aKingi news

Yesterday we released a new app, Torrent Downloader 2. 

This piece of software represents a complete rewrite of our main product, jTorrent, a full featured torrent download manager with 1.000.000+ downloads worldwide from the first release in 2014.
Torrent Downloader 2 was published with the version string 5.0a, which represents the direct connections of the two applications. We started rewriting jTorrent at the beginning of January, rebasing the core part from a custom libTorrent NDK project to the awesome libTorrent4j and with other important changes and fixes.

This is a partial changelog:

v.5.0a ~ 2019.03

• CORE part totally rebuilt;
• no more download problems when the users switches off the screen (thanks to a smart service);
• better notification support when exposing current download status;
• GUI rewritten, using tabs to select torrents by state and a nav drawer as app menu;
• move to AndroidX;
• add a multi option Floating Action Button as torrent selection add type;
• improved app logo;
• fix HTTP torrent downloads and torrent files loading;
• minor fixes and improvements.

Notice the porting of the project to AndroidX and the improvements of the torrent download procedure by using a custom (smart) service. Now after a period of testing, we are going to merge the new code in the old jTorrent repo, so jTorrent will soon see a 5.0(x) update.

This 5.0a will be just a starting point, we will keep fixing bugs and introducing enhancements in a two weeks window, until reaching perfection.

We encourage everybody to install and test Torrent Downloader 2 from this link and to report bugs.

Today is a very important day for us, because after several months we published a new major release of our main Android product, Video Converter Android.

We spent most of the latest months totally rewriting the application and adding some brand new features, such as the very popular and requested multi file conversion, with whom the user will be able to add more than one media to convert. We also added folder conversions, online media conversions (the only video converter on the store that supports it!) and a very comfortable media selector to easily pick your favorite medias and add them to the conversion list.
Of course, several updates will follow this release, mainly to fix bugs and to receive the feedback of our users. Of course, we are open to introduce new features and improvements as always, just use our official social channels.

FULL CHANGELOG

v. 4.0a "Galileo" - 2017/05

The application has been totally rewritten. 

Here there is a partial list of the new features:

• main interface totally redesigned;
• added ability to convert multiple files;
• added ability to insert whole folders;
• added ability to process online medias;
• conversion options unified in a new activity;
• added a new default media chooser (for video, audio and images);
• added a useful media info activity;
• added video conversion presets;
• added a completed conversions activity;
• added ability to set custom frame dimensions;
• added ability to reverse the frame dimensions;
• updating FFmpeg to version 3.2.4;
• updating libYUV;
• minor fixes and improvements.

Two months after the last blog post, we are here to announce that we just published updates for almost all our Android apps on the Play Store, the changelogs of their latest version can be found on the respective project pages.
During the last weeks we also published two new Android applications, Video Player and ZipDroid, a super fast video and multimedia player, the first, and a complete zip and archive manager, the second; both this new apps are published on the Play Store and are written for the Android mobile operating system.
We also introduced the HTTPS protocol support in our site and in our most important subdomains, thanks to the awesome Letsencrypt project (promoted by Mozilla) and thanks to the Arvixe team, the great web hosting where our site is stored. In this way our domain enters in the 21th century, allowing SSL connections to our ORG site, our forum and our bug tracker (other subdomains will be added in the next months).
In the end, we decided to use "Python" as the codenames of Video Converter for Android and of MP3 Converter in the memory of Alan Rickman, that everybody knows mainly for the role of Severus Piton (Snape) in a very famous and lucky series of fantasy films.

Exactly three years ago aKingi org was born and our first apps were published in the Play Store.
Our team has been doing a lot during these years and we are really happy that thousand of users download and install our apps, leaving almost always a positive feedback. Our goal is to create solutions to help people using computers in everyday life to achieve their purposes and during our work we never focus the development on the earning part (and of course, the latest apps published with the so called WYSIWYG philosophy, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, are a good example of this).
The last month was really important for our products since we updated almost all of them, fixing bugs and adding more features. Video Converter also reached 2.000.000 downloads and, again, we wanna thank everybody uses our applications every day, in particular for this one. Of course the next step is to arrive to 5.000.000 installs. Meanwhile we are also performing some codec-related tests, in fact we totally deleted them for MP3 Converter and for the ex beta version of Video Converter, now simply Video Converter 3. If these tests will have good feedbacks and a few bugs we’ll implement everything on the main TVC version.
We also published a new version of our site and reset again the bug tracker, because of a problem with our database, and for this we created a backup mechanism to prevent this kind of problems. But that’s not all folks! We are working on some new projects that will be announced on the next months. So stay tuned and keep following our social profiles for all the updates!

