Open Beta Version 3.5.0

Damir

Peter i still have a big problem with a function that has never worked satisfactoraly, i believe i have a simple solution to fix it if its technically possible.

Getting to settings and exiting settings is awkward.
Where you have TAP TO CLOSE is right under another apple function that brings down a window option, this i regularly bring down by mistake as it is so close to where you are suggesting to hit to close the window, so why dont you change the position of this writing to the left and another one to the right of that area so we get two notifications and will get an immediate feel the whole area gets us to settings our brains will immediately recognize its the whole area we can hit or at best we will go closer to one of those headings and avoid an unnecessary drop window appearing.

The second problem i have always had with exiting the settings, there is no notification to where we need to hit to exit, so my suggestion is use the exact same TAP TO CLOSE spot on the upper screen to exit settings, instead of having to mind read to have to go down the page and guess where to press to exit , this is just not useable i am surprised no one has pointed this out already.

NOTE this is mainly an ipad issue it does not bother me so much on iphone because there is less realestate and tapping below seem to be the only option to close the window but i still dont like its not labeled in some way.

I wonder if apple have added this drop down function recently as it certainly is a pain my iphone does not seem to have this is it possible to disable this in apple settings , i havent found a way myself?

peter

Damir These buttons are placed by iOS. No way to get rid of them. See here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253276698

Regarding settings: Settings are displayed inside a tab and the main player is a full screen view that is shown over the regular. Therefore it has a close functionality and the settings don't have this. Because closing that view would also close the app.

DickyDutch Yes I see it too now that you mention it. Not sure if I can change this but I will try.

DickyDutch

Hi Peter the introduction of the pdf width /height setting works well and is a great improvement- well done and thank you. However one very minor issue (which doesn’t bother me personally) is that on my ipad I’ve noticed that the pdf page is positioned ever so slightly too low resulting in a slight gap between the top of the pdf and the wave profile line. If it happens to be multi sheet pdf this gap becomes progressively larger as you page through the pdf. I personally only use 3 sheets max in any pdf so not a problem to me but some users may use more sheets and may find this expanding gap annoying. Perhaps it would be possible to ensure the same position for every pdf page?

Damir

DickyDutch i noticed that immediately as well, i believe in settings 1 page turn is not actually the PDF page turn it is the screen of the view of ST3 software so basically to get a true page turn you have to zoom your PDF to a full page then you can do a full page turn on pdfs.
Thats why i drew an idea before so you can dedicate six pdfs in a song to pages with switches on screen, and then to be also able to set a timer like in Songs only mode to scroll through these six pages or perhaps 3 pages if thats your need and that way you can just hit the footpedal or page buttons on the screen and get full easy control of your PDF setup each page remembers its settings and can easily load a PDF . I know its a lot more design work but that way it would really giive you a lot more powerful system to run your pdfs as you would expect pdfs to work.
At the moment its a very basic system that requires a lot of prep work in another program that gives you limited control when performing. ITS STILL BETTER THAN NOTHING.
And technically Peter might have a easier way around it, i am only putting out ideas that would work for me on the surface of the software, i like the six page turn buttons on the dead space of the volume area this i think would be great for those using pdfs without remotes how to impliment it is another thing.
Imagine this, you load a 3 page pdf you get 3 pages in volume area representing these 3 pages single tap any page button gets you to the top of that page and allows you to then foot scroll if needed but if you have set an overall scroll time it averages all 3 pages and gives you a uniform scroll, if you then go back and hit pdf 2 it jumps to the top of that pdf and resets to that scroll that auto scroll time and keeps going as normal to end, this is exactly what Lyrics only should do and have. By selecting your pdf page it defaults to full page viiew if you zoom it remembers its settings by long press of this page button the page time settings are set automatically because it should know immediately if you have six pages and you want a 6 minute scroll time each page timestamp is going to be one minute appart and is automatically set for any number of pages you decide to use , six pages maximum for one song.
Double tap on a page opens an option window where you can delete this pdf and load another one if it has multiple pdfs it pushes all subsiguent pages forward and their settings, alowing to insert pages. Delete all to clear song and rename pdf page .
If you select a page and make a visual change a long press on this page saves the settings.
This exact same principal to be applied in Lyrics only, the only difference is you are loading pdfs instead.
Having auto scroll for pdfs would be beneficial to some users and maintains consistancy with lyrics only so it would be great to have that to standerdise operation its just then an option which way you want to do things.
Sorry Dicky didnt mean to go on in this thread but once i get ideas i need to get them down in writing otherwise they are lost its Sunday morning here in Adelaide a perfect day ahead and the creativity juices are freely flowing.
Cheers Damir

