Page 1 of 1
Posted: 05-18-19 6:35 am
by monkel
I would like to suggest a little change to the personalize tool, which allows me to assign notes to fingers, the background or to mute them. I often use it to reduce complexity in a piece when learning difficult sections.

For this I find it very helpful to have playback when I'm scrolling through the song to edit the notes.

Exactly for this I would find it even more intuitive if muted notes didn't play when scrolling. This way I get an idea what it'll sound like and to ensure I didn't take out too much to keep the piece recognizable.

Posted: 05-22-19 4:44 pm
by Nicholas
This is a great idea that should have been there in the first place when we added the audio preview to that screen. That will be in the next preview.

Posted: 05-23-19 1:41 am
by monkel
Thanks! Are there preview versions available for iOS? Because while I did use a windows tablet for a while I'm back to an iPad as it was just more reliable.

Posted: 05-23-19 4:45 pm
by Nicholas
Historically, no. But I just found out that Apple finally made it much easier to do. So it's something I'd like to start doing, soon.

Posted: 05-31-19 11:33 am
by monkel
Sounds great, although I have to admit that I've learned to understand "soon" to mean it might make it on the roadmap for v12 ... ;)

Posted: 06-02-19 12:26 am
by Nicholas
I suppose that's fair. In this case, even "just found out" meant two months ago. ;)

Posted: 06-02-19 7:18 am
by monkel
1) Just noticed another weird scrolling effect - when the metronome is on, and music is paused, scrolling up will playback the metronome, but not the notes.
Is there a specific reason for that?

2) And another one (that may have been covered before) - when manually scrolling over the edge of a loop end, there is a gap at the end (as defined in the loop) and a preview of the beginning of the loop, but scrolling further will not actually jump you to the start of the loop but continue after the loop with a hard screen update. Is that intentional?

Posted: 06-04-19 1:06 am
by Nicholas
1. No particular reason; just a consequence of how the metronome code is implemented. (It makes for kind of a silly effect when you "throw" the falling notes quickly with either a mouse cursor or your finger on a touch screen.) I suppose it might almost qualify as a bug, if only because it was enough of an oddity to prompt the question in the first place.

2. This one is closer to a bug. I could see a use case in both directions. A: maybe you want to start the loop over more expediently by dragging or B: maybe you'd like a more convenient way of "breaking free" of the loop without messing with the timeline. I suppose with the upcoming "Restart Loop" shortcut, case A won't be as necessary and B might be the desired behavior more often... but right now what you see in the falling notes and what you get by dragging are different.

I am eager to hear opinions on how it should behave. Which do you think is the right answer (or something else completely)?

Posted: 06-04-19 1:56 am
by monkel
1. I would suggest there to be a global setting "Playback when manually scrolling" and apply it to all notes and the metronome (incl. during note/hand edit mode, where it is already active).

2. I was going to say that seeing the start of the loop only makes sense during loop edit mode - but that would make it confusing to impossible to actually set the end of the loop. So during pause scrolling? That's where I noticed it and together with the hard jump into the rest of the piece it doesn't make sense to me. But to alternatively actually jump to the start of the loop during manual scrolling would cause confusion and moments of "I'm stuck in this loop and can't get out.". To this end I would suggest to render the beginning of the loop above the end (as upcoming notes to play) only during actual playback.

3. I did stumble across another slightly "crude" translation in the loop edit mode and while I went through the translations I found a few more suggestions and added them as well:

Code: Select all

<text id="loopInstructions" v="Ziehen Sie in die Zeitleiste, um eine Schleife zu erstellen.  Nehmen Sie die Feineinstellungen unten vor." />
<text id="tutB1" v="Ziehen Sie in den Bereich der fallenden Note, um die Tastatur zu schwenken." />
<text id="dragKeyboard" v="Ziehen Sie in den Bereich der fallenden Note, um die Tastatur zu schwenken.  Passen Sie den Zoom unten an." />
<text id="dragToCopy" v="Kopieren Sie jede Einstellung, indem Sie dieseauf ein anderes Instrument ziehen." />
<text id="autoColor" v="Farbe automatisch" />
<text id="reset" v="Zurücksetzen" />
should be

Code: Select all

<text id="loopInstructions" v="Markieren Sie die Schleife auf der Zeitleiste und nehmen Sie die Feineinstellungen unten vor." />
<text id="tutB1" v="Schieben Sie den Bereich der fallenden Noten, um die Tastatur zu verschieben." />
<text id="dragKeyboard" v="Schieben Sie den Bereich der fallenden Noten, um die Tastatur zu verschieben. Passen Sie den Zoom unten an." />
<text id="dragToCopy" v="Kopieren Sie eine Einstellung, indem Sie diese auf ein anderes Instrument ziehen." />
<text id="autoColor" v="Farben automatisch setzen" />
<text id="reset" v="zurücksetzen" />
My impression of the translations is not that they are bad or wrong. Most of the time it just seems that they didn't know enough about Synthesia functionality to choose the best phrase. Also it's one thing to translate a contiguous text, but quite another to first identify and then press fit the best translation into the limited space that an UI typically gives you. Here is in interesting article on the typical expansion of English into other languages. Following that, coming from an English UI there should be at least a 200% buffer of free space to accommodate well for other languages. Now work that factor into a design that should work on a 17" and a 6" screen equally well... ;)

Posted: 06-06-19 1:32 am
by Nicholas
1. I'll at least get the metronome to stop playing when the song isn't playing. That global setting sounds like a valuable option (that would make things behave a little like the custom hand assignments screen) but I've already added a dozen "tiny" things to the list... which is starting to add up to a big thing. :D

2. A pretty common reason for pausing (that I've heard about dozens of times over the years) is to practice the upcoming notes. It's always seemed a little strange with an available loop function, but I worry that if we show the non-looped part of the song while paused, it will ruin that particular flow for everyone. :? (I agree this is a tricky problem!)

3. Thanks again! I remember reading an article like that one (on Microsoft's site, actually) over 20 years ago. Even after all these years, I remember how startling it was to see those large multiples between the various languages. It was probably my first contact with anything that caused the faintest sensation of culture shock.

I've got some debug code built into the app that will load ALL the languages, actually measure how large the rendered text will be, and choose the language matching the widest text for each entry in language.xml. It writes it out to a new "language_longest.xml" that can be loaded just like any of the others. That way I can navigate through the app and see the absolute worst case without having to check each language individually. That has helped find lots of "that area is too small" bugs.

EDIT: I'd agree with your assessment that the translators from the "professional" service won't ever be able to do as nice a job as an enthusiastic Synthesia user (with a good grasp of their native language). At this point, I think something like 4 of the (11?) supported languages have been community translations initially. (I'd nearly call German one of them too, after all of your wonderful help!)

Posted: 06-06-19 1:39 am
by monkel
3. Creating a "language_longest.xml" is a clever idea. You could also set it as the default if someone tries to activate pirated keys ... :D

And thanks for your feedback, I'm happy to help and it's in my personal interest of course, as well ... ;)