Lyric highlighting

royandreno

Could we please have back the option in the autoscroll section, Current Line Position - Top, meaning on top the WHOLE song, without having to add 30 empty lines in the text editor.
Thank you.

AnthonyB

I hope this isn't considered thread high-jacking, but I'd extend that to the Highlight position = centered as well.
I had to explain to my main collaborator yesterday why there was 5 blank lines and a period appearing at the end of new lyric sheets 🙂

I raised my argument in detail here previously, including some suggestions on how to satisy everyone's needs - https://support.stagetraxx.com/d/3495-lyric-display-timed-lyrics/29

Also, the other reason I find this important is the proliferation of buttons appearing in ST4 near the bottom of the lyric page. Yes, they are transparent, but that doesn't make it perfect. Even in ST3, I would regularly find that the little side-bar flyout handle would obscure the first 2 characters of a line.

Having Highlight Position = Top or Centered actually artifically extend the lyric page (or whatever implementation works) to maintain the highlight position all the way to the end of the song would solve these little problems as well.

royandreno

AnthonyB I hope this isn't considered thread high-jacking, but I'd extend that to the Highlight position = centered as well.

Not at all! Same issue I would say😊

peter

I haven't changed anything with the highlight position options compared to ST3. So what exactly do you mean?

royandreno

peter I haven't changed anything with the highlight position options compared to ST3. So what exactly do you mean?

The fact that as of now, in ST3, if you select current line position - Top, it will be on top until towards the end of the song. Then it would move downwards and end up at the bottom. This was an update I somewhat harshly criticized, and caused 34 replies to my post. It forces you to add x number of empty lines, (30 lines for me) at the end of the text in the text editor in order to keep current highlighted lyric line on top.

peter

Understand, so you would like to get back the behaviour of ST3 before the change to not scroll over the end of the lyrics, right?

royandreno

peter correct👍🏻

Sharonzaz

peter Understand, so you would like to get back the behaviour of ST3 before the change to not scroll over the end of the lyrics, right?

yes please

peter

OK, then let's wait for upvotes. Because I think the current behaviour is the "correct" behaviour when you compare it to pdf documents for example. Because you can't scroll over the end of the last page in a pdf either.

royandreno

peter Because I think the current behaviour is the "correct" behaviour when you compare it to pdf documents for example.

Well, I disagree. The text editor does not produce a document, in fact, I would argue it's an integrated part of the program, and I use the lyric editor and the autoscroll the way it is intended, in my eyes, timed, line by line. I know you prefer pdf's, but the way I freestyle and use ST, I have both my hands on the guitar, and I'm not gonna mess around with fingers scrolling while I'm playing. I see some do, and it looks, in lack of better words, not good.
I use my foot to press my 5 button air turn to jump and manipulate the loops. I think If you have an option to select highlighted lyric on top, then it should always be on top, to the last beat.

The reason for the change was, as I understand it, was that some messed up the manual scrolling of a pdf because it was harder to control on an iPhone. Incredible that such an argument take precedence over the automation.

Again, to repeat myself, I'll probably lose this one, I just hope you could find a solution that could make both sides happy. Until then, I'll continue adding 30 lines at the bottom of the lyric editor
And you should maybe add something about this in the manual where it says:
'With time coded lyrics, Stage Traxx will always try to position the current lyrics segment at the selected position within the lyrics view.'

Sharonzaz

peter

I def vote for ST3 behavior. One of the things i like about it is not needing to put my ipad high to hide my tummy, guitar (from the crowd - I really not like when musicians block their view with a tablet or worse, laptop right in front of them) etc. I keep it low and my eye when i need to ''remember a line'' on need to look quick on the top of the ipad.

that, an the fact that if i need to raise the fader on a track towards the end of the song (happens) i will not where i am in the lyrics if me old brain suddenly forgets.

If i need to add 30 lines ill do it, but why break something that works well?

center line can have that behavior, no?

AnthonyB

I've never used a PDF lyric sheet and don't plan to given the limitations of the PDF format inside of ST and the features I use in lyrics (timestamping, MIDI events, etc.).