Damir

peter sorry i know you are bussy beta testing but this has become a real problem to me and something i have tried to live with so if there is a slightly better way it would be great to fix this.
Imagine if you were preseted the first time to the settings window, someone just handed you the ipad with this last settings window jpg example and said now go to song mode and play me a song, they would have no idea how to do this as there is nothing there to clearly indicate what to do next , this is not operationally acceptable and needs attention.

peter

Damir Everyone who has used apps is familiar with the concept of tabs. I don't see the problem. I often write in support emails to open the "Settings" tab. Not once did I get a response asking what that is and how to exit it.

DickyDutch

Damir Hello Damir thank you for your comments and ideas regarding the functionality of pdfs in STAGETRAXX. From my point of view simplicity is the key. For The majority of the songs that I perform I use time coded lyrics taking the advantage of midi commands to control guitar fx pedals. However I do like to do the occasional song where I sing and accompany myself on acoustic guitar without a backing track. For this type of song I do try to memorise the lyrics but as you know if you’ve haven’t done the song for a while or get nervous it’s comforting to have the lyrics in front of you just in case! Also for these type of songs I want to have flexibility, maybe to pause, repeat parts, lengthen or shorten the song etc and above all not be controlled by a computer turning lyrics pages for me. I want to be able to do this myself by tapping the screen or by a foot pedal. I think what Peter has implemented to-date gives me what I want so well done to him. I’m not so sure whether the idea of have pdf page number tabs is necessary as for me the page numbers could be shown on the pdf itself if needed and I could never see myself wanting to select different pages - only perhaps during rehearsal or when learning a song. Myself when performing live I would always start at page 1 and page through numerical to the last one. Anyway Damir hope your are keeping safe in Adelaide. Although I’m from the U.K. I’m currently spending time in sunny Portugal where I continue to test beta!

Damir

peter Regarding settings: Settings are displayed inside a tab and the main player is a full screen view that is shown over the regular. Therefore it has a close functionality and the settings don't have this. Because closing that view would also close the app.

Sorry Peter, I don’t understand the reply, my initial 2 problems were when you touch the TAP TO CLOSE area it often brings down an unwanted window that’s one issue, and the other problem is when you do manage to TAP TO CLOSE successfully and enter this new view you then have no visual notification where to tap, touch, scroll, double, tap, whatever, to get back to full I call it normal view . Now this also applies if then you enter History, Playlist, Songs & Settings,
As a totally new user without reading the instructions you would be scratching your head for quite a while trying to figure out how to bring the damn window back up.🤯
I’m just expressing feelings I get when I hit a dead end screen in software, then find out it’s as simple as a tap on an unmarked area I was supposed to mind readingly know about.
It’s not good.
It needs a TAP TO OPEN option somewhere to visually indicate what needs to be done to get back to normal screen.
This has always been my view from day 1 and it still is.
This seems easy to you because you already know the trick, new comers aren’t aware.
Frustrating a demo user that’s fumbling around the software for the first time is not great idea.

