Help testing the upcoming v1.58.x release

🧪 User Testing 🎮
1

Please test the new Desktop Prerelease 1.57.0 before we publish the final release 1.58.0

Important new features to test:

  • voice messages: finally you can record and send voice messages with DC desktop
  • change to new transport API (technical)
  • profile view redesign
  • show user names instead mail address in many places
  • improved image rendering

Changelog

Download:

Where to report bugs?

You can find already known bugs on GitHub.

Please report the found bugs either here in this forum topic or even better
as issue on GitHub.

Important: please backup your current setup (or most important accounts)
before upgrading in order to be safe when trying test-releases. You can
find this option under Settings > Chats and Media > Backup.

6 Likes
2

First test:

  1. At startup the theme settings, font enlargement, interface language, and reversing the shortcut to send the message are lost, I don’t know if anything else.

  1. I think the audio quality is too high, the average is 100 kb every 6 seconds (the file appears to be an mp3 128kb 48000hz) also is not compressed more by selecting the low quality of the output media.
    In my opinion for a voice message you should compress the file more, possibly mono instead of stereo, and selecting low output media quality should be compressed to the point of being altered. Perhaps a format other than mp3 could also be used (opus, vorbis?).
    For the rest the recording function seems well done!

  2. I like the redesign of the profile view, perhaps the avatar is cut off slightly at the top (but I use the max zoom level of the interface, so maybe it’s related to that)

1 Like
3

Talking about something that is not about this specific version:

  1. one thing I don’t like very much (however I could be wrong) is the fact the playback is stopped when you change chats (if the audio is very long, for example a song, you can’t look at other contacts in the meantime). However maybe it is better to leave it that way because then you would have to implement an audio player like telegram.
  2. on the other hand starting a second audio does not block the one that is already running (however it could be a feture if one wanted to make a chorus XD)
1 Like
4

I did some tests, 32kb opus has basically the same quality but takes up a quarter of the space:

$ ffmpeg -i delta_rec.mp3 -acodec libopus -ab 32k -vbr off -application voip output.opus
$ du -h ./*
100K	./delta_rec.mp3
28K	./output.opus

https://wiki.xiph.org/Opus_Recommended_Settings

5

Thanks for testing!

Hmm, but the accounts are still present right away? Would you mind telling what OS is this? Is your “production” Delta Chat set up from a different source, i.e. some app store?

It would be also easier code-wise to go for Opus, but it’s not supported by iOS Delta Chat.

1 Like
6

yeah, we will eventually gor for opus. the current mp3-intermediate-step was to move forward on desktop without adding pressure to iOS devs (where we are short atm, as everywhere :slight_smile: )

the too-high-quality-issue is known, there seems to be a bug in the used lib, see Reduce filesize of voice messages · Issue #4977 · deltachat/deltachat-desktop · GitHub

1 Like
7

Yes, no problems with accounts.
I use the appimage for linux through firejail to have portable home with this command firejail --private="./" --noprofile --appimage dc.appimage.
Obviously after the first boot and reconfiguring those settings, the problem is solved.

Oh, what a shame, is it not supported only in encoding or also in decoding? Because in the first case maybe you could let the two versions be asymmetrical?

@r10s :+1: Thanks for the info :slight_smile:

1 Like
9

Decoding, otherwise we’d go for it.

10

There is a new test release ready to be tested: Index of /desktop/v1.57.1/

  • lower bitrates for audio messages → smaller filesize
  • accessibility improvements
  • webxdc: fix webxdc apps sometimes having wrong selfAddr
  • clicking info messages with contacts now open the contact’s profile
1 Like