The Juicer COMES of AGE
NOT YOUR AVERAGE KITCHEN APPLIANCE
by David Hebel
As the now cliché, but true saying goes, "necessity is the mother of invention". That couldn't be more true when it comes to the Juicer, the Digital Juice content browsing and processing application. With over 350 content products under our collective belts, Digital Juice was, from the start, and still is today mainly a content driven company. But in 2002 we had a problem and there was no other way to solve it other than create our first application, Juicer 1.0. In the early days of Juice we delivered content on CDs in AVI and Quicktime format. We recommended that our customers buy Quicktime Pro and convert the animations to whatever codec they required on their system. This worked for a while but it was starting to get out of hand, with every product we released we had to release multiple versions of the CDs. The tipping point came about three months before we were to debut our first version of Editor's Toolkit, which for the first time, was going to include animations with alpha channels. The product was already going to be huge at 10 DVDs, but then we discovered a bug in Quicktime that forced our hand into the world of creating applications. The bug prevented Quicktime Pro from scaling animations from PAL to NTSC if they had a alpha channel. The alpha channel was totally corrupted whenever you did any scaling of the animations. This would mean we would have to do Quicktime PAL and Quicktime NTSC discs if we wanted to sell any products to our customers outside of North America.
With three months until the big release we had to act fast and jump head-first into making an application that could, at a minimum, browse, scale, and convert our animations. We quickly located a programmer to knock out the first version and for the most part it worked. But because he was mainly a Mac programmer it worked better with Quicktime than with AVI. By the time we realized this and asked to extend his contract with us he turned us down and said he would have to pass because he got an offer from Apple. It turned out that Apple had purchased a program he had designed called "India" which was the basis for the first version of LiveType.
The Juicer 3.1 interface (above) has come a long way in both looks and functionality from how the software looked and worked in previous incarnations, as you can see in these Juicer 2 and Juicer 1 screenshots.
GROWING PAINS:
Hey, this ain't as easy as it looks!
It is a pretty ambitious effort for a content company the size of Digital Juice to dive into the world of application building. But we realized after the first version that we probably couldn't rely on individual outside contractors to build the Juicer, we'd need our own programming team. We put together a team of four guys and set about programming Juicer 2. How hard could it be? The first version took us three months with one guy. We thought since we now had four guys we could bang out an even better version with more features in even less time. Wrong! Version 2.0 ended up taking over a year to get out the door. When it was done, it turned out to be reasonably good, considering it was our first real cross-platform (Windows and Mac) application. It could search and browse content, and it was easy for us to come out with and install new volumes with no changes to the code.
In content creation, which is what we were used to, as long as the content looks right and loops (if it is something like a Jump Back) we were done. You tend not to have to worry if content is going to "work" on another person's system. With application development, it's a whole different story. Everyone has different system configurations, hardware add-ons, OSes, etc. As we found out, it can really be a nightmare to get an application to work perfectly for everyone. Even though we've always kept the Juicer "free" it doesn't really take us out of the loop of responsibility when something doesn't work.
We persevered and eventually got a stable 2.0 that worked for almost everyone. For the most part, it did the job. It wasn't pretty and it was a bit difficult to navigate and learn for the novice. We decided we needed to make it easier and more powerful at the same time. That would mean redesigning the user interface and the back-end. In short it would mean starting Juicer 3 from scratch.
We really had big plans for Juicer 3 (and still do!) but it was an extremely difficult task. We had little experience in managing a software team, testing, and all the details that go into creating a mid-sized application. But we kept at it and set about learning the ropes because we felt it would be a big plus for both us and our customers if we could create the application we had on paper. It took about two and half years to get the first version of Juicer 3 ready for release. Getting it done and out the door was another "necessity" situation as the first volumes of SoundFX and Swipes could not be supported by Juicer 2.
It finally went out the door in March 2007, but it wasn't nearly as stable or robust as we had intended. We had cut a lot of features and taken some shortcuts that would come back to haunt us. We regrouped, analyzed the situation with the team, and this time instead of scrapping it and starting over with a brand new "Juicer 4.0" we decided we'd keep working and fixing this version until it was what we had planned all along.
FIRM FOUNDATION
What's new in 3.1?
In April 2008 we released Juicer 3.1 which is our most stable, reliable, and feature-packed Juicer to date. Finally we have an application that we can build on and really start doing some interesting things with. Here are just a few of the changes in 3.1 that may not be visible but are helping to make your experience more enjoyable and increase your productivity.
THE UPDATES MANAGER
We've completely rewritten the way the Juicer handles downloads and in particular product and software updates. The Updates Manager is actually a separate application that communicates with the Juicer to handle all downloading needs outside of the application itself. If the Juicer (or any future Digital Juice application) needs to check on or actually download a file it sends a message to the Updates Manager to do the actual work. Outwardly, it may not look that different from the previous version. However, underneath the familiar interface is a much more refined software design that enables the Juicer to operate more reliably while also opening doors to new functionality. The new capabilities of the Updates Manager will allow us to build in features that will make it easier to troubleshoot and resolve potential problems before they become major disruptions in your work flow.
One simple example afforded by the new Updates Manager is the auto repair of corrupted thumbnail preview files. With 3.1, if the Juicer detects a problem with one of the content thumbnail images, it notifies you and gives you the opportunity to refresh the thumbnail from the Digital Juice web server.
ROLLBACK
Another improvement in 3.1 is the automatic version control system we call Rollback. This allows you to take a snapshot of your current Juicer before a software update is applied. While we hope it never happens, if you should apply a software update that somehow breaks the Juicer, you can easily return to the previous version using a Rollback utility that is now included as a separate application in the Juicer 3 folder.
SOFTWARE RENDER ENGINE
One of the biggest problems some customers had placed with Juicer 3.0 was the fact that it tried to use Open GL rendering for everything, even simple format conversions. Some older systems (and even a few newer ones) didn't like this at all and would often not render or even crash the application. Now you can go to Preferences and set the type of render engine that works best for your system. The new software-based engine is actually faster in some cases than the engine that uses hardware acceleration. We recommend giving it a try on your system and determining which works best for you. If you've had trouble rendering in the past, this may be just what the doctor ordered to cure your Juicer woes!
BRIGHT FUTURE
Where's it headed?
As time goes on, we intend to make the Juicer more responsive, easier to use and more capable of supporting innovative new types of customizable content. In June we'll be releasing Digital Juice Fonts and the Juicer will have a fully functioning text editor to make using them a breeze. Digital Juice Fonts will also be the first product that takes advantage of a new download architecture that will make buying content from Digital Juice as easy as buying music from iTUNES. That's right, Digital Juice is bringing out new downloadable content in the near future.
Finally, while the Juicer will always be free, we intend to extend it's power and usefulness outside of just a content management and processing software for Juice content only. In fact many of the planned plug-ins will allow you to do more with the Juice content you already own, and even allow you to import and manage your own content.
Stay tuned, the future is looking brighter than ever for this little application that had a rough start, but is now all grown up and ready to face the world and help you with your projects.