Today all the aKingi staff is proud to announce the release of the stable version of Video Converter and MP3 Converter 2.8 "Hardin" stable versions, after weeks of tests and a lot of improvements. The new "Hardin" branch includes all the changes proposed in the beta version of Video Converter for Android, plus some new application-related fixes. These are the main changes (all the others can be found in the official changelogs below):

• introducing a new NavigationDrawer menu with Hamburger2Arrow animation;
• introducing a custom video player in CutFile activity, to improve the selection of start/end cut media time and, of course, to obtain a preview of the converted file;
• fixed some bugs with ARMv8/AArch64 devices, with wrong error screens showed and inability to start conversions.

After some months of delay we also updated all the codecs, upgrading FFmpeg version to 2.8.6.

Complete CHANGELOGS:

Video Converter v. 2.8.0.303 "Hardin" - 2016/02/08

• targetting latest Android 6.0 "Marshmallow";
• replaced SlidingMenu with custom NavigationDrawer;
• introduced the Hamburger2Arrow animation;
• introducing a beautiful interactive player on cut activity;
• introducing bug fixes for a general conversion (and working) experience on AArch64/ARMv8 devices; 
• improving layout of tips and other dialogs;
• improving menu layout for tablets;
• fixed a bug that caused the auto-focus of the first textbox in the layout;
• minor fixes and improvements.

MP3 Converter v.2.8.0.304 "Hardin" - 2016/02/08

• synchronizing with latest commit of TVC;
• minor fixes and improvements.

Codecs-all v.2.8 "Hardin"

• updating FFmpeg to version 2.8.6;
• minor fixes and improvements.

It has been a long time since our last update, around 6 months ago. In this period we worked to improve all our Android applications and we started a process of renovation of all our products on the market. But during this period, Video Converter for Android also reached 1 million installations and we are so happy for this important goal that we reached. Of course this is now just a starting point and we wanna reach as soon as possible the next goal, that is the 5 millions installations.
The renovation process started last week with the publication of two new applications, Video Converter Beta and its codec package, Video Converter ARMv7 Neon Beta, the first two updates of the new "Horus" branch. We will update these two applications more frequently than the other ones and they will be useful to test the new features of our products before the stable applications will be updated. Other important news comes from the features added to all the converters: Video Converter for Android now has been restyled using the Material Design and the ARMv8 (AArch64) codec has been added, to support new devices, while MP3 Video Converter has been finally updated, after months of stop. The support for ARMv8 CPUs has also been added to jTorrent.
Another important news is that for the first time we have started the translation of our products. In fact, Video Converter, MP3 Video Converter and Video Converter Beta starting from this release will be available in Italian too, while jTorrent will be available from next stable release in that language too. From now we are going to start to search native speakers that will help us translating our applications, in a free-paid collaboration. We are interested in translating the applications in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. For this, before the end of the summer, we will publish a site with all the informations to start a collaboration with us to translate our products and we will also publish some advertisements about it on our forum and our social profiles.
We want to thank once again everybody who uses and installs our applications every day and who reports bugs or proposes improvements (such as sterval, that helped us so much, or AchwaqKhalid on Twitter). Keep following us, more news will be posted soon.

