VoceVista Video 5.4.1

This is a small service release with some bug fixes:

  • File type selector on the “Save As” dialog was invisible in some cases on macOS, which would prevent saving files as Mp3.
  • The current colormap was not refreshed when the active colormap was deleted.
  • Fix opening files on Windows File Explorer through the right-click context menu “open with VoceVista Video”
  • Fix saving edited mp3 files.

VoceVista Video 5.4.0

This release of VoceVista Video 5.4.0 has been cooking for almost a year and brings several major new features, as well as many smaller improvements and bug fixes.
This release does not yet contain documentation for the new features. We will update the user manual and add new tutorial videos for everything in the coming weeks.

VoceVista Video Pro

Vibrato Analysis

The biggest new feature in VoceVista Video Pro 5.4 is Vibrato analysis. Vibrato is a periodic fluctuation of the fundamental pitch of a singer. The vibrato analysis feature can plot the vibrato rate and extent over time, and it can show a numeric readout of the instantaneous and average values of those parameters.
Here is a video tutorial for this feature:

EGG Wavegrams


The electroglottograph (EGG) display now officially supports the EGG Wavegrams developed by Dr. Christian Herbst. Similar to how the spectrogram can visualize how the spectrum changes over time, the EGG and dEGG Wavegrams visualize how the EGG and its derivative change over time, so that the entire history can be visalized in a single image.

Improved Long Term Average Spectrum

Various bugfixes and workflow improvements were made to showing the Long Term Average Spectrum.

Marker list improvements

The theming of the marker list has been revised to give a better visual grouping of a file and its markers. Also, the workflow for selecting and managing markers has been revised and improved.

All editions (VoceVista Video Pro, VoceVista Video, Overtone Analyzer)

Real-time pitch display during playback and recording

During recording and playback, the current pitch is now shown in real time, and the detected musical note can be shown on the piano and the staff view.

Improved accuracy when tracking pitch of singing voice

When singers put a strong emphasis on their higher harmonics, the pitch tracking might pick those harmonics as the fundamental pitch, because in a mathematical sense, they might be the strongest periodic component of the sound. With the new feature prefer harmonic fundamental, the pitch tracker will find the fundamental at the base of the harmonic series, even when the higher harmonics are very strong. This makes pitch tracking for singing much more robust.

Color pitch line by frequency


In addition to having a flat color for the pitch line, this line can now be colored by frequency. The colors will repeat for each octave. This can be enabled unter Preferences / Frequency Scale / Color by Frequency. Thanks to Heidi Moss for requesting this feature.

Improved Sound Generator


The Sound Generator now has much richer simulation options, including second-order modifiers to create dynamics, and to change speed and extent of vibrato over time.
In the picture above, the vibrato rate follows a bell curve to change smoothly from 2.5 Hz to 7.5 Hz and back, while the vibrato extent follows a linear curve from 100 to 50 cent.

More audio backend options

Under Preferences / Advances Settings / Audio Performance, you can now select a new audio backend (“Backend R”) for better compatibility on some MacBook models. On Windows, this will allow to record through the “ASIO” framework, which offers very low latency on high end sound cards.

Smooth colormap interpolation


So far, all colormaps have used linear interpolation between their control points. This may cause some sharp spikes, such as in the yellow part in the middle of the colormap above. With the new “Smooth” color interpolation method, the colors flow more naturally into each other without any spikes.

 Selection Period and Frequency


For selected time ranges that are shorter than one second, the inverse of the selected period is automatically displayed as frequency. This allows to verify the period and frequency of vibrato cycles, or even individual vocal fold vibrations.

Smaller changes

VVVP only

  • check all and check none buttons on Profile manager, and other places
  • require ALT key when moving markers on spectrogram
  • support for multi-user installations and offline activations
  • support for automated installations

VVVP and VVV

  • improvements to Export Image dialog
  • fix some bugs related to window tiling
  • in Vowel Chart, disable snapping to resonance matrix when ALT is pressed
  • open multiple files at once when using the “Open file” command

All editions (VVVP, VVV, OA)

  • improved support for Retina displays
  • new crash handler for better error diagnostics
  • group secondary time scales to simplify the view menu and other places
  • enhanced context menus for secondary views to show the name of the view and allow to hide it
  • Preferences now have many shortcut buttons to directly change the color of certain display elements such as pitch and mean pitch lines
  • listbox rows are themed with alternating colors
  • fix some bugs with importing .m4a files and other compressed file types
  • revise and rename included sample files
  • fix alignment issues on status bar

Known issues

Saving as mp3

On macOS, the Save As dialog doesn’t show the choice of file extension by default. This is a glitch. To make the file type choice visible, for example if you want to save as .mp3, switch to another app and then back to VoceVista Video.

VoceVista Video 5.3.4

This is a service release to fix recording on macOS 10.12 and 10.13, which had been broken in VVV 5.3.3 due to the recent changes made to support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

If you are running VoceVista Video 5.3.3 on macOS 10.14 or 10.15, or on Windows, you don’t need to do anything.

