Retaining a song in a playlist after "updating" it...

MasterAnt

In November when I decided to start using ST3 (eventually after having bought ST2 years earlier), I encounted a few issues getting my tracks loaded into the program.

The first one, which I should probably start a new support discussion about, was that if I selected all my mp3 files—around 140 files—a few would "corrupt" during import. They would import with no content and show a length of 00:00:00. Sometimes an error message would pop up about the file being corrupt. I got around this by importing them in batches of about 30 each. I don't do this often so haven't tested it with the latest updates, but there are times when I need to reimport them all. This occured when importing over SMB (Windows share) or directly from Apple's filesystem. Mysteriously, I got far fewer problems importing M4A files, so for a while I thought that using MP3s was the problem.

The second issue (what this post is about) was that I created Playlists manually for certain songs that go well together, but from time to time I make external edits to my original tracks and lyrics requiring the song(s) to be reimported. If I try to import the new file over the existing file, nothing would happen—the exisiting song would be unchanged. Before updating, I found that I had to delete the exisiting song before replacing it with my newly edited version. The problem with doing that is that I'd lose that song from all those playlists!

Am I missing something, or replacing my songs incorrectly?

peter

First issue
Network transfers can be a bit unstable depending on the quality of the iOS integration. I have found iCloud to be quite reliably and Dropbox to be rather on the bad side. In most cases you can work around that by downloading the files directly in the Files app and then as a second step importing them.

If you have a lot of files to import, I found USB sticks to also work quite well.

Second issue
Don't delete songs when you just want to update the audio file. What you might be missing some of this:

Refresh the song list after updating audio files: https://stagetraxx.com/user-guide/songs/#refresh-song-list
If you edit lyrics in Stage Traxx, you will no longer see any edits in the lyrics tag of the audio file. The edited lyrics from the Stage Traxx database have precedence. You can reset these lyrics in the lyrics editor.

MasterAnt

I'm sure it's frustrating for peter that we all have our unique way of working! 😆

MasterAnt

I spent about 30-minutes playing around with importing songs after reading your post and the manual carefully.

I'm still finding this a bit counterintuitive. Currently, I do all my lyric editing externally. I could use the built-in editor eventually for fixes, but I'm not doing that yet. The other day, for example, I removed the trailing silence from all my tracks using GoldWave which does batch processing. Easy. Then I wanted to bring the songs back into ST3. Easy too: Edit > Select All > Delete All > + > Import From Local & Cloud Files > Select All (or just 30 at a time to avoid errors) > Open. Done. Playlists obviously destroyed. But the point is that was mostly effortless. The same thing when I make changes to multiple lyric files, which are separate to the MP3s on my PC (before I run a program to combine them.) Why would I edit so many lyric files: Well I use lyrics for things other than just lyrics. One of the most valuable things I have in there is details about the song that I might talk about before I start the song. That includes some facts, who wrote it, sung it, and what year, and some other nonsense to enhance my audience interaction. So sometimes I make changes to many lyric files when I feel like adding more details, etc.

What I find counterintuitive is that if I import these songs without first deleting them, importing makes no changes to any of the existing files, even if I pull down to refresh. I'm expecting there to be a popup asking "Do you want to replace your songs?" or similar. So I tried the suggestion of replacing the MP3s directly in the Files App. This is somewhat slower, but not a major problem. Now I have to think which songs I might have changed lyrics on and go through them one-by-one by opening the lyrics editor and resetting lyrics. That's a bit more work. Then, I use my iPhone as a backup to my iPad so I have to do all this again on my iPhone. It's okay to do this one time, but updating backtracks is a bit of an obsession which I regularly do to improve my performance.

Would it be possible to add some settings option titled "Importing replaces existing lyrics" and "Importing replaces existing files?"

If not, is there already a way to export just the playlists so I can import the songs the easy way and just reload/relink the playlists after that? Using the Files App on iOS is often problematic, and maybe a bit confusing for other people too.

Damir

MasterAnt i know exactly where you are coming from, i have been trying to explain this problem for ages but unfortunately thats the way the system is, ist very fixed to operate in its own limited way.
Its probabbly not so easy to change it now, but eventually it will be set up the way it works simply and efficiently for the end user.
I just do all my final lyrics editing within st3 as any other way its just more time consuming if you try to use external editors and try to save to ST3 after.
I have written lengthy explanation to how we want it but its obviously too hard.
I expect the main ST3 folder, then a folder for every other need like multitracks, PDFs, Texts, stero audio files.
Multitrack songs tracks should be individualy housed within each songs name and this folder should contain all the audio tracks within that multitrack song folder, all multitrack songs should be inported as a folder containing all the tracks within that folder, the folder name is the name of the song and all the other tracks within that folder are its individual instruments, this avoids ST3 folder clatter and logical storage for easy operation
PDFs have a folder with PDF files in it , great ! , why arent TEXT files treated the same?
Having their own folder.
Why dont we have a STEREO TRACK folder as well and thats where all the stereo backing tracks reside keeping the actual ST3 folder simple to follow,
All thats left is backups, perhaps have a folder for this or just leave the backups in the actual first ST3 folder as normally there arent too many backups otherwise you would be out of disc space in no time.
This all seems a lot more logical and easy to follow.
No confusion to where are my text files and so on.

peter

MasterAnt You have misunderstood what I mean with "updating audio files". I mean you really only overwrite the audio files in the Stage Traxx 3 folder with new version. You certainly don't select "Import from local files" in Stage Traxx. Instead use the Files app to copy and paste all your edited files into the Stage Traxx 3 folder.

MasterAnt

peter Yes that is what I understood and what I tested earlier today. In my previous post, this part describes the process:

So I tried the suggestion of replacing the MP3s directly in the Files App. This is somewhat slower, but not a major problem. Now I have to think which songs I might have changed lyrics on and go through them one-by-one by opening the lyrics editor and resetting lyrics. That's a bit more work. Then, I use my iPhone as a backup to my iPad so I have to do all this again on my iPhone. It's okay to do this one time, but updating backtracks is a bit of an obsession which I regularly do to improve my performance. <

The rest of my post describes how I think it could be all better if done via the Import options.

peter

MasterAnt Sorry, I missed that. You said you never edit lyrics in Stage Traxx. In that case you don't need to reset lyrics.

And getting the updates to your iPhone might be quicker if you create a backup once you are finished editing and just restore that backup.

I plan on adding iCloud sync between devices for version 3.7. But to do that I need to increase the minimum iOS version to 13 so I still hold off on that feature at the moment.

MasterAnt

peter I noticed the lyrics updating without reset if I hadn't done any editing. Okay, I'll try it that way and see how it goes.