Assets [Released] AudioClip Explorer (edit multiple clips simultaneously)

I'm going to deprecate AudioClip Explorer and AudioClip Explorer Pro.
Please see this post for more information.

Spoiler

Download

AudioClip Explorer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679


Documentation

 

Pretty cool, I can't use this as we don't have a single sound file imported into Unity yet

 

Just for completeness, the plugin is available in the Asset Store since a couple of days: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9679

 

Hi Peter,
I have been using this. Great tool. Couple of things:

Sorting by "Load Type" doesn't work.

Also, I think thre is an underlying problem with Unity reporting "Runtime Size" for Compressed files. If you happen to be in Windows / Linux build when importing clips, compression is set to Oggvorbis. Changing build type to Android then makes MPEG available, but for some reason, files that are set as Compressed get left as Oggvorbis in the preview pane. The runtime size for Oggvorbis files is much larger than their storage Size. Eg. Storage size might be "259KB" while Runtime Size 0.6MB. If you tweak a parameter on the file to force Unity to recompress it, the preview pane and Runtime Size is then displayed as 245.4KB and Mpeg. Have you come across this?

I think this is the source of much confusion in forum threads regarding the size of compressed files at run time.

I am thinking a useful addition to AudioClip explorer would be to force recompression of all files so that their Runtime Size is displayed correctly for MPEG. Hope that makes sense.

Steve Duckworth

 

Hi Steve,

I was able to reproduce the problem and fixed it.

I haven't come across this problem before, but I can partially reproduce it. I tested with Unity 4.1.2 as followed:

• Switched Platform to Standalone
• Added an AIF file to the project and selected it to show its properties in the unity inspector
• Audio Format = Compressed (OGGVORBIS), Load Type=Compressed in memory, Runtime size=0.8mb, Storage size=0.5mb
• Switched Platform to Android
• Unity inspector still displays "Audio Format = Compressed (OGGVORBIS)"
• Unity preview shows Runtime size=500kb (earlier it was 0.8mb)
• Selecting a different clip in the project and then the just imported AIF again, updated the Inspector to "Audio Format = Compressed (MPEG)"

So I guess it works on my PC (except for the inspector refresh issue) or did I do anything wrong/different?
What unity version do you use? Does this problem occur with all clips in your project? Could you email (unitytools@console-dev.de) me a clip that displays an incorrect size after switching the platform? (I hardly believe it's related to the clip, but you know there are sometimes the strangest bugs out there, so just to be sure).

If I have a reproduce for this problem, I can probably implement it, but I need that reproduce to actually test my code


Thanks for the feedback!
Peter

 

Hi again,

I just submitted a new version to the AssetStore. If everything goes well and Unity let is pass, it should be online around 15th or 16th august, I guess.

Here is what has changed in version 1.9

• New: Added 'Find Prefabs in Project' context menu button. It selects all prefabs in the project that use a particular audioclip.
• Fix: Sorting by 'Load Type' column works now.
• Fix: Clips in 'Audio Format = MPEG' were displaying '0 Bits' as 'Bits per Sample' . Now an empty string is displayed, to match the Unity behaviour (Bits per sample isn't displayed in the unity preview pane for clips in MPEG format).

 

Hi there Peter,

I've just purchased the plugin, but I'm getting a "Download Failed" error message from the asset store when I try to get it into our project.
I suppose it could be that the new version you mention above is being published right now, meaning the plugin is unavailable for download...?

Any help getting access would be appreciated.

Thanks
Tim

 

Hi Tim,

sorry for the late reply!

That's a good question. If you still can't download the package, please send me a private message with your email address and I'll send you the plugin this way.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

PS: I just noticed the asset store displays "Size: 0 BYTES" for the package, which is totally wrong. I've contacted the asset store admin and asked to fix this issue.

 

Unity replied to my support request yesterday, saying they're currently working on this issue. Unfortunalety, the problem is not fixed yet. I guess it's also not going to happen during the weekend.

As I wrote before, I can send you the plugin via email. Just let me know where to send it to.

