Difference between revisions of "1.2.0"

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== Increased voice quality, decreased latency ==
 
== Increased voice quality, decreased latency ==
<span style="float:left; margin-right:5px">http://mumble.sourceforge.net/static/min_max_codec.png</span>
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Mumble is now able to use a new codec called [http://www.celt-codec.org/ CELT], which means 48khz sampling rate, but most importantly reduced framesize to 10ms, half of what it used to be. This means better audio quality and an even lower latency. Of course this also requires a bit of additional bandwidth and because we wanted to conserve the great performance [http://speex.org/ Speex] offered us in low bandwidth situations we simply decided to get the best of both worlds. Mumble automatically chooses the best codec for your quality and latency settings and hence is able to work in high, as well as low bandwidth environments.
 
Mumble is now able to use a new codec called [http://www.celt-codec.org/ CELT], which means 48khz sampling rate, but most importantly reduced framesize to 10ms, half of what it used to be. This means better audio quality and an even lower latency. Of course this also requires a bit of additional bandwidth and because we wanted to conserve the great performance [http://speex.org/ Speex] offered us in low bandwidth situations we simply decided to get the best of both worlds. Mumble automatically chooses the best codec for your quality and latency settings and hence is able to work in high, as well as low bandwidth environments.
  

Revision as of 14:32, 2 September 2009

1.2.0

Status

1.2.0 is currently in heavy development. Most of the major features are in place, but there are still quite a few features missing, and there's a lot of polish and testing to do.

This release uses a new protocol between the client and server, which means a 1.2.0 client is only compatible with 1.2.0 or newer servers, and a 1.1.8 client can't connect to a 1.2.0 server. The new protocol is designed to be easily extended, so we should never have this problem again.

We've also switched to using CELT as a voice codec. This means higher voice quality and even lower latency. CELT is also under heavy development, and our current plan is to release 1.2.0 not long after CELT reaches a stable release.

New features

This is a summary of some of the new features in 1.2.0.

Increased voice quality, decreased latency

Mumble is now able to use a new codec called CELT, which means 48khz sampling rate, but most importantly reduced framesize to 10ms, half of what it used to be. This means better audio quality and an even lower latency. Of course this also requires a bit of additional bandwidth and because we wanted to conserve the great performance Speex offered us in low bandwidth situations we simply decided to get the best of both worlds. Mumble automatically chooses the best codec for your quality and latency settings and hence is able to work in high, as well as low bandwidth environments.

Certificate based authentication

When starting Mumble for the first time, users are guided through the process of generating a certificate. A certificate uses strong public key cryptography to securely and uniquely identify a user to a server without giving away any passwords or other sensitive information. If the certificate is ever lost, the ability to authenticate to servers will be lost, so making a backup is mandatory, and part of the guided process.

Users that already have secure certificates will have the option to use these instead, and such a trusted certificate can be replaced by any other trusted certificate for the same user identity.

User management

With certificate based authentication, many of the social engineering attacks on password-based authentication are weakened. As such, we feel it's safe to do user registration from the client. There are a few new permissions possible, and one of them is the ability to rightclick and register a connected user with the server.

Once registered, the user will be remembered by the server for the future, and can be used in ACL lists and group memberships.

There is also the possibility to list existing users and unregister users.

New connect dialog

For the new version we completely redid our previous server browser. It is now able to display all the important information about favourite, lan and public servers in one comprehensive list. We also added additional important information like the ping of the server or the number of users currently connected to it. Of course you are able to use this information to filter and sort the list, for example you could prevent empty servers from being displayed.

Comments

Based on popular requests, both players and channels can now have comments associated with them. Comments are shown in the tooltip for the channel or player, and are stored persistently on the server.

Friends

You can now add players to your friends list. Friends are recognized based on their certificate, so you will recognize your friends even on other servers than where you first met.

Whisper

You can now set up one-sided whispers. This will redirect your voice to a set of players or channels. The possibilities are fairly large; for example, you can whisper to "everyone in my parent channel, and all channels linked to it, that are a member of the @admin group". You can whisper to as many different "targets" as you want at the same time.

G15 for OSX

OSX now has full G15 support, which was the last missing feature on that platform.

Automatic Plugin Update

As the number of positional audio plugins increase, it has become a bit of a problem that games are updated much more frequently than Mumble releases. There is now a system to automatically update plugins, which means they'll be installed as soon as they are available.

Textures

Custom textures for the overlay can now be changed from within the client.

Automatic network fallback

For clients that, for some reason, have trouble getting UDP packets to and from the server, the client will now detect this and automatically switch to TCP compatibility mode. If things improve, it will switch back.

Audio events

Audio samples can now be associated with events, and these samples can be in .wav or .ogg.

Access Tokens

ACLs can now define rules for Token groups; and anyone who knows the token will match the group. This can be used to implement password-based channel access.

To set a token on a channel, simply add the token name preceded by # as a group in the ACL tab. Example: #yourtoken

Temporary Channels

Temporary channels live only as long as there are users in them, and automatically get deleted when the last users leaves.

LAN announcement and discovery

Mumble and murmur now support Bonjour, allowing users on the same site to easily find local Murmur servers. As it uses multicast, it even works across VLANs, making it great for LAN parties.

Crash reporting

Mumble now has a built in crash reporter, and will allow you to upload the crash directly to the developers. With the complete crash data, it's much easier for us to find and fix bugs.

Compatibility client

1.2 will come with an updated version of 1.1.8, we call it 1.1.X, which enables you to visit servers which did not update to the new version yet. We will eventually remove this client from the default installer once we feel that the new protocol has spread wide enough in our user base.

Customizable PTT audio cue

With the new client you can now customize what sound mumble plays when you push or release your push to talk key.