Open Beta Version 3.4.0

peter

New build 6893

With this update we are feature complete for version 3.4.0 🙂.

If nothing unexpected happens, this might be the first release candidate. Now I will start updating the manual.

Added

Table headers (i.e. filter and sort options) will always stay visible when scrolling
Context menu for timestamps in lyrics editor to position playback at the current timestamp
Reset button to song and track equalizer views
Coloring for current and next song in network player

Changed

Seeking is now possible during playback in song details, lyrics editor, equalizer and multitrack view
EQ button in big player is now greyed out for lyrics only songs
Some text corrections

Fixed

Various problems when setting start and stop trim positions in song details
Highlighting of current and next song in playlist view when displaying played songs
Queue button in network player losing transparency
Playback position not in sync when switching to and from other apps
Possible crash when accepting phone calls during playback
Various rendering issues in iOS11 and iOS12

Damir

peter Peter great job with trim but still one little problem, create 1 min start trim 2 min end trim hit done when you start the song it does not do what you have just programed untill you leave this song and then return, its like done does not update the new song settings until you reenter the song.

I have just figured it out, the reason this happens is the priority is given to where you were in the song when you went to edit the trim , when you come back from editing this position takes priority and not the new settings, now this is not a major drama but it does apper to be a fault because you expect to immediately get what you have created.

peter

Damir eter great job with trim but still one little problem, create 1 min start trim 2 min end trim hit done when you start the song it does not do what you have just programed

Good find. The main player needs to update without loading the song. I will fix that.

Damir if the reset button could be a toggle reset so you can switch between the old and new setting like compare between the two and whatever you live it on gets remembered when you exit

I will add it to my todo list. But not for version 3.4.0.

Damir I dont understand the need for a filter in Playlist first page

You can assign Keywords to playlists and that would be of no use if you could not filter by these keywords. Very handy for users with lots of playlists.

Damir I would have one list in the middle of the box for filter names and the tick to select option either side that way you have no repetition of names a much shorter list to scroll through

The idea is not bad but I have never seen this in another app. So I'm not sure if this conforms to Apples UI guidelines. In any case this is not something I would add in 3.4.0.

Damir BIG PROBLEM!

Rather a small display problem but I can reproduce it and will try to fix it. As I said, having sticky table headers is something Apple does not offer for whatever reason, so I have to work around these limitations which is more than tricky and these are the consequences. Some edge cases always lead to unexpected behavior with these hacks.

Damir A highlight should only happen @[00.00.00] when play is activated not before as its false visual information.

No, that's not how highlighting works. Highlights are always visible whether playback is running or stopped. If you change the position in the waveform view, lyrics are highlighted in realtime as you change the position. This is working as I inteded it. If you don't want the text highlighted immediately, you should not use the timestamp [00:00.00]. But I wrote that already a couple of pages above.

Damir The keyboard needs a switch to be able to hide it

The switch is the blue button with the caption "search".

Damir My other observation is the search area in landscape is huge

The search bar is an iOS system component that always uses the whole width of the table view. I can't change that.

Damir I just noticed the drop down the keyboard key bottom right is available on iPad but not available on the iPhone version yet it is more needed there go figure

Can't change that. The keyboard is a system component of iOS.

Damir Hi Peter heres what i have found regarding the blue highlighted song in playlist mode only, it does not matter if you have allready played purple songs involved, the issue happens on any unplayed songs,

Again, a good find. Clearly a bug that I will fix in the next update.

Damir

EQ reset is fantastic, i feel bad mentioning this and its my fault i did not think of it before, but if the reset button could be a toggle reset so you can switch between the old and new setting like compare between the two and whatever you live it on gets remembered when you exit.
I really feel bad that i didnt suggest this first.

Damir

Feedback on highlighted songs in slave display, it feels complete and comfourtable and easy to understand to what is happening on screen.

Feedback on playback position not in sync, it works perfectly now in Beta i can bounce back and forth the ST3 looses sync while the Beta is rock solid now, well done Peter.

Damir

Filter feedback.
Love the fact it stays on screen it is very handy now.
I dont understand the need for a filter in Playlist first page as it doasnt do anything this page just selects your playlist of choice, this filter would be more useful in the actual playlist so you can easily filter whatever is in your playlist itself.

Damir

Regarding the filter songs itself, now you have INCLUDE KEYWORDS then a list of all the filter options and then below that you have EXCLUDE SONGS then another list below that, this is not very practical especially if you have created a lot of filters.
SUGGESTION to improve its usability.
I would have one list in the middle of the box for filter names and the tick to select option either side that way you have no repetition of names a much shorter list to scroll through and a simple choice click on the the correct side of the song that you want the filter to apply to, and i would also make sure the headings to the tick columns do not dissapear with the list. Ignore song title that was a mistake its actualy meant to be the filter words.
Everything above the dotted line is allways in view.