 

Hi Tim,

The Unity asset store team fixed the download a few hours ago. Again, I'm very sorry for the trouble it caused you.

 

Hi Peter,
I have the latest version now and can confirm Load type sort is working now. Thanks.

I am using Unity Version 4.1.4f1. Steps to recreate the Runtime problem (Any old WAVs will do)....

1. Create new project.
2. Ensure build type is standalone.
3. Add two Wav files to the Asset directory. One fairly big one say 4MB, so we see the effects of compression.
4. Set the Large Wav to be Compressed (OGG) and say 96kbps.
5. Note the Storage and Runtime sizes for the OGG.
6. Switch the Build type to Android.
7. Switch between the clips to display their properties. You will note Audio Format (at top) eventually changes to MPEG. However, the PREVIEW pane (where the waveform to displayed at the bottom) will still say OGG.
8. Now load the clip size data in Audio Explorer. Runtime size will match the figures displayed in the Unity Clip Preview Pane.
9. Now (and only now) change some aspect of the Clip, EG. Uncheck "3D". Unity will now recompress the file.... to MPEG.
10. Inspect the runtime size of the clip and you will see that it is different (Smaller), and the Preview pane will now be updated to MPEG.

Basically, there is nothing wrong in Audio Explorer - it is reporting what it is told. The problem is with Unity. When a project build type is changed from Standalone -> Android, any Stats for compressed samples remain displayed as for OGG (which is incorrect), until the user manually forces the clips to recompress. This is a laborious process. A button to do this in Audio Explorer would be great

Steve

 

Hi Steve,

thanks for the steps to reproduce. I'll take a look at it and see if I can add a button that will do this automatically for you.

 

No worries Peter ...I ended up getting one of our guys to hack together something for me.
I can confirm the package is downloadable now.

Tim

 

Hi,

I'm glad it finally works for you, thanks for letting me know!

Following the provided reproduce list step by step, I'm still not able to reproduce the issue. I'll implement your suggested feature anyway, but without being able to thoroughly test it and then send you a copy under separate cover so you can check if it does the job for you.

 

A new version is available in the asset store now. Here is the changelog for version 2.0:

• New: Added “Load all automatically” option to the “Tools” popup. If checked, AudioClip Explorer loads clip details automatically (the details where otherwise the “Load” button is displayed).
• New: Added a cancable progress bar while audio clip importer settings are loaded, which happens when you start the plugin or on playmode changes.
• New: Added “Reimport all” option to the “Tools” popup. This will force a reimport of all clips listed in AudioClip Explorer.
• Fix: Context menu item “Delete” didn't work when the Unity project pane was using “Two Column Layout” and a folder was selected. In this case AudioClip Explorer asked to delete the folder, rather than the clips selected in AudioClip Explorer.
• Fix: Context menu item “Show in Explorer” wasn't shown as “Reveal in Finder” when running Unity editor on MacOS. Fix: Text inside the list was sometimes cropped vertically.
• Fix: Inactive selection color when using pro skin (dark theme) didn't really match the color used in Unity itself for an inactive selection.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9679

 

How well does this work in the case of very large number of audio files? I'm worried about potential out-of-memory errors when dealing with such a large number of files (the mere act of selecting 10k audio files in the unity editor itself crashes it cause it tries to generate previews and runs out of memory). If it can handle a lot of audio assets, I'd be on board!

 

We have about 3500 audio files in our project and it does work like a charm. I'll create a test project with more than 4gb of audio clips and give it a try. If it runs into an out of memory issue, I'll fix it. This is going to be some really boring import only day

 

I created a test project with more than 20000 audio files, which have an imported total size of 16 GB. 5000 wav's where each is 3 MB, 15000 wav's where each is 50 KB and a few more from the AngryBots projects duplicated several times.

