Usability Issues

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mbatchelor
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Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:12 am

Usability Issues

Post by mbatchelor » Sun Oct 16, 2011 1:31 am

Hey Mike,

Thanks for 10.8.x, but there are still several usability issues that make the product extremely difficult (for my use cases). I've made enhancement requests going back over two years, but they just haven't seemed to be addressed. I'll try them this way:

1- Audio File Cue - Zoom - at higher levels of zoom, the view scroll bar becomes useless as does the zoom feature. Example: open audio file cue, zoom to 100%, click right-arrow on view scroll bar to just scroll over a little. It doesn't - it zips from 0.00 to 5.00 - this scroll increment makes sense when zoom is around 50%, but not when at 100. As you get closer to 100% (above 90), the scroll bar increment must go down to 1 or else zooming is useless. This one should be an easy fix... Pretty please.... ;)

2- Editor Window - Resizability - To really zoom into an audio clip, you need to be able to make it grow really large to see where zero-crossings are in a clip to line your start up exactly right. But the SCS Editor, isn't really resizable. That is, the Audio display window stays at the exact same size always. Also, it would really help when you zoom in far (at say 100%) to get a zero line through the middle of the audio so you can see visually the zero crossings. See audacity for an example.

3- Granularities are still in hundredths even though the underlying layer supports much higher granularities. This helps completely avoid those pops and clicks.

4- Real vamp support (or a semi-elegant way to do it) is still lacking. Right now, to support vamps, I have to do it across several AF and SFR cues for a single song. For example, in one song I'm doing, I have to subdivide the song across 9 different cues - Meas 1 is a vamp, meas 2-87 plays straight, meas 88-89 is a vamp, meas 90-191 goes straight, meas 192-195 is a vamp, meas 196-end. Between each vamp and next part is a SFR cue to break out. I tried using looping like I did last time I was faced with this, but the clicks and pops were just too much to handle and you can still only have one loop per file (so I ran into the whole buffer issue again). I know this isn't a common use case as you've seen it, but the application doesn't just apply to musical theater vamping - it could apply to any long bit of audio with multiple transitions and loops within it.

Thanks for an otherwise great product. As much as I whine about certain things, I'd hate to think about trying to run a show using a CD player again.

Take care,

Marc

Mike Daniell
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Re: Usability Issues

Post by Mike Daniell » Sun Oct 16, 2011 8:41 am

I regret that many feature requests have not yet been implemented but you can expect that to change soon. For most of this year I have been porting SCS 10 to a new development platform which will better handle the ongoing processing requirements of a program like SCS. The new version will be SCS 11 and a beta release should be available within a week or two. When SCS 11 has been fully released (ie after beta testing etc) then you can expect more action on implementing feature requests!

1. Audio File Cue - Zoom: SCS 11 has a vastly improved zoom and scroll facility. When you zoom in on a graph you can then smoothly scroll left and right and you can also click and drag the graph for fine-tuning the scroll area. Also, if you set a point like start/end/loop start/loop end then when you zoom the zoom is based around that last-used point. For example, if you roughly set the start point of a cue and then zoom in (or out) then that start point line on the graph will stay stationary while the portions either side of that point are zoomed.

2. Editor Window - Resizability: See how you go with the new zoom and scroll in SCS 11. Program changes I've made for SCS 11 will make it easier to implement a full window resize - I'm considering allowing you to maximize the Editor window but I will need to make a few changes to make that effective. This will be particularly useful for the revised video/image cues which in SCS 11 have a 'slide show' or 'storyboard' timeline of the videos/images to be played in the cue.

3. Granularity - I'm planning to provide millisecond timings in a later release of SCS 11. This shouldn't be difficult so I may even get that implemented during the beta test phase.

4. Vamps - I hadn't really considered multiple vamps within a cue but I can see how this could be useful. Generally I've recommended cross-fading loops to avoid pops, but I realize that may not be workable with some music tracks. However, I recently attended a show produced by Strut & Fret where they had three looping cues of music and the loops were seamless. I have a copy of their SCS cues and one of them had a 0.5 second cross-fade but the other two cues had no cross-fade. Anyway, I like the idea of supporting more than a single loop/vamp so will see what I can do later to implement this.

Another feature that has been requested and is planned (but not yet implemented) is handling markers in wav files. Loop points in a cue could then be associated with wav file markers.

Watch the Forum for news on SCS 11 beta.
Mike Daniell
Show Cue Systems Pty Ltd
mike@showcuesystems.com
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mbatchelor
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Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:12 am

Re: Usability Issues

Post by mbatchelor » Sun Oct 16, 2011 9:19 am

Thanks as always Mike for your thoughtful responses. I look forward to SCS 11.

Marc

jmgordon
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Re: Usability Issues

Post by jmgordon » Mon Oct 17, 2011 10:37 am

When considering Zoom and the Editor Window size you might like to reflect on the following interesting effect.

A few months ago our laptop died and we upgraded to a Sony Vaio running WS7 with a 1920 x 1080 screen, without fully considering the visual consequences. To assist ancient eyes we usually run at 150% magnification, which works fine with most programs, if a little fuzzy. However, in SCS 10.7.6 the non-resizable Editor window doesn't fit the screen so that the transport buttons don't show and one has to resort to the scroll bar, which is rather inconvenient. Consequently for SCS I reset the screen to 125%, which allows the Editor to be shown in full and is still viewable. However, there are a few display anomalies. The "Pre-load whole file" and "Curr. position" labels don't show properly, and the audio file graph at 0% zoom (view all) doesn't fill its window, but stops short, as if that part of the screen were at 100% magnification instead of 125%. This seems to be the case for shorter audio files. If one zooms, the graph display is the correct size. Is this curable in SCS 10?

Malcolm

Mike Daniell
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Re: Usability Issues

Post by Mike Daniell » Mon Oct 17, 2011 6:08 pm

Malcolm,

I've just set my Windows 7 display option to 125% (it only gave me 100% and 125% to choose from as 150% is only available if the screen resolution is at least 1200x900). I then tried SCS 10.8 and SCS 11. SCS 11 provides the facility to resize the Editor window height which means I can see the entire content if the screen resolution is sufficient. However, at 125% quite a bit of the text was truncated.

I checked a few other programs and some seem to totally ignore the 125% except for standard Windows controls, like button text and menu text. I will probably need to review how SCS 11 handles 125% and 150%. Resizing the Editor window may be part of the answer.

With 10.8 I didn't see any issue with the audio file graph not filling the available display, even with a short file of about 1.5 seconds.
Mike Daniell
Show Cue Systems Pty Ltd
mike@showcuesystems.com
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jmgordon
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Re: Usability Issues

Post by jmgordon » Tue Oct 18, 2011 3:23 am

The programs we use all the time seem to work with 150%, it's only SCS we use at 125%. However, as you have gathered, I haven't yet upgraded to 10.8. Does it handle the screen differently from 10.7.6?

Malcolm

Mike Daniell
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Re: Usability Issues

Post by Mike Daniell » Tue Oct 18, 2011 4:38 pm

jmgordon wrote:The programs we use all the time seem to work with 150%, it's only SCS we use at 125%.
Hmm. OK. I'll need to do some work on screen formatting for sizes > 100%. However, I won't hold up the SCS 11 beta release for this as it will take a while to change screen layouts.

jmgordon wrote:However, as you have gathered, I haven't yet upgraded to 10.8. Does it handle the screen differently from 10.7.6?
No, screen handling in 10.8 is the same as 10.7.
Mike Daniell
Show Cue Systems Pty Ltd
mike@showcuesystems.com
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