Damir

DickyDutch Hi Dicky, you worded your needs perfectly and i am in the same boat.
I have thought about the implementation of both Lyrics only and PDF and have come up with an idea of how best it would give the musician exactly what you described.It actually follows a similar system to my looping request as well , i would have all three systems working very similarly but giving the end user the choice of what they need on stage.
I will put some effort in coming up with a block diagram explaining how i think it would work best.
The idea is to easily load any file and have very simple obvious options that gives you either absolute freedom to perform live yet you can easily bounce all around the song by easy screen touch or remote pedals.
Its all in my head but its hard to put on paper i know exactly what i want i just need to explain it so a programer can impliment it.
I have already shown drawings where you would have 6 switches on screen where the unnecessary volume slider is, as LYRICS ONLY and PDFs dont need this, the page naming is not what is important its just an option,whats important you can easily setup 6 points in the song you can quickly jump to, imagine having instant recall to any verse/ chorus add lib lines, your own lyrics version of the song you are performing thats if you want it at an instant.
If you dont have a time set for the song to program these buttons is just scroll to the point you want zoom in to your liking and long press this pages button, this is then remembered so by simply going through a song and choosing your preferred points and long pressing the page buttons you are done in 30 seconds and have freedom to bounce between all the important sections of the song.
Ok, In this NO Time selection mode the STOP/START button would dissapear totaly as its not needed and the NEXT song selection is gone as well as you are runing totally FREE! Once you have finished your freedom song you choose another song and depending on what type of song it is is how the interface sets itself up for you.

If you introduce a time length in any of the two methods LYRICS ONLY/PDF, the STOP/START and NEXT function appear the setup of pages buttons remains the same but with a slight difference now if you have moved to a specific spot not only does the button remember the view position/zoom it also places a time stamp on that button , meaning if you are runing in auto scroll and you feel the song is too short you can easily hit any page button to take you back to that point and it then continues to the end again, this gives you great auto function yet still gives you the freedom to jump around if needed, this is the mode i would mostly run in as the auto function saves me a number of foot hits yet the feedom to foot control anywhere i want.

These functions are already there its how they are presented to us is what is missing and i am trying hard to explain my vision but it is so clear and functional in my head i just cant seem to explain it in writing.

Imagine, copy paste lyrics/chords in to text editor set a length select song, long press first page sets the begining of song, scroll to verse1 long press page2 scroll to chorus1 long press page3 scroll to verse2 zoom in a bit if necessary if its a PDF long press page 4 , go to chorus2 long press page 5, scroll to Ending and long press page 6. Thats it you have just created PERFORMANCE FREEEDOM!

If you have your specific needs to remember which button does what, you double tap the PAGE button a menu pops up to rename your button, also a DELETE to clear this button, no writing in button means its EMPTY it does nothing. A DELETE ALL function clears all butons, and a REMOTE setup button so you can quickly setup your pedals, select it touch the foot switch you want and its done for ever more.SIMPLE yet very powerfull on stage.

Both LYRICS ONLY AND PDFs perform exactly the same its just a choice of what you require,
The only difference i would introduce in to the pdf section is if you load a single pdf with say 3 pages, these pages get auto loaded to the first 3 PAGE buttons, so if you dont select an Auto time length it is as simple as single hit any page button imediately gets you to that page within the overal pdf and it is a full page view as standard you then can zoom and long press that same button and it will remember that pages setting so this means your pdf is quickly loaded pages are set up for you with a limit of 6 pages as that is more than enough for one song, if you need more just create another song and jump to thatto get 6 more pages but i doubt anyone would.
The idea is to make it absolutely flexible yet consistant in all modes simple to create and fine tune.
I really believe this would work perfectly on stage and hopefully if the same principal is used for looping in the wave window to give me freedom to manipulate my audio backing track, this would be a humangous leap forward in the industry as i dont know of any device or software that could even come close to this.

I have not pointed out all the logic in this writing as it gets involved but you get the basic idea, it sounds complicated yet it would deliver simplicity on stage, it just needs careful thought and 3 dimensional understanding.
I believe Peter has this ability because we have certainly come a long way from ST2.
Cant wait to use the latest beta version.
Have a great day 🎸🎤😀

Damir

Lyrics Only Time setting option.
Hi Peter i noticed in Song deetails time setting does not immediately update the waveform bar and the time data to represent the new settings untill you select annother song.
Choose a lyrics only song , enter a time hit play you will notice the stop/start button has not updated to a green play mode and the time has not registered immediately, so when you hit play the next song plays instead the now song which should have been immediately updated.