The currently available AudioClip Explorer version (2.0) in the asset store does handle this amount of audio files, unless you click "Load all". In this case AudioClip Explorer loads all the audio clip details (Duration, Frequency, etc) and then indeed shows an out-of-memory error when reaching the 4gb memory threshold. There are also some minor glitches, such as the summed total size in the bottom bar wraps at 4GB, due to using EditorUtility.FormatBytes.

However, I did fix all these issues by now. The next version will not have this memory limitation anymore and I also fixed all minor glitches I found so far. Version 2.1 does handle 20000 files (16 GB), even when using the "Load all" button. The list is also super fast when scrolling (just mentioning that, because I've seen plugins where the list gets slower the more items are added).

I'll submit the new version to the asset store after having it thoroughly tested and put a note here when it's online.

Screenshot: http://www.console-dev.de/bin/audioclipexplorer_21.jpg

 

Awesome, thanks for the quick and informative reply, I'll definitely give it a shot (and your Texture Overview looks just as useful). Just a random question though, for either tool, is it possible to filter texture/audio lists by folder or folder trees rather than entire projects?

 

Yes it is. You can push the magnifying glass icon in the text filter and select "Filter by Path". You can then enter a path relative to the "Assets" directory and AudioClip Explorer (or any of my plugins) will display only assets that contain the specified text in their path.

I'm not entirely happy with this solution though. If you have any idea how filtering by path could be improved, let me know.

Here is a screenshot of that "Filter by Path" functionality:
http://www.console-dev.de/bin/audioclipexplorer_22.jpg

 

Oh, I didn't even know that option existed. I've picked up both plugins, they're very useful! For browsing by folder, I guess you can't get what folder is currently selected like you can with objects in the scene view huh... a context menu would be easiest, but I can see why some people wouldn't want such an option.

 

Thanks for the kind words! I was experimenting with the folder filtering. You're right, getting what folder is currently selected like with objects in the scene seems not to be possible.

An alternative that I really like is to drag&drop a folder from the project window on the filter textfield in AudioClip Explorer and the list will then only contain clips that are stored in this folder.

 

I just submitted the new version to Unity. If everything goes well, it should be online around 11th Oct. I'll leave note as soon as the new version is available in the asset store.

Here is the changelog:

• New: The search field accepts drag&drop from the Unity project window. This makes it
  much easier to filter clips by path, no typing needed anymore.
• New: The search supports basic search operators now: „add“, „or“ and „not“
• Fix: The „Load all“ button caused an „Out of Memory“ error when several thousand clips
  were in the project and memory consumption went near 4 GB. Now, clips get properly
  unloaded once their properties have been read and thus are no longer required. AudioClip Explorer has been successfully tested with a project containing more than 20000 clips that
  make up more than 16 GB of imported data.
• Fix: The summed „StorageSize“ and „RuntimeSize „in the bottom bar shows incorrect sizes
  when the project contains more than 2 GB of clips.
• Fix: The filter mode (Filter by Name, Path, GUID) has been lost every time AudioClip
  Explorer has been closed.
• Change: The „Loading“ progressbar now also displays the number of remaining items to
  load.
• Change: Increased the width of the filter textfield.
• Change: Context menu button „Find References in Scene“ gets disabled when more than
  one clip is selected.
• Change: Renamed „Filter by Name“ etc to „Search in Name“.
• New: If a search yields no results, the list displays a note that different search modes are
  available.

... and here is the manual with the new search functionality: Manual

 

The new version AudioClip Explorer 2.1 is online now. The asset store approval team was super fast this time!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9679

 

AudioClip Explorer version 2.2 is now available in the asset store. Here is the changelog:

• Fix: Plugin starts much quicker now, see „Cache File“ section in manual. Only the first start might take a while to complete. I also removed the „Load Details“ functionality, which is no longer needed with the cache file.
• Fix: The „Playmode tint“ setting in Unity Preferences is now correctly handled in AudioClip Explorer.
• Fix: The „Color Space“ player-setting no longer impacts the icons in AudioClip Explorer.
• Fix: „Unable to find style '' in skin 'DarkSkin' used“ warning sometimes turned the plugin being unresponsive.
• New: Added „Export CSV“ to „Tools“ popup-menu. The exported CSV (comma separated) file can be used to generate fancy graphs in spreadsheet applications to visualize memory usage for example.
• New: Pressing a key, while the list has the focus, jumps to the item of the texture that starts with the key.
• New: Added key shortcuts for a few context-menu functions (Open, Select in Project, Delete)
• New: Pressing „Enter“ now assigns the selected clips to the Unity inspector.
• New: Added links to AudioClip Explorer asset store and forum pages in About Dialog.