There are releases... and Releases. After the two minor updates of the "Seldon" branch (the last in October), today we are pleased to announce a new major release of the new branch of Video Converter for Android, called this time Reno. There are not much news from the main application side, but interesting ones from the codecs side. For the first time from the release of February, we add the support for a new CPU architecture, in this case MIPS CPUs. The support comes as a new codec app that MIPS users will install with the main application, just as with other architectures supported. The MIPS support comes as a basic support and tested only on emulators, so we will be happy to receive feedback from some indipendent testers; everyone who will report issues or bugs will be more than welcomed.
The second main news from the codec side, is the support of the WebM format, with the addiction of the two main video codecs related to it, VP8 and VP9, through libvpx. This to answer to the very big number of requests arrived to us in the previous months. Also, opus format has been added (through libopus) and the FFmpeg version has been updated to the latest 2.5.1, and it's a big jump from the previous used 2.2 version. On some codecs (such as the important ARMv7 with Neon extension) ASM optimizations have been turned on.
As usual, we will soon update MP3 Video Converter to the latest version of Video Converter, maybe in the first days of 2015.
Meanwhile we also released jTorrent Downloader Client for Android, a new torrent client for the green robot based on libtorrent. The actual 0.9b version is the second of this project under active development and soon we will release a new version of it, to fix some bugs, introduce the missing MIPS CPUs support and introduce some new features.

After the recent release of the new version of our main Android product, Video Converter for Android, we are proud to announce that this application reached 500.000 in less than one year.
It's a great result for us and we want to thank all the people who believe in our applications and that download and install them every day. From our side, we continue the development, providing bug fixes and improvements almost every month.
Meanwhile, the first patch for the "Seldon" branch is ready and has been published today, with some important bug fixes. Regarding the MP3 Video Converter update, there are some internal builds under testing and, as said in the past, the update will be published before the end of September.

After the long summer pause, finally we announce a new release for our main Android application, Video Converter for Android. The new 2.5 version, codename "Seldon", introduces a new GUI for the main menu and some fixes and application improvements. The full changelog is listed above.
A new release may be published until the end of September, with all the major changes pushed also on MP3 Video Converter for Android. During the last days of August, our bug tracker suffered of a spam attack, for this reason we had to reset it. We encourage all the users who reported bugs and issues to register there again.

TVC v.2.5.0.156 "Seldon" - 2014/09/02
- introducing a brand new menu GUI;
- "Recent files" menu option added, to choose as input file one of the last three files converted;
- from now default video options include the auto-selection of device's screen width and height;
- on Android 4.4 "Kitkat" the default output folder is selected from the internal memory (but can be changed);
- replaced wrong "350" custom video width value with \"360\" (thanks to Thomas Jensen);
- adding "COPY" options to audio/video codecs;
- fixed a bug on some tablets that caused a wrong reverse portrait mode rotation;
- force portrait layout only on small and mdpi devices;
- small layout fixes for 600dp devices;
- minor fixes and improvements.

Today we released a new series of updates for our main Android products. The 2.4 version comes with codename "Iris" and it's focused on stability and usability. A new settings user interface has been designed for this release with the option to select a single folder where all output files will be stored (useful, for example, for Android 4.4 users who have problems with external MicroSD devices). Another important feature introduced is the CLI interface with whom advanced users can execute custom FFmpeg commands. This release also introduced some internal changes to the codecs, so it's needed to update them, too.

TVC v.2.4.0.133 "Iris"
- introducing a brand new Settings UI;
- introducing a CLI to execute custom FFmpeg commands;
- introducing the possibility to set and change default output folder;
- forcing to update to latest 2.4 codec versions;
- fixing a bug while changing output folder;
- output file dimension now is expressed in Mega, Kilo or Giga byte.
- fixing a bug file selecting two or more times the output folder;
- minor fixes and improvements.

MVC v.2.4.0.134 "Iris"
- synchronizing with latest version of Total Video Converter;
- allowing CUT feature in free version;
- minor fixes and improvements.

Codecs-all v.2.4 "Iris"
- updating FFmpeg to v.2.2.3;
- minor fixes and improvements.

Today we released a new update to most of our Android products. Here are listed the changelogs.

