Sonic Candle 2.0 Beta 1.0

Sonic Candle 2.0 Beta 1.0

Beta 1.0 is the first release intended for broad community testing. It freezes the complete Alpha 20 feature set while feedback, compatibility reports, bug reports, and future preset ideas are collected.

What's included

• Six visualizer modes: Bars, Circular, Dual bar, Loading bar, Cardiogram, and the new Neon Wave.
• Real-time audiovisual preview with Play/Pause, audio playback, and timeline seeking.
• Audio or video input, including videos with embedded audio and silent background videos paired with a separate song.
• Color, image, and streamed-video backgrounds with Cover, Contain, Stretch, Loop, and Freeze controls.
• MP4, transparent ProRes 4444, transparent WebM VP9, and transparent PNG-sequence exports.
• Spanish and English interfaces plus Modern blue and Classic themes.
• Rotating diagnostic logs for actionable bug reports.

New in the Beta candidate

Neon Wave turns the spectrum into a contained polygonal trace with 8–32 glowing nodes, temporal echoes, music-driven deterministic particles, three line finishes, adjustable glow, top/center/bottom placement, and vertical inversion. Its straight node line remains visible during absolute silence.

The preceding Alpha 18 and Alpha 19 work is also included: streamed video backgrounds, automatic media-track detection, embedded-cover filtering, and the adaptive Cardiogram visualizer.

Downloads

• Windows EXE: includes a private Java runtime. FFmpeg and FFprobe must still be available in PATH or bundled beside the application.
• Executable JAR: requires Java 17 or newer plus FFmpeg and FFprobe.

Please include your operating system, Java and FFmpeg versions, input/output formats, visualizer configuration, reproduction steps, and the newest file from logs/ when reporting a problem.

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 19

Full Changelog: v2.0.0-alpha.18...v2.0.0-alpha.19

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 19 — Cardiogram Visualizer

Alpha 19 introduces the fifth Sonic Candle visualizer mode: Cardiogram. This mode transforms musical intensity and detected attacks into a moving P–QRS–T heartbeat trace inspired by medical electrocardiograph displays.

The visualizer continuously draws new heartbeats while older portions of the signal travel across the frame and disappear at the opposite side.

Heart rate mode

Heart rate is the default Cardiogram behavior.

Instead of drawing arbitrary pulses for every note, this mode behaves like a continuous heart monitor. The song's overall intensity controls the simulated heart rate:

• Calm passages remain close to a resting pulse.
• Medium-intensity passages progressively increase the heart rate.
• Energetic sections accelerate toward a tachycardia-like appearance.

The resulting rate ranges approximately from 58 BPM to 190 BPM. Changes are smoothed over time so the monitor accelerates and decelerates naturally instead of jumping immediately between unrelated values.

This mode is intended to preserve the recognizable rhythm of a normal heartbeat while allowing the music to influence its emotional intensity.

Intensity-adaptive sweep

Heart rate mode includes the optional Adapt sweep to intensity control, enabled by default.

When active, musical intensity changes the actual speed at which the trace is drawn and displaced across the screen using three movement levels:

• Normal during calm sections.
• Fast during moderately energetic sections.
• Very fast during intense sections.

The visual scale remains fixed. Previously drawn heartbeats move faster instead of the complete trace being stretched or compressed, preventing accordion-like deformation.

When the option is disabled, the heartbeat rate continues responding to the song, but the trace movement remains fixed at Normal speed.

Musical hits mode

Musical hits preserves the alternative attack-driven behavior.

In this mode, each significant detected musical attack generates a P–QRS–T pulse whose R peak lands directly on the detected hit. The detector combines low-frequency energy, bass attacks, and broader spectral onset information to prioritize meaningful beats while rejecting small continuous fluctuations.

Quiet variations in the spectrum do not generate unrelated or random heartbeats.

Unlike Heart rate mode, Musical hits provides a manual sweep selector:

• Slow: keeps more signal history visible.
• Synchronized: provides a balanced default history.
• Fast: displays less history and produces a more energetic movement.

These settings only change how much trace history is visible. They do not accelerate the song or alter the timing of detected attacks.

Direction and appearance

By default, new heartbeats enter from the right while the oldest trace disappears on the left. The complete sweep can be reversed, causing new beats to enter from the left and leave through the right.

Five line finishes are available:

• Thin line
• Thick line
• Rounded stroke
• Segmented line
• Fluid halo

The Cardiogram also includes independent color and sensitivity controls. Sensitivity adjusts the height of the P wave, QRS complex, and T wave without allowing extreme peaks to leave the video frame.

The trace is softly contained within a safe margin rather than appearing trapped inside a visible rectangular boundary.

Deterministic preview and export

The complete Cardiogram timeline is precalculated from the analyzed song. Preview seeking, real-time playback, and final rendering all use the same temporal signal and sweep positions.

This guarantees that:

• Seeking to the same timestamp displays the same heartbeat.
• Preview playback matches the exported result.
• MP4, ProRes 4444, WebM VP9, and PNG exports preserve identical pulse timing.
• Reversed and adaptive sweeps remain deterministic.

Embedded cover-art correction

Alpha 19 also fixes an important media-import issue affecting MP3, M4A, and similar audio files containing embedded album artwork.

Attached cover images are no longer classified as real video streams. Audio analysis and preview playback explicitly select the first genuine audio stream and discard attached pictures.

As a result:

• Album artwork cannot become an unintended background.
• Audio files with covers no longer stall or block export.
• The selected background image, background video, or solid color remains unchanged.
• Audio-only projects continue using a black background when no other background is configured.