 

I’m very happy to announce a “Pro” version of AudioClip Explorer is now available in the Unity Asset Store. The Pro version contains the full C# source code to build the plugin.

I thought it would be a nice step to upgrade the existing product to the Pro version, rather than submitting it as a new product, so existing users who bought the plugin prior 8th April 2014, should be able to download the upgrade to the Pro version without any additional cost. This is my way of saying thank-you to all of my customers so far!

I’m also going to submit the regular (non-pro, without source code) versions of the plugin to the Asset Store in the next days, which is then hopefully available next week.

Here is the changelog for version 2.3:

• New: AudioClip Explorer Pro now contains the full C# source code to build AudioClip Explorer.
• New: Last column sorting information now gets restored when the plugin starts.
• Fix: "Export to CSV" generated broken CSV when a comma was in the asset path.
• Change: I replaced third party icons with selfmade ones to not cause any license issues, now that the source code is available and therefore the icons as well.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9679

 

The low-priced non-pro version is now also online again:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/16939

 

I see your tool does some extra features. But people who just want to modify loads of audioclips, could consider this free solution instead.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/77816-Changing-import-settings-for-multiple-audio-files

 

Yes, but also not really I guess. The script you posted operates on the Unity selection, so you have to select the audioclips you want to change. This will cause Unity to load the clips into memory and most likely cause the editor to run into an out-of-memory exception if you're really dealing with a lot of clips. It's a good solution for smaller projects I think.

AudioClip Explorer does not have this limitation. It's also more than just changing settings simultaneously as you already pointed out, it provides you with a well working workflow to get your audio settings right. It's a super useful tool during content optimization and gives an excellent overview what audioclips you should actually consider for optimization.

With AudioClip Explorer, you don't need to know in advance what you need to change. Just fire up the plugin, sort by Runtime size and check which clips consume the most memory, sort by Load type to figure out if your music is using streaming, etc. AudioClip Explorer helps you to find these things much faster.

 

AudioClip Explorer Pro is currently available in the 24 hour deal for 50% off!

Don't miss to take a look the Asset Store Page:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

I'm super excited about this deal! Can hardly wait to get feedback from people who actually picked up the plugin. Feedback is always the most joyful, interesting and rewarding thing in development for me

 

Hi there,
I've been unable to use AudioClip Explorer for a while. As soon as it tries to populate the explorer window it crashes. (I;m using latest unity release).

 

Hi Steve, thanks for the info. I'm going to take a look at this problem later today and let you know as soon as I have a fix available. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Hi Steve, I just sent you a private message with a fixed version. Please let me know if the fix works for you.

 

A new version is available in the Asset Store, it's a bug-fix release. Here is the changelog for version 2.4:

• Fix: Don't crash AudioClip Explorer if an AudioImporter cannot be loaded, output an error message and display the item in red instead.
• Fix: "NullReferenceException at AudioClipExplorer.MainWindow.OnSelectionChange" error occasionally occured when pressing Play in the editor.
• Fix: OSX displays a resize grabber in the lower right corner of the AudioClip Explorer window, which was overlapping the "Info" button. Added some space to prevent that overlap.
• Fix: "Name" column were using CurrentCultureIgnoreCase for comparison, but it's recommended to compare path names using OrdinalIgnoreCase. This fix also makes sorting by "Name" significantly faster when the project contains 10000 and more audio clips.

AudioClip Explorer Pro:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

AudioClip Explorer:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

 

Hi, it seems that files with .aiff extension are not listed.

