The big list is too big

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LucidMusicInc
Posts: 23

Post by LucidMusicInc »

Fist off this is the best app out there. I used the subscription based apps from the big names. I much prefer the simplicity and speed of Synthaesia, especially the looping and stats features.

The problem is the big list is liable to crash the app if there are too many files in the database. I’ve corrected the problem by keeping the files stored in a separate location but I had to mention there should be a safeguard against users overloading the database.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Which version of Synthesia are you using? (What does the version number say on the title screen?)

Many years ago things would start to misbehave with a very large song library, but most of the versions released in the past five years or so should be pretty resilient. How many songs are "too many files in the database"? Ten thousand?
LucidMusicInc
Posts: 23

Post by LucidMusicInc »

Latest version on iOS 12. I put about 2000 files in it :p courtesy of vgmusic.com. Since then I’ve switched to a media player to audition pieces.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

It has been some time (five years?) since I've taken a look at the performance of the song list when under... duress. I just grabbed a zip from the vgmusic forums that has over ten thousand songs. I'll add those and see if there aren't any new hot-spots that show up in the profiler. (Really, opening and hashing the entire contents of each file shouldn't be done each time the app starts or returns from the background. That would be the biggest performance boost.)
LucidMusicInc
Posts: 23

Post by LucidMusicInc »

I think the solution would be a setting that can turn on or off the big list. As the list gets too big, the app doesn't launch very well, even with a song list in the mere hundreds, running on an iPad Pro. As far as lists go, it would be nice to have a set list, such as starred songs, or better yet, set lists that can be ordered manually.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I haven't had a good chance to actually fix this yet, but I did peek at it to assess what's going on. There isn't any (good) reason Synthesia shouldn't be able to have 20,000 files in that list, loaded in less than a second or two (without skipping a single video frame).

That said, there are lots of bad reasons it can't do it today, with about a half-dozen of the most important ones bubbling up to the top of the list. For 10.6 I'm going to try to fix the worst couple offenders, which should get things to a much better place.
LucidMusicInc
Posts: 23

Post by LucidMusicInc »

Ok I just think it's impractical, obviously the search bar is great to use but sometimes midi files aren't named very meaningfully and therefore directories are more useful to find things quickly. I'll just submit the suggestion for some UI tweaks in the file management area of the app. Side note, let's have the MIDI connection settings available in the play performance area of the app as well. Sometimes a MIDI connection is lost and has to be reset and you have to go back a few pages to settings to do it.
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