While I get the desire to keep scrolling behaviour consistent across text and PDF lyrics, and I know there are people that use both formats, it would be a shame to degrade the behaviour due to a 'lowest common denominator' type rationale. In fact, does that even hold up given they behave differently today and have different capabilities anyway?

royandreno

AnthonyB While I get the desire to keep scrolling behaviour consistent across text and PDF lyrics, and I know there are people that use both formats, it would be a shame to degrade the behaviour due to a 'lowest common denominator' type rationale. In fact, does that even hold up given they behave differently today and have different capabilities anyway?

Excactly! Well put.

Damir

royandreno I use my foot to press my 5 button air turn to jump and manipulate the loops. I think If you have an option to select highlighted lyric on top, then it should always be on top, to the last

royandreno Again, to repeat myself, I'll probably lose this one, I just hope you could find a solution that could make both sides happy. Until then, I'll continue adding 30 lines at the bottom of the lyric editor
And you should maybe add something about this in the manual where it says:
'With time coded lyrics, Stage Traxx will always try to position the current lyrics segment at the selected position within the lyrics view.'

Hi Roy, i think you are making it a much bigger deal than it needs to be, i also have close to 500 songs , and i did not go through the pain of adding lines because i found the changing down of lines very useful as it warns you that you are getting to the end of lyrics , yes initially it was worrying but now i kind of like it, and it gives you the benefit when you stop at the end to simply repeat the last few lines if the crowd needs it with no need to do anything as the last number of lines are still there , BUT to defend your thinking yes this does not work well if you have the MIXER open as the lyrics disappear at the end of the song , so if i was Peter i would force the lines to stay on top if the mixer is opened and perhaps to give you an option, which i think is not necessary, to force the highlighting to top permanently as a choice, which would bloat the settings.
Its Peters choice , sometimes it just takes time to get use to different things.

Vedeja

Upvoted, because the point to me of saying I want it on the top of the screen is for easy reading. And that is the same regardless if we are in beginning or end of the song.

Could it be an extra yes/no option to ”Force end of lyrics to stay on top”?

royandreno

Vedeja Upvoted, because the point to me of saying I want it on the top of the screen is for easy reading. And that is the same regardless of we are in beginning or end of the song.

Thank you. Exactly my point.

royandreno

Damir Of course you will argue for this. You were the one that made Peter change this behaviour in the first place in order not to manually over scroll on your iphone.
I didn’t get used to it, and I kept having to search for my ‘missing’ lyric line. So don’t try and convince me why I should like it. It’s a really bad thing that the highlighted line moves down and doesn’t do what you select in the settings, namely stay on top. I like having the current lyric on top, close to the wayform with regions. It makes it super easy to crosscheck where you are with a quick glance.

And the reason I’m making a big deal of it now is because things have a tendency to cement itself in the beginning of this Beta process, harder to change later.
There are 6 upvotes now, I hope more joins the party.

Damir

royandreno Of course you will argue for this. You were the one that made Peter change this behaviour in the first place in order not to manually over scroll on your iphone.
I didn’t get used to it, and I kept having to search for my ‘missing’ lyric line. So don’t try and convince me why I should like it. It’s a really bad thing that the highlighted line moves down and doesn’t do what you select in the settings, namely stay on top. I like having the current lyric on top, close to the wayform with regions. It makes it super easy to crosscheck where you are with a quick glance.

You are making this an argument not me, i simply suggested to Peter that the logic of the end scroll is wrong from PDF and Manual scroll user point of view and i am absolutely correct on that , i never suggested the Auto scroll be changed and was surprised like you this happened and i did point this out to Peter, which he replied it was not technically possible so i left it at that and had to get use to the way it works now , which is still better then it was.
You could simply ask Peter if the Auto scroll can be fixed to be on top or in the middle at all times, and see if it can , without interfering with the good logic that effects all the other parties, instead of blaming people that have made ST more logical.
I try to think of all users, not necessarily the way i operate, you think just for the way you operate and thats fine but don't point fingers its not nice , i never look at who does what i only look at what is being done and if it makes logical sense.

royandreno

Damir This is not only my opinion, quite a few others share my view, as you can see above.
Again, you have to butt in on everything here. You just can’t help yourself, can you? Incredible.