The other observation is in DURATION when setting a time if you enter 222 you end up with 3:42 if you enter 111 you get 1:51 i dont get it, also you cant use enter when you finish a data entry but if you close the keyboard the data is entered , i am confused by the data entry system of the time area. I should be able to hit 222 and enter and get 2:22 result.
Just figured it out, bad logic, 111 means one hundred and eleven seconds equaling 1 minute 60 seconds plus 51 seconds totaling 111, this is not a good method of entering time as the user does not want to be doing complicated mathematical equasions to end up with a simple time.
Im sure you you get my drift.
I hope this is fixable.

peter

Damir Minutes and seconds are separated by :. So just enter 1:11. If you omit the :. It is treated as seconds. That's how every time entry field is working since the beginning of Stage Traxx. I will not change this as all users are used to it.

You are right that pressing enter should close the text fields. I will change that and also take a look at the current song not updating when editing details.

Damir

peter just noticed the x clear time does not reset the time to zero and i believe its not working in other time setting functions like START time STOP Time possibly others if any.

peter

Damir just noticed the x clear time does not reset the time to zero and i believe its not working in other time setting functions like START time STOP Time possibly others if any.

Pressing X clears the entry field. If you hide the keyboard time will be reset to 0:00 for duration and start and the song duration for stop time. Just tried and works fine.

Damir Firstly it has no undo/redo but has a cancle which actually gets rid of your pdfs so if you use the pecil and make a mistake which is very common you expect an undo not a completely get rid of the pdf, if you then hit save by mistake you have just cleared your song

I have really no idea what you did to see this behavior. Cancel does exactly nothing and there is no way to delete the pdf from within the editor. Instead of Undo you have the eraser which is much more flexible.

I work 100% with pdfs in my own band and scribbling notes into charts is very important.

Clear does remove all your annotations. The PDF remains the same (without annotations). Maybe your pdf generator only generates PDF files with annotations and no acutal contents.

Damir

PDF basic FEEDBACK
When you use Song data and PDF document area, compared to TEXT editor it needs help.
Firstly it has no undo/redo but has a cancle which actually gets rid of your pdfs so if you use the pecil and make a mistake which is very common you expect an undo not a completely get rid of the pdf, if you then hit save by mistake you have just cleared your song, off you go to the begining of loading another pdf, now that points out another thing you cant easily load another pdf from this area which does not make it efficient you have to go to song and use the plus process, this is wasting time specially when you did not mean to get rid of the file in the first place.

So why would you go here? If you wanted to hand write over the PDF and thats it no other use,
Att least a LOAD new pdf in this area would give it two reasons to go there.And perhaps an editor with undo and if possible the ability to use the keyboard to insert typed text over the pdf, otherwise there is really no point to go there unless you need to quick scribble on page.

UPDATE! just noticed the CLEAR issue is only on ipad pro , and is working as expected on iphone11 max

Two suggestions,
1
why not stick to undo as in text editor to maintain consistancy, one way or the other but the same in all.

2
Song detail
Song information
PDF document heading is not consistant with Edit Text
Why not call it Edit PDF, specially when thats all you can do with it there anyway.

Quick suggestion, perhaps a slide to left gives you two options DELETE and LOAD
i would also give this load capability next to SAVE in the in the actual pdf editor, to give the user very fast work flow choices since there is not much more the user can do there but scribble.

MORE FINDING
i just realized the CLEAR on ipad with single page pdf works as expected, the file i was testing on had 3 pages, and when i hit CLEAR after scribbling all 3 pages went blank, so this issue might be related to multi page pdfs only. I have not tested it yet by creating another multi page pdf loading it then editing it then hitting clear, i will try this soon but perhaps keep this in mind when trying to recreate this issue.