 

Thank you for the report! The .aiff extension problem has been fixed in version 2.5, which has just been released.

 

AudioClip Explorer version 2.5 is available in the Unity Asset Store now.

This update is fixing several bugs, ensures compatibility with the recently released Unity 4.6 open beta version and introduces a new feature that I call the Find Usage Results window.

Changelog

• New: Added Find Usage Results window, which displays the result of “Find Prefabs in Project” and “Find Prefabs and Scenes in Project” search operations.
• New: Added “Find Prefabs and Scenes in Project” to context menu.
• Fix: The plugin was ignoring clips with the file-extension .aiff (.aif worked though)
• Fix: The Apply and Revert icons were missing sometimes when switching playmode.
• Fix: The plugin displayed the following error using Unity 4.6 open beta, which caused the plugin to start much slower than usual: “Library/assetDatabase3 not supported, seems not to be an assetDatabase3 file.”

AudioClip Explorer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

 

Nice update. Also because I'll start testing 4.6 soon, so good that you already fixed some bugs

 

Well, I'm trying my best to fix any issues that occur as fast and reliable as possible. If you encounter any bugs, I don't think there is another one though, please let me know.

 

Spoiler: Old news about 24hrs deal

AudioClip Explorer Pro is currently available in Unity's 24 hour deals, it's 50% off for a short time.

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

 

In this post I would like to outline the current progress on Unity 5 compatibility. If you purchased AudioClip Explorer, you use Unity 5 and you are interested in giving it a try, please message me your AudioClip Explorer invoice number and I will send you the package in return. Think about it as some kind of beta testing.

Here is a screenshot of AudioClip Explorer running in Unity 5 (too large to embed):
http://console-dev.de/bin/audioclipexplorer_unity5_support.png

I'm happy to say I have a build that works fine with Unity 5, but still needs thoroughly testing. Unity 5 supports platform specific audio clip settings, which I implemented in AudioClip Explorer as well.

I found there was little compatibility between the old and new audio system from an editor point of view, so it was not as simple to upgrade AudioClip Explorer to work with Unity 4 and 5, which was an important goal for me. I found a good solution to cope with it though.

Future versions of AudioClip Explorer display a short (few seconds) installation window after you imported the package from the asset store and open the plugin for the first time. The installation window detects which Unity version you use and copies either Unity 4 or Unity 5 specific AudioClip Explorer DLL's. This allows me to support both Unity versions in a single package and from an development point of view to have the best of both worlds.

Now I would like to show what new features you can find in AudioClip Explorer for Unity 5.

The toolbar now displays buttons for each supported platform, pretty much the same you also find in Unity's audio clip inspector. Clicking such button will tell AudioClip Explorer to display settings of the selected platform.



Since AudioClip Explorer displays settings in a table, I added platform specific settings in the same way. In AudioClip Explorer for Unity 5, you also find the platform specific settings simply in a column. Platform settings are slightly tinted in a blueish color. This should communicate that these settings belong together. I was thinking about the tint for quite a while but it makes sense for me. Let me know what you think.



In Unity's audio clip inspector, you can find various "sample rate" related settings. Unity displays these settings using several UI controls. I tried to combine all these settings into a single dropdown menu to ease the workflow. I think I found an easier approach to that, which only uses a single dropdown menu.




So, what is left until I will release an update? I would like to find existing AudioClip Explorer customers that could give it a try before I officially submit the update to the asset store. I'm pretty confident that it works, but software development is such a complex topic and I might have missed to find an issue.

Please let me know what you think.

 

AudioClip Explorer 2.7 is available in the Unity Asset Store now. This update fixes an exception that occurred when running the plugin in Unity 5.2 beta.

AudioClip Explorer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

 

AudioClip Explorer 2.8 is available in the Unity Asset Store now.

This update fixes an exception that occurred when running the plugin in Unity 5.3 beta and several minor glitches. Beside all those fixed bugs, it also comes with a new mode to inspect audio clips of an AssetBundle Manifest file.

