v1.1.0 - Enhanced Keyword Handling & Audio Preprocessing

Release Notes - v1.1.0

Enhanced Keyword Handling & Audio Preprocessing 🚀

This release introduces powerful new keyword capabilities and audio preprocessing features, along with significant reliability improvements for production workloads.

✨ New Features

Keyword Spotting 2.0

• ✅ Negated keyword support: Use !keyword syntax to detect segments without specific terms
• 🎯 Improved accuracy: Better handling of homophones through fuzzy matching enhancements
• 📊 Enhanced logging: Detailed keyword processing metrics in request logs

Audio Preprocessing Pipeline

• 🎧 Smart audio enhancement: New preprocessing options including:
  • DC offset removal
  • Normalization & dynamic range compression
  • Noise reduction & silence trimming
  • Pre-emphasis filtering
• ⚙️ Configurable workflow: Enable/disable steps via environment variables
• 🖥️ UI integration: Toggle preprocessing in web interface

Gemma Improvements

• 🔒 Safer model loading: Better error handling for GPU memory constraints
• 📈 Performance metrics: Detailed memory usage tracking during initialization

🛠️ Improvements

• 💾 GPU memory management: Optimized VRAM allocation logging and fallback logic
• ✨ Type hint modernization: Better developer experience across codebase
• 📄 Documentation overhaul: Updated README with preprocessing guides and new API examples
• 🌐 UI enhancements: File preprocessing toggle and improved status displays

⚠️ Updated Known Issues

• Gemma-2b-it still requires >8GB GPU RAM for optimal performance
• AAC support continues to require FFmpeg preprocessing
• Keyword confidence thresholds may need adjustment for technical vocabulary

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🚨 Migration Note
Add these new environment variables to your .env file for preprocessing controls:

AUDIO_ENABLE_PREPROCESSING=true
AUDIO_ENABLE_DC_OFFSET=true
AUDIO_ENABLE_NORMALIZATION=true
AUDIO_PRE_EMPHASIS=0.97