TVC v.2.3.0.118 "Nova":
- adding FLV, M4A and VOB formats support;
- from now on output filename cannot be equal to input filename;
- improving tip #1 with general working instructions with pics;
- improving 441dp layouts, both portrait and landscape;
- adding some warnings on Android 4.4 "Kitkat" about SD/MicroSD devices errors;
- layout improved for 4 specific screen resolutions;
- now using a fork of aFileChooser with "GO-UP" button;
- video options button is now unselectable is audio format selected;
- fixing a bug that didn't show hidden files in chooser activity;
- fixing a bug while selecting a multimedia from Android Gallery;
- minor fixes and improvements.

MVC v.2.3.1.120
- synchronizing to latest TVC version;
- minor fixes and improvements.

Codecs 2.3 release:
- updating FFmpeg to latest release (2.2.1);
- minor fixes and improvements.

Some days ago have been revealed some informations about the limitations introduced in latest Android 4.4 "Kitkat" version with external SD/MicroSD devices. This limitation consist in the impossibility for non-system apps (such as our Total Video Converter or MP3 Video Converter and other third part applications) to write or create new files in these external storage supports, despite reading permissions are still available.
This decision, by the Android development team, derives from some security issues with the filesystem used by most of the MicroSDs, the FAT/FAT32. For this reason, TVC and MVC users will be able to encounter some "Permission denied" problems while writing to external MicroSD storages and this isn't in any way or form a problem of these two applications, so we will not accept bad or low star reviews for this issue.
More informations about "Kitkat" external MicroSD storages writing permissions issue can be found here.

This is a great release day for us because we published another fix for Total Video Converter and a new Android application, MP3 Video Converter with its pro key.
This new Android application can be defined a fork of TVC focused on the extraction of audio tracks from video files or the conversion of audio files (there are a lot of output formats and codecs available). We have activated a new category in the forum and updated the bug tracker with the new entry.
The pro key for MP3 Video Converter is also available. Please remember that the two keys, the one of TVC and the other one of MVC, are not interchangeable since they cannot activate pro features of both application.
On the other hand, the new release of Total Video Converter fixes some bugs still present in the last version, so we recommend all the users to update to this version.
Below you will find the changelogs.

TVC v. 2.2.2.110 "Gemini" - 2014/03/07
- fixing a bug while editing audio options for OGG format;
- fixing some English strings;
- some fixes for the free version.

MVC v.2.3 "Nova" - 2014/03/07
- first public release.

We are proud to announce the recent release of Total Video Converter v.2.2 codename "Gemini". This the most important release, after the 2.0 "Oracle", for the amounts of bugs fixed and GUI changes. First of all, from now the free version will work offline with few features deactivated. Secondly, many users are experiencing the "Internal error" bug, for this we updated all the codec, forcing to update to the latest release to work.
For this reason we recommend to all the users to update to this release (both of the main one and the codec ones). Below there is the full changelog.

v. 2.2.0.107 "Gemini" - 2014/03/04
- enabling free offline work;
- redesigning main application GUI;
- redesigning meta informations GUI;
- adding five new metadata fields: ALBUM, TRACK, YEAR, GENRE, COPYRIGHT (for compatible file formats only);
- adding 3gp format support;
- synchronizing all codec versions to 2.2;
- forcing to update codec if version is less than 2.2;
- adding option to keep the screen on during conversion (disabled by default);
- from now default profiles will keep original video width and height;
- fixing some rare codec bugs;
- some GUI fixes with various devices;
- improving CUT options GUI;
- improving and fixing English strings;
- removing main full screen ad in the free version;
- minor fixes and improvements.

This month our main Android application, Total Video Converter, reached 100.000+ installations. This is again a great result but we also noticed the too long list of bad reviews given to it; for this reason, we are going to modify some elements in next version that will be published in March. In the same time we published an update, both for TVC and for codecs, with this changelog:

v. 2.1.0.89 "Dynamo" - 2014/02/08

• updating icon;
• minimum Android version is now 2.3;
• patching internal codec framework;
• info writing now is a marquee when showing long strings;
• adding the option to open media files directly with Total Converter;
• adding informations about input file;
• adding more informations about conversions (kBs written and total conversion time);
• from now it is possible to exit by pressing BACK twice;
• general improvements for metadata informations (to see them a device reboot generally is required);
• fixed an error while uninstalling and reinstalling codec package;
• fixing some errors in FFMPEG output interpretation;
• fixing an error while starting a second conversion;
• fixing an error while resetting options after a conversion;
• adding a dialog while converting big media files;
• adjusting build version number;
• minor fixes and improvements.