Example
After hitting CLEAR

DickyDutch

Damir Damir I don’t seeing the same issues as you on my iPad. If I open the pdf editor I am able to mark it up with 3 sizes of pen, with a choice of colours, and erase individual annotations with the eraser tool. Pressing Clear erases all mark ups, Cancel does not save the edits just made and Save does what it says. Pressing cancel does not delete the pdf file.

Damir

DickyDutch perhaps Peter has a point my multi page test PDF might not be a normal pdf multipage perhaps my PDF alows you to edit it, while your pdfs are locked so the CLEAR function does not affect your actual file , while my pdf allows the CLEAR function to actually clear my scribble and the actual original pdf content.

Any PDF Experts out there that canconfirm this theory?

Damir

peter
Sorry Peter i dont know much about PDF format all i am reporting is what is happening.
I managed to create a 3 page pdf i loaded it went to edit it by writing on it which all worked as i hit clear all three pages went blank and the only way to get them back is to cancle or exit and get back again.
This is not the case with single page tests ive done. And the iphone diference is unconfirmed now since i did not use the same 3 page pdf.

I am fine with functions i am just pointing out inconsistancies comparing to other editors, you use undo in other areas here you use clear , keeping consistant keeps the software streamlined.

Example - Edit Lyrics then you have PDF document,
This really should be Edit PDF, to maintain the same naming logic as Edit Lyrics.

Time scrol works in lyrics only, yet it does not it PDFs, the screen does not move in pdfs it would be handy to have this in pdfs as well so the user has the choice, 0 time means full manual control and is a default, the two systems should run exactly the same except you have a choose of the medium you use that best suits you, if you need notation and quick ability to scribble you use PDF if you need simple lyrics only you have the other option which still gives you more power if you introduce chords you can key change on the run and perhaps have a time run need, both systems have great capabilities but need careful implementation so to remain consistant and streamlined to use.
You have easy to copy and paste in the lyrics editor, yet you have no easy load and replace in the pdf editor.

These are just simple observations that are easily noticed by us the user, but not so easy to keep a track of when creating a beast of a program.

I used PDF expert app to create the multi page test pdf i will do more tests to see if i can work out this CLEAR issue.

peter

Damir I managed to create a 3 page pdf i loaded it went to edit it by writing on it which all worked as i hit clear all three pages went blank and the only way to get them back is to cancle or exit and get back again.

Seems like you created a pdf file that consists only of annotations. In that case you need to be carefull in the Stage Traxx editor as there is no way to distinguish an annotation made in Stage Traxx from an annotation made somewhere else. PDF annotations are a standard which has the advantage that annotations created in Stage Traxx will be displayed in any PDF viewer no matter which platform.

Your single page document has most likely been generated in another way than the 3 page document.

Damir This really should be Edit PDF, to maintain the same naming logic as Edit Lyrics.

No because this is also the place to load a pdf and delete a pdf. It is not only used to edit a pdf document like the lyrics editor.

Damir

peter ahhaa i seee i have just realized how to load a file.
At first i didnt know you could load a file in this area as i could not see a load function, but what i didnt realize i have to delete the file first so that i can access the load function, OK, well that is not obvious why not have obvious commands slide to left gives you clear options, LOAD simply loads a file over the existing file and DELETE simply deletes the pdf , why have a feature hidden behind another feature making you do twice the work and no clarity to what you need to do if you simply want to LOAD a file, it seems confusing and innoficient.
As i said earlier not realizing you could load a file in this area since there was no load anywhere, why not have a load function next to SAVE and next to DELETE in the left slide option, making it very obvious to what you can do, again not needing a mind reading coarse or manual instructions and fiddling around.

Damir

peter No because this is also the place to load a pdf and delete a pdf. It is not only used to edit a pdf document like the lyrics editor.

I disagree , PDF document, really means nothing, it does nothing to suggest you can edit your pdf or load or delete there.
Edit pdf says something or at least PDF Editor , states that you can do something there like edit and everyone knows part of any edit system load, save, are standard functions available there.

I would actually prefer this.

LYRICS EDITOR
PDF EDITOR

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