Obi versions

v4.3 [Nov 4, 2019]
Detail on New Features and Enhancements of Obi 4.3:
- Introduction of a dialog for quick configuration of Obi when it is started the first time—This release introduces a convenient way of configuring the basic settings in Obi such as input device name, output device name, and profiles, via the Configurations dialog. which appears when you first start Obi after installation. You can modify these settings any time later by using the Preferences dialog.
- Facility to restrict unintended modification of structure while narration—You can disable the modification of the structure of your project by checking the check box Switch to read only structure via the Project tab of the Preferences dialog. This feature is very useful for preventing unintended modification of structure while recording.
- Updated language pack for French—Many thanks to European Digital Reading Lab for consistently updating the French translation.
- Choice of removing accents from the filenames during DAISY 2.02 export—Obi can now normalize accents during the production of books in languages that contain accents. If you choose to append section names to audio file names for non-English books, the file names may contain some characters that may create issues in accessing them. This feature normalizes the accents in file names to curb such issues. The Audio tab of the Preferences dialog provides the check box Remove accents from filenames during DAISY 2.02 export to activate or deactivate this functionality.
- Project and audio preferences made more manageable by segregation—Obi now classifies a few project and audio settings as additional settings, if they are not used frequently by users. You can access these settings by using the Additional Project settings and Additional Audio Settings button in the Project and Audio tabs of the Preferences dialog respectively.
- New keyboard shortcut for pasting multiple phrases—You can now conveniently paste multiple phrases by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl Alt Z.
Some of the Major Bugs that have been Fixed and Behaviour Changes made in the 4.3 release:
- In the TOC view, the copy command copied full name of the section even when a part of the section name was selected.
- When a new section was created and multiple phrases were copied and pasted (using multiple phrase operations), the undo command could not remove all the copied phrases in one go.
- Removing the headphones/earphones while navigating Content View in Play on navigate mode resulted in the null reference crash.
- Replaced the Preserve Zoom checkbox in Zoomed Waveform view with a button to prevent the checkbox from altering the space bar behaviour, which is supposed to start and pause the playback.
- One was not able to paste a set of phrases multiple times by giving consecutive paste multiple phrases commands.
- Added a message to inform that skippable structures are not exported to DAISY 2.02 file set.
- TODO mark position in a phrase is now preserved in an Obi session. The caveat is that currently it is not saved when Obi is restarted or project is opened again.
- User registration dialog now needs explicit authorization of the user for sharing the personal data with Obi team.
Known Limitations of Obi 4.3:
There are some limitations in this release which the team is working consciously towards resolving:
- Pipeline-lite does not work with non western characters in file path—Pipeline-lite is not able to operate if there are non western characters in path of the file. It is recommended to keep non western characters away from the file paths on which Pipeline-lite needs to work. This means that the DAISY 3 export folder and the DAISY 2.02 export folder should be placed at a location where there are no non western characters in its path. This only affects validation, mp3 encoding and fileset renaming process and does not hinder normal operations of book authoring.
- EPUB 3 export & import does not support skippable structures yet—The skippable structures like footnotes, sidebars, notes etc. are yet not supported by EPUB 3 export & import. The support will be added as the EPUB 3 navigable audio-only guidelines will progress.
- Error messages are not so user friendly—Error messages in message boxes when some invalid operation is done, give information. But these messages are not so user friendly, especially the exception messages. These will be replaced with more user friendly text in future.

v3.7 [Apr 13, 2015]
Ability to preserve preferences for their portability across workstations and Obi versions
Enhanced Recording Toolbar
Enabled simultaneous export to multiple standards
Export Audio command now lets you specify the name and the location of the audio file.

v3.6 [Dec 16, 2014]
- Ability to export the book in newer audio formats(MP4, AMR, and 3GP).
- Apability to perform operations on multiple sections simultaneously.
- Enables integration of Obi with the production management software using configuration file.
- Enables creation of sequenced audio data files with customizable size during project cleanup to reduce the load time when fetching the project via a network.
- Project cleanup now creates sequenced audio files of customizable size.
- New Chinese language pack added and Finnish language pack updated.
- Option to preserve pages when recording over subsequent audio.