If you still run macOS 10.12 or 10.13, please upgrade to this version VVV 5.3.4.

Also, on some specific Macbook Air models, the recording produces a distorted sound. If you experience this issue, please check out this page for a beta version and a fix.

VoceVista Video 5.3

This is mostly a service update to fully support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Known issues

  • No recording on macOS 10.12 and 10.13: The changes made to support macOS Catalina turned out to be incompatible with older macOS versions. Please download the latest beta version from our support page.
  • No pitch line if spectrogram is turned off. The pitch line will only be displayed if the spectrogram is enabled. To hide the spectrogram, you can adjust the brightness and contrast sliders to make it invisible. Fixed for Version 5.4.0

VoceVista Video 5.2.0

This update brings many changes under the hood for improved stability and performance. The biggest new feature is the Sound Generator, which enables a large number of exercises and experiments for better understanding of acoustics and voice science. Check this space for upcoming tutorial videos.

New Features

  • Sound Generator, for additive synthesis of sounds and for simulating vocal tract resonances
  • playback of note sliders to separate ears for binaural experiments
  • record output of generated sounds from the piano, the note sliders, and the Vowel Chart
  • faster mp3 encoding
  • the Vowel Chart can now be customized, which means the position of the vowels can be rearranged
  • new nomenclature for resonance frequencies. Instead of talking about formants, the vocal tract resonance frequencies are now labelled fR1, fR2, etc.

Bug Fixes

This release contains a large number of bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as preparations for several exciting new features to come very soon.

VoceVista Video 5.1.0


This update has taken much longer than originally planned because we had to change quite a lot of stuff under the hood to prepare the app to support the Electroglottograph (EGG) display. Most notably, all editions now have better support for stereo files and allow switching the displayed stereo channel on the fly.

This version also completes all features from Overtone Analyzer 4.0 that were still missing, such as the textual pitch and cursor info display on top of the spectrum.

This is a free update for all users of VoceVista Video / Overtone Analyzer 5.x. If you have a license for those programs, you can simply download the latest edition from our download page and install it over the old one.
To upgrade from the older Overtone Analyzer 4.0, please contact us for details about how to buy a renewal license.

Here are the individual changes:

New Features

  • support for the Electroglottograph (EGG) in VoceVista Video Pro
  • improved support for storing the contents of one window in another for comparison
  • export recordings as mp3
  • change stereo channel display on the fly
  • frequency filters work in stereo now
  • textual pitch and cursor info display on top of the spectrum:

Bug fixes / Detail improvements

There are a lot of fixes and improvements in this release, too many to list all of them. Here are some of the more important ones:

  • better fading in and out (to avoid loud pops) when playing the selection in a loop, and while dragging the visible rectangle
  • support for resizing the selection while looping, even when looping very short sections
  • review workflow for creating Markers and using Marker List
  • better support for horizontal spectrogram orientation
  • better default file names
  • refresh tabs more consistently when file names have changed
  • fix various crashes
  • fix file corruption when opening wave files with unknown chunks
  • support for macOS 10.13
  • fix various scaling issues for retina screens
  • make more colors adjustable in the Fonts and Colors settings (such as LTAS line)

 

VoceVista Video 5.0.2

Version 5.0 was the first release of our software that was not only for PC but also for Mac. The 5.x product line had been in development for quite some time, and even though it still has some bugs and not all features from the 4.x line are completely ported, we felt that it was already useful, so we decided to release it instead of making everyone wait even longer for the Mac version.

5.0.2 continues to fix bugs and port features that were already in 4.0, and to make the app more compatible with the original VoceVista 3.

New mouse cursor behavior

The biggest change in 5.0.2 is the new mouse cursor behavior.
In previous versions,

  • moving the mouse across the spectrogram would immediately show the spectrum for the time position of the cursor.
  • Clicking on a time position would set the cursor to that position and reset the selection.
  • Click+drag would set the selection.

The new mouse mode is more similar to VoceVista 3 and should be more familiar to users of that software:

  • Moving the mouse pointer by itself has no effect.
  • Clicking, or clicking and dragging, sets the playback cursor and the position shown by the spectrum.
  • To change the selection, you now need to hold Control (on PC), or Command (on Mac), and then click and drag across a time range:
    Selecting time range and notes

You can change the mouse cursor behavior back to the old way in the Advanced Settings.

Other changes

  • The status bar has now labelled every value to make it easier to read.
  • The mouse wheel emulation (by pressing the 1 and 2 keys) is working again.
  • The mouse wheel operates even on inactive views in tiled mode.
  • Drawing of Overtone Sliders and Undertone Sliders now works in all orientations.
  • The piano now works again with the linear frequency scale (not just the log scale): Linear and Logarithmic Frequency Scale
  • Double-click for all note slider operations is working again.
  • Note sliders are refreshed immediately when the view settings change.
  • The notation system is changed automatically to Scientific when the app language is English.
  • MIDI input to drive the piano is working again.
  • Fixed various crashes and bugs.