Reliability and testing

New regression coverage validates:

• Silence and flat-line behavior.
• Resting and high-intensity heart rates.
• Normal, Fast, and Very fast adaptive sweep advancement.
• Fixed-scale movement without accordion-like stretching.
• Musical attack detection.
• P–QRS–T pulse shape.
• Exact R-peak alignment.
• Sweep reversal.
• All five line styles.
• Sensitivity and safe-frame containment.
• Deterministic preview seeking.
• Transparent and opaque export consistency.
• Audio files containing embedded cover artwork.

Generated diagnostic logs are also excluded from distributable ZIP packages so automated test logs cannot be mistaken for user crash reports.

Requirements

• The executable JAR requires Java 17 or newer.
• The Windows installer includes its own Java runtime.
• FFmpeg and FFprobe must be available through the system PATH, the bundled tools directory, or the supported environment variables.

Alpha 19 remains a prerelease, but it adds a distinct visualizer style that goes beyond conventional bars and circles while preserving Sonic Candle's goal: creating polished music visualizations without requiring a full video editor.

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 18

Full Changelog: v2.0.0-alpha.17...v2.0.0-alpha.18

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 18 — Video Background Support

Alpha 18 expands Sonic Candle beyond static backgrounds by introducing complete video-input and video-background support. This release allows users to create finished music visualizers using existing footage without first separating, converting, or manually synchronizing media in an external editor.

Video as the main input

The primary input selector can now identify three different kinds of media through FFprobe:

• Audio-only files.
• Video files with an embedded audio track.
• Silent video files.

When a video containing audio is selected as the main input, Sonic Candle automatically uses its audio track for spectrum analysis and its video stream as the visual background. This provides a convenient one-file workflow for music videos, gameplay recordings, animations, and other footage that already contains the desired soundtrack.

Independent background video

A separate background-video selector was added for projects where the song and footage come from different files.

This supports workflows such as:

• Combining a song with a silent animation or video loop.
• Using footage that contains unwanted audio while preserving only the separately selected song.
• Replacing a static image with moving footage without changing the existing audio configuration.

When separate audio and video files are used, the background video's audio track is ignored. The selected song remains the only source used for spectrum analysis, preview playback, and final audio output.

Video fitting and duration controls

Background footage can be adapted to the output frame using three fitting modes:

• Cover: fills the complete frame while preserving aspect ratio, cropping excess areas when necessary.
• Contain: displays the complete video while preserving aspect ratio, adding empty space when necessary.
• Stretch: forces the footage to match the selected output resolution.

Two end-of-video behaviors are also available:

• Loop: repeats the background video until the song finishes.
• Freeze last frame: holds the final video frame when the footage ends before the audio.

Synchronized audiovisual preview

The preview system now seeks and plays the background video from the same timeline position as the audio and visualizer. Moving the timeline, pressing Play, pausing, or resuming keeps all three components synchronized:

• Audio playback.
• Spectrum animation.
• Background-video frame.

This makes it possible to evaluate the actual composition before beginning a full render.

Streaming architecture

Background videos are decoded progressively through FFmpeg instead of being loaded completely into memory. This keeps memory usage stable when working with long or high-resolution footage and avoids turning the application into a full video editor internally.

Export behavior

MP4 export composites the transparent Java visualizer over the selected video stream while preserving only the intended audio source.

Transparent export formats continue following their overlay-oriented behavior:

• ProRes 4444: exports the visualizer with maximum-quality transparency.
• WebM VP9: exports a compressed transparent visualizer.
• PNG sequence: exports numbered transparent frames without audio.

Global backgrounds—including background videos—are intentionally omitted from transparent exports. Circular visualizers still preserve a configured interior color or image, while a transparent interior remains transparent.

Reliability and testing

Alpha 18 adds regression coverage for:

• FFprobe media classification.
• Audio-only and audiovisual inputs.
• Silent background videos.
• Real preview-frame decoding.
• Timeline seeking and synchronization.
• Cover, Contain, and Stretch behavior.
• Looping and last-frame freezing.
• Complete MP4 video composition.
• Export command construction and audio-stream selection.

Requirements

• The executable JAR requires Java 17 or newer.
• The Windows installer includes its own Java runtime.
• FFmpeg and FFprobe must be available through the system PATH, the bundled tools directory, or the supported environment variables.

Alpha 18 remains a prerelease intended for testing, but it establishes the complete audiovisual foundation required to create finished visualizer videos directly inside Sonic Candle.

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 17

Sonic Candle 2.0 Alpha 17

This is the first public Alpha 17 release of the Java continuation of Sonic Candle.

Downloads

• Windows EXE: self-contained installer with a private Java runtime. FFmpeg and FFprobe must be installed separately or available in PATH.
• Executable JAR: cross-platform Java package. Requires JDK/JRE 17 or newer plus FFmpeg and FFprobe.

Highlights

• Bars, Circular, Dual bar, and Loading bar visualizers.
• English and Spanish interface.
• Modern and Classic themes.
• Synchronized audiovisual preview with timeline seeking.
• MP4, ProRes 4444, WebM VP9, and PNG-sequence export.
• Transparent video output with Circular fill preservation.
• Frequency-distribution and motion-response modes.
• Rotating diagnostic logs and theme-aware dialogs.

This is an alpha release. Please report reproducible problems through the repository's bug-report form and attach the relevant diagnostic log when possible.