v2.5 [Jan 31, 2013]
- Obi can now author skippable notes like footnote, prodnote, endnote, note, annotation & sidebar.
- Automated book production process has been introduced, by enhancing audio file import to generate the structure of the book and import its contents.
- Obi can now perform On-the-fly phrase detection to detect phrases while recording. It can be enabled from audio preferences.
- Fine navigation mode has been introduced to provide convenient way for fine adjustment of audio cursor and audio selection. It also enables quick alteration of nudge duration with up and down arrow keys.
- Live waveform generation has been incorporated in Obi that draws the waveform being recorded on the run and provides facility to mark phrases, pages and also chunk of audio to delete. It can be enabled from audio preferences.
- Replace audio functionality added to replace audio of selected section or phrase with external audio. This feature facilitates audio processing with external tools
- Multiple section phrase detection has new set of options.
- Export operation enhanced with options of adding section names to audio filenames for facilitating mp3/CD player users in easy identification of audio files.
- Both DAISY 3 and DAISY 2.02 export commands can now be executed in one go.
- ncc:depth & ncc:files metadata entries are added in DAISY 2.02 export
- Ability to generate audio for page phrases using text to speech engine has been introduced. Users can also select preferred synthetic voice to be used for audio generation and text to speech based audio clues.
- New Collect special phrases feature is introduced that collects all phrases of one kind in the project and enables quick search and navigation to the required one.
- Preferences dialog has been augmented with the Color preferences tab for personalizing colors used for elements and components of Obi's user interface.
- Recording toolbar can now be magnified for touch screen use.
- French language pack added. Thanks to localization work done by Association Valentin Haüy.
- Go to time in project option added in go to dialog box.
- New options added to transport bar time display.
- If pages are marked while recording, option is provided to renumber the subsequent pages when recording stops.
- Phrase detection parameters are saved in applications settings and can be adjusted from audio preferences. Furthermore the parameters can be extracted from a silence phrase using Phrases->apply phrase detection -> parameters from selected silence phrase menu item.
- Before executing operations like importing audio file, recording audio, and saving the project, Obi checks if there is enough disk space for proper execution of the operation and informs the users if it is less than the minimum limit.
- Cleanup operation made safer by adding an option to retain unused files, which may be reused in case of cleanup errors.
- Graphical peak meter window has been synchronized to the main application window; it goes down with the application when Obi is minimized and vice versa.
List of some major bugs fixed in this release:
- The recording process started filling audio in the next empty page when Next phrase command was given. The correct behavior is to create a new phrase before the empty page phrase and record in the newly created phrase.
- When the user executed the following series of commands - Begin note, End note, and Cancel the dialog thus opened; the End note command was not disabled and therefore its execution resulted in Null reference exception.
- Clear role from skippable note resulted in Null reference exception sometimes.
- Error was thrown while saving referred skippable phrase in the project created in Obi 2.5 alpha, due to different conventions used for saving anchors and their references.
- Occasional error thrown in export when illegal characters were stored as value of File name length limit.
- Opening the peak meter window used to shrink the main application window of Obi.
- Live waveform creation has been made more stable.
List of some major bugs fixed in Obi 2.5:
- Project upgrader missed out upgrading the audio format, when the project created in Obi 1.2 was opened in Obi 2.0 / 2.5 alpha.
- Validation errors were thrown by DAISY 2.02 validator, when append section name to audio file name option was used for DAISY 2.02 export.
- Add/Remove reference dialog for skippable structures has been stabilized and improved.
- Record in next page command used to ignore next empty page in the section for filling audio. Instead, it used to create new page for recording.
- Navigation buttons of transport bar were enabled, even if there were no pages or sections in the current playlist.
- Collect special phrases dialog had no option to collect empty phrases.
- Pre export checks missed out detection of duplicate page numbers for empty pages
- Export to DAISY 2.02 inserted Duplicate ncc:totalTime metadata entry in the imported book that already had TotalTime metadata entry.
- Obi failed to open the project if some of the audio files were missing.
- Missing windows/.NET framework components on some machines resulted in improper functioning of Obi.
- Installation on some versions of windows 7 failed due to inadequate permissions.
- Split command, if invoked during preview operation, used to split the phrase or section at the cursor position instead of the position from which preview was started.
- Obi used to throw an exception when Go to time command was used on empty section.
- After pausing the Play all command, initiation of the Play selection command from Transport menu used to fail.