Changelog

• Fixed “unsupported platform specified tvOS” error when running in Unity 5.3b5
• Fixed NullReferenceException if the project contains a broken audio clip (where AssetImporter.GetAtPath returns null).
• Fixed that selecting platform buttons in AudioClip Explorer and afterwards switching the mode (Project,Scene,Selection) showed the “Loading…” dialog every single time.
• Fixed garbage settings if an audio clip is broken. Just leave the list cell empty to avoid confusion.
• Fixed icon of broken audio clips. Do not display an audio icon, but an error icon instead.
• Fixed label in bottom info bar where the path of the selected clip is shown. It now properly shrinks with the window size.
• Added AssetBundle Manifest mode to display audio clips from a manifest file.
• Increased minimum required Unity version for AudioClip Explorer from 4.1 to 4.3

AssetBundle Manifest mode

You can find this new mode under the popup in the toolbar as shown below.



This mode displays audio clips that are referenced by an asset bundle manifest file. Unitys BuildPipeline outputs a manifest file for each asset bundle it generates. Such manifest file contains which assets have been explicitly added to an asset bundle. Asset dependencies are not resolved.

Please note that AudioClip Explorer does not load the actual asset bundle. It uses the .manifest file to detect which assets are stored in a bundle. It reads and displays settings of those audio clips that are located in your project, not the ones stored in that asset bundle.

The list at the left side displays all .manifest files that have been found in the directory that you selected using the “Open…” button. If a file with either no or .unity3d file extension is located next to the .manifest file (which is usually the actual asset bundle), its size is display in the list next to the name.


AudioClip Explorer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

AudioClip Explorer Documentation
http://www.console-dev.de/bin/AudioClipExplorer.pdf

 

AudioClip Explorer version 2.9 is available in the Unity Asset Store now.

Changelog

• Fixed that "Scene mode" now also finds clips used by inactive GameObjects.
• Fixed that AudioClip Explorer properly works with Unitys "Automatically Play Audio" feature. Double-clicking a clip in AudioClip Explorer now properly plays the clip if the "Auto Play Audio" option is enabled in Unitys AudioClip Inspector.
• Fixed error when canceling a progressbar (seems the error occurred under Windows 10 only?)
  

AudioClip Explorer
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16939

AudioClip Explorer Pro
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/9679

 

AudioClip Explorer version 3.0 is available in the Unity Asset Store now.

Changes in version 3.0

• Unity 5.5.0f3 compatibility
• Unity 5.6.0b3 compatibility
• Fixed missing compression slider for XMA and AAC formats
• Fixed missing ATRAC9 format in popup for PSP2 platform
• Fixed "Unsupported platform specified" exception (Switch/Facebook)

Download from the Asset Store
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:3683

 

AudioClip Explorer 3.0 does not work with Unity 2017 beta.
I'm going to add Unity 2017 compatibility in the next few weeks. I'll update this thread as soon as I've something available.

 

I just submitted an update to the Unity Asset Store, which adds Unity 2017 beta 1 compatibility. The update is currently in review and perhaps available around April 24th, if Unity does not find an error during the review process.

 

AudioClip Explorer 3.1 is available in the Asset Store now, which adds Unity 2017 beta 1 compatibility.

Changelog

• Unity 2017 beta 1 compatibility
• Added 'Ambisonic' column (Unity 2017 only)

Download
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=relevance/query=publisher:3683

 

I'm going to deprecate AudioClip Explorer and AudioClip Explorer Pro.

I'm going to submit an update that adds support for Unity 2017.2 and shortly after that mark the package as deprecated, which means the package will not be visible in the Asset Store anymore.

Customers who purchased the plugin will continue to be able to download the package from the Asset Store.

I've decided to deprecate the package, because sales are pretty much non-existent. AudioClip Explorer is available in store for a little over 4 years and I made sure to always support the latest Unity version. Unfortunately, the effort I have to put into it, to keep the plugin up to date with all the new Unity releases that are coming really fast these days, is higher than what I get in return.