Damir

BIG PROBLEM!

This happens when choosing multitrack songs and text songs you can fix it by finger touching the screen and moving up or down resets the filter back to its normal position, i believe it behaves untill you choose text file or multitrack i could be wrong as i have just dicovered this so play around see if you make more sense of it.

Damir

Hi Peter this was something i raised before ST2 use to do it correctly i do believe that was an issue on it as well but you fixed it , ST3 has the same issue.
A highlight should only happen @[00.00.00] when play is activated not before as its false visual information.

Damir

Hi Peter, I love the fact the filter is always there here is a photo of iPhone version in landscape as you can see there is not much song view realestate, my observation is that the filter area is unnecessary too thick it could be halved if you place the Letter on the left up to the filter writing position this would gain realestate, and the other issue is when you type in a search and get your results you can’t see them because the keyboard is blocking the view and you can’t close it unless you hit cancel but if you do that you loose your search results.
The keyboard needs a switch to be able to hide it or some other option that allows you to see your results.

My other observation is the search area in landscape is huge and as you know the less you type in the search the more likely you will find what you want, if you notice the smaller search in the playlist view is halved and it still does a great job, why couldn’t you fit the filter and sort by all on the same line and the Letter on the bottom left of search line gaining a hell of a lot needed realestate and usefully using the big wasted search area.
Example

I just noticed the drop down the keyboard key bottom right is available on iPad but not available on the iPhone version yet it is more needed there go figure😳

Damir

Hi Peter heres what i have found regarding the blue highlighted song in playlist mode only, it does not matter if you have allready played purple songs involved, the issue happens on any unplayed songs,
As the blue highlighted song plays and you choose the next song other than the one immediately below, the blue highlight dissapears on the now playing song.
This issue does not seem to be a problem in song mode.
You might be aware of this already.

Damir

peter The switch is the blue button with the caption "search".

Aha i didnt hit search as the song was immediately found by typing in the search box,i didnt realise the hit search gives you the results and removes the keyboard, i thought i had to manually lower the keyboard like on ipad.
All good, its just a pitty we get such a large search strip and we only really need a few words to be typed in and yet the other features hog up the very important screen space i wish apple would give more flexability to create better software.

Damir

I don’t understand the fact ST2 worked perfectly in that respect yet ST3 is not.
Have you changed the logic of operation in ST3 to suit another operation of the player or perhaps I am not clearly explaining this problem. It is forcing me to do one more thing on every song I create when ST2 just worked as expected.
Why would you want a highlight on the first line when you haven’t started the show yet, that’s the main reason I use synced lyrics as it highlights lines in sync with the playing song keeping me it time. An immediate highlighted line means the show has started yet it hasn’t, it does not make sense.
ST2 was working in this respect ST3 isn’t I don’t understand why.

peter

Damir Why would you want a highlight on the first line when you haven’t started the show yet,

I want to highlight everything whatever the user has chosen for a specific position in the song. Regardless whether the playback is running or not. If you seek to any position in the song the correct part of lyrics is highlighted. That's exactly what I want to achieve with this function and that's what it does.

If you choose to place the timestamp 00:00.00 into your song, then you indicate that you want to hightlight something right at the beginning. If you don't want that, then change the timestamp to something like 00:00.10.

I'm not going to change this logic as I am very happy with the way it is working right now.

Damir

peter I agree

peter Ok I think you don’t get what I am saying so I will give you a more thorough explanation.

I use the first line for my intro chord structure and at the same time the change of colour as a visual prompt that the foot pedal has successfully started the song.

On start my eyes are focused on the first line to get my chords but I don’t play until the chords change colour meaning my foot pedal has worked.All this is instantaneous and great for those Big Bang song starts.
By having the colour change of the chords happening at the same time as I hit start is an immediate reassurance I am away and I also see my chords without having to shift my eyes to double check the start button, I have had on number of occasions false started the song as my foot is slightly out of position but having that immediate visual feedback helps if the chords don’t change colour it ain’t gonna happen, this is all a very quick thing that happens in the brain, and I am so use to this because ST2 worked perfectly I have been forced to do a work around on every song I have previously used on ST2 and all new songs when programming them to compensate for ST3 .
It’s only the initial loading of song that I don’t want [00:00:00] to highlight the first line in Auto line sync mode until the start command the rest is fine.
A lot of my songs are instant start, I don’t need false logic at the start to confuse me.
Why can’t ST3 do what ST2 did so well?

peter

Damir I understand what you do but I truly think that the current way is correct. If you have lyrics highlighted at 00:10.00 you want them to be displayed when the playback position is at 00:10.00 or later. And you want this when playback is stopped or playback is running because it makes seeking very easy if you see the highlights changing while you move your finger over the waveform. And this is what changed in the current version. Before the highlighting just stayed static whenever you pressed stop. Even if you moved the playback position to somewhere else, which is purely wrong. So version 3.4 corrected this. And I don't understand why there should be an exception to this rule for timestamp 00:00.00. The solution is simply to change this timestamp to 00:00.01. You won't notice the 10ms delay in highlighting, but the logic will stay sane.