MarkGuitar

I just sat and ran through a bunch of songs with timed lyrics and I have to say I think @royandreno is right (along with others who feel the same way)
It feels wrong, even off-putting, that throughout the majority of the song, your eye goes to a certain point on the screen and then near the end, the highlighted lyrics are in a different place and in fact gradually work their way continuously down the screen.
Personally, I try to learn the lyrics if I am singing (which isn’t often, so easy for me to say) but the singers in our band like to have the lyrics available just in case. And they both agree that what they need is for the ‘current’ lyrics to be in the same place throughout the song and to not have to ‘scan down’ the screen to find where the lyrics are. It is only fractions of a second I know, but when just flicking their eyes to the screen for a quick reminder, the need to know where to look in an instant. Being highlighted is ok but if they move around it still takes longer than it should to track them.
I guess if you are just staring at the screen and reading it like the page of a book, it’s ok to follow the text down, but that is not how it works for us and I guess most others that are performing live and trying not to sit fixed staring at the screen.
As for the lyrics creeping down being useful to indicate the end of the song, I don’t agree. And anyway, the top panel flashes brightly near the end, you can hardly miss that.
So this request definitely gets my vote.

Damir

Reporting Xfade works now.

MarkGuitar I just sat and ran through a bunch of songs with timed lyrics and I have to say I think @royandreno is right (along with others who feel the same way)

Yes i agree, so is the way the song starts at the top and moves to the middle of the screen as the original setting is set to middle of screen.This was known as an issue in ST3 but we are living with it.Perhaps the top view selection can be set to always stay there as the excuse in ST3 was the way the programming software is, it cant be done , maybe it can be done now as i believe Peter is using different programming method , only he knows.

Damir

MarkGuitar I just sat and ran through a bunch of songs with timed lyrics and I have to say I think @royandreno is right (along with others who feel the same way)
It feels wrong, even off-putting, that throughout the majority of the song, your eye goes to a certain point on the screen and then near the end, the highlighted lyrics are in a different place and in fact gradually work their way continuously down the screen.

Hi Mark, i also agree with you, as i was the one that pointed out the bad logic of the manual scroll to Peter i was not expecting that by fixing that issue it would change the auto scroll logic, i did try to explain to Peter that he fixed one problem but caused a change to auto scroll , i actually use auto scroll for all my songs but on occasions i manually scroll to get to a different point in a song and use different lyrics on the audio backing , i found if you quickly scroll to the end you end up with no lyrics , this is why i wanted that fixed so i can cofidently scroll to end without overshooting the end.
Unfortunately this fix has also affected the auto scroll, i thought the software was going to allow us to keep our old auto scroll logic and only effect the manual scroll, but that was not the case , so in some way i have shot myself in the foot.
The PDF users like it as its safer and the guys that finger scroll their lyrics like it but now i have to follow the lyrics down the screen and yes it changes the eyeline , after using it for a while i got use to it and it always warns me i am coming to the end, and if i pause after the ending reverb i still have the lyrics to repeat the last bit of the song if needed, you could say these are some positives from a negative that was not meant to be.
If you use middle of screen setting, then you also have the same problem of following the lyrics in the begining of the song from the Top to the middle.
Ah thats life!
Peter told me he cant make both methods work its one or the other, i am not fussed but i think Peter prefers it as he is a PDF user.
Thats a long explanation of what happened.

MarkGuitar

Damir ok, thanks for the background.
I hope that this major re-write will enable Peter to fix this. It’s not a show-stopper but having text lyrics behave more intuitively would sure make them easier to read as the song approaches the end.

Damir

MarkGuitar I think we have a much bigger problem with the audio engine , I am finding it very unstable , with audio dropouts and just now a multitrack song won’t open up the audio segment editor, my iPad is just generating a waveform message that’s stuck on the screen , it looks as though stereo songs load in but multitracks don’t, probably because it doesn’t know which track to use to form a waveform, just guessing, Peter must be pulling his hair out,
I won’t report any more stuff till the audio is sorted.
But I like a lot of the interface improvements we just need to make the overall interface user friendly simple yet powerful It’s going to be tough beating ST3 but I’m sure if we all pitch in some way we will end up with great bit of gear as long as Peter doesn’t go bonkers in the process.