, for example).
Is there a reasonably mature open-source project that meets these criteria?
When doing Voice over IP, UDP is preferred, and web browser plugins usually lacks support for UDP and P2P-connections.
But there is a solution. You have to use Adobe Flash Player 10 and the Adobe Stratus for this. This is actually what Chatroulette is using for P2P streamed video chat.
Take it from someone who found out the hard way: Java's support for video playback is pisspoor. They keep promising a new, fantastic video playback system, but meanwhile we are STILL stuck with Java Media Framework, the platform-limited, MPEG-4 incompatible mess.
Your alternatives are Quicktime for Java and systems wrapping MPlayer/VLC/etc. None of those are really options for a browser.
Much as I hate Adobe and the evils of Flash site design, Flash is far and away your best option.
See the Xuggler library -- it includes code for playing back video (well, sample code) in the com.xuggle.mediatool.IMediaVieer object.