Now, I understand if you say that you would need to make lots of changes to your songs. So I can offer you to make this change for you. I have tools that allow me to do that in 1 or 2 minutes for all your songs. Just send me a database only backup file.

The only possible solution for this would be a setting that would only apply highlighting during playback and never when playback is stopped. Not even during seek.

Damir I have just joined my iphone to my host ipad and noticed that the actual slave operates exactly how i expect with first line highlight, when the song gets loaded the iphone slave does not highlight the first line untill i hit play , yet the host ipad does, thats interesting.

This is a bug in my opinion. It should behave the same as the host. I will fix this.

Damir The way i would have it is if you tweak the host text size the slaves also react immediately, but if you resize the slaves text size it maintains that relationship with the host, that way you set it once and everything just works with no more tweaking required.

The host only sends information about the current song when you select it. Text changes are also not sent. And in your case send text size changes would break the custom text size on the connected clients. So no, I don't want to do that. Just use iPads as slaves, iPhone displays are too small anyway.

Damir cant destinguish between the two identical messages, if i dont select anything and press the two different buttons the messages i get makes me think both of those function buttons do the same thing.

That's definitely the wrong message for the keyword button. Will fix it.

Damir

@"Damir"#p4755Hi Peter, I have just joined my iphone to my host ipad and noticed that the actual slave operates exactly how i expect with first line highlight, when the song gets loaded the iphone slave does not highlight the first line untill i hit play , yet the host ipad does, thats interesting.

Damir

USING HOSTS Feedback
I love this feature as my daughter is a singer and i have a number of singer friends that sometimes appear at the venue i might be performing in, its easy for them to join their iphones to my ipad and presto can join in.
But i have some issues with the way the slaves being a smaller screen dont seem to work well.
The Text size on the ipad becomes too big for iphones and yet there is no compensation for this my average text size on ipad is 40 to 50 but his size does not transfer well to iphones, i wish there was a control on the client settings to be able to compensate for that.
Now what happens is you shrink the lyrics on the iphone manually for each song that plays because the size reduction of now playing song gets reset by the next song, I wish that this command to reset the font was never there that way whatever size font you choose on the slave it stays that way so you can tweake it once and from then on it just stays in that setting relationship for all other songs from the ipad.
I also find it irritating that tweaking the font size on the ipad does nothingto the slave unless you leave the song and come back.
The way i would have it is if you tweak the host text size the slaves also react immediately, but if you resize the slaves text size it maintains that relationship with the host, that way you set it once and everything just works with no more tweaking required.

Damir

I might have found another one.
I cant destinguish between the two identical messages, if i dont select anything and press the two different buttons the messages i get makes me think both of those function buttons do the same thing.

SoloGuy

What format should the multitrack audio files be? My DAW is Digital Performer 9.5.2 (unsure of the actual version number).

peter

SoloGuy What format should the multitrack audio files be? My DAW is Digital Performer 9.5.2 (unsure of the actual version number).

You can use all audio formats that Stage Traxx can load. I would recommend to create stereo stems of your instruments. Just make sure they all have the same sample rate. Whether you use wav, mp3, aif or maybe even flac is up to you.

Damir What if you could do this,
The key is Waveform seek during playback switch is what determines of how the first line highlighting performs.

I don't think this fits together with this setting. But I will create a separate setting and then you can decide for yourself how it should behave. Maybe a setting named "Highlight lyrics when stopped" is the correct way to do it.

Damir The needs are endless, but the compatability of the two devices are not great from text size compatibility point of view.

OK, I do already have a text size modifier for external screen support. I can add a new modifier for the network clients. If you have an iPhone you can set it to 0.5x for example and all text sizes sent by the host will be displayed with half size.

Damir SHOW LOCAL LYRICS? What is it and what does it do for me?

Only needed if clients have different lyrics for a song. Say a drummer does not need lyrics but only couple of notes. So he has his own lyrics containing only his notes. If he enables this setting, the network client will not display lyrics from the host but the custom notes of the drummer.

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