Today we released the 2.0 version of Total Converter for Android, codename "Oracle". This release is the result of more than a month of hard work, most of that spent to fix the so called Millennium bug that prevented the program to make long conversions. We had to rebuild all the codecs, we also changed the interactions between Total Converter and codecs, in fact from now codecs have not to be uninstalled and its update process will be more simple and flexible.
For this reason, updating to the 2.0 version requires also to update the relative codec pack, better if you remove the old one and reinstall it again.
The list of changes for this version is long (below there's a complete list). Anyway other important changes are the support for x86 Android devices, feature that will let Total Converter run on Intel x86 Android tablets and on desktop pcs, netbooks and notebooks on which Android is installed.
Another notable change is the removal of the H.264 codec encoding option. We removed it for stability problems but we do not exclude to integrate again this feature in our product in the future. Anyway the decoding option is still available.
Finally, the multifile support expected for this version has been postponed, since we have given more importance to the resolution of the "Millennium bug". We will implement this feature in the future, in a 3.0 version that will be certainly published in this 2014, since a lot of users requested it.
If you experience problems updating to this 2.0 version, please don't leave Total Converter a low star review. See this useful upgrading guide to solve common updating problems.

CHANGELOG v. 2.0.0.69 "Oracle"

• complete rebuilding of codecs to support long time conversions;
• support for x86 processors (Android installed on desktop pcs, notebooks/netbooks, tablets, etc...);
• codec interaction and update redesigned, from now codec packages have not to be uninstalled;
• updating aFileChooser to the latest commit;
• removing support for H.264 codec options (but decoding support still available);
• improving layouts for QVGA and HVGA devices;
• improving layout for small devices;
• improving layout with pro version;
• restart options added when modifying settings;
• disabled physical file deletion when overwriting;
• generic "Error detected" error string replaced with some detailed informations;
• minor fixes and improvements.

Yesterday our main Android product, Total Converter for Android, reached 50.000+ installs. This is a great news, especially because we released it only three months ago. Meanwhile, the development process didn't finish, because we are working for the 2.0 release, planned for the end of December. This new major version will be a bit different from what we announced before, because we are focusing on fixing the millennium bug of our app.
More informations will be avaible in next days.

Today we released a new update for the branch "Equinox" of Total Converter for Android with this changelog:

v. 1.1.2.48 "Equinox"
- fixed a bug while changing folder path and filename;
- fixed wrong conversion settings reset after orientation change;
- improving landscape design for large smartphones;
- fixed notification text reset during orientation change;
- minor improvements.

Meanwhile, the works for the version 2.0 have already started and a beta version will be available for the end of 2013. We will bring the multi-file feature, that has been requested from several TC users. We do not exclude other bug-fix versions for the current "Equinox" branch for next weeks.

This is a great news for our fresh published app, Total Converter for Android, that some days ago reached 10.000 installs on the Google Play Store. Once again, it is a great result, especially for a new application like us (we published it on the first days of October). So we hope that this march will not end and to reach the 50.000 installs for the end of November.

Two weeks ago we released Total Converter for Android, a new multimedia converter based on FFMPEG for the Android platforms (smartphones/tablets). Yesterday, after two exact weeks after its official release on the Play Store, the main app reached 5000 installs. It is a great result for us, and we will work to improve it and to bring Android users the best multimedia conversion for this platform. The 2.0 version, that will introduce dozens of improvements, is set to the end of the 2013/begin of 2014. More news will be published on this site and on social profiles.

Today we decided to enable aKingi org site access for the first time from our site has become online two years ago. In the same period we are also disabling Pietrosoft services to complete the transition to aKingi org. There are still some works in progress, but almost all the work has been completed. In next days final tasks will be operative. Follow us on Twitter/Facebook/Google+ to stay updated.