Remote Control Idea - Scroll Automation

[Neill00]

yes I get that, which is why I figured lot's of people would like it the way it is.  I find when I set up the scroll using my current method (automation to turn on and off autoscroll) I'm land marking so that the bottom of the paragraph is at mid screen.  It's been working well for me for a few years.  I'd like to switch to the highlight method especially if we get a "by paragraph" option as it wouldn't matter what you set the font size to, it'll always snap to where I want it.  Just to be clear Bandhelper is already way beyond my original expectations I'm really just being a princess here asking for more. But at the end of the day, I know you are relentless in continuing to try to improve it, so I figure who knows maybe I'll have the odd idea that's helpful.

[Neill00]

Hey Arlo, I think I may have come up with a solution for the scroll and maybe a simpler solution, if it's easier with regard to the automation. 

I discovered that if you tap on an empty line it doesn't highlight but it still snaps to the middle of the screen.  So instead of tapping the first line of the paragraph I tap the empty space at the bottom of the paragraph I want and voila it's somewhere between the 1/4 and 1/3 position I wanted.  If someone wanted to go paragraph by paragraph without having just the first line highlighted but still wanted the paragraph to start mid screen just tap the empty space above the paragraph.  It would be off by one line but close enough.

The solution I was thinking that may be easier than trying to do an advance to previous or next automation event would be if you could add a "decrease text size" to a footswitch.  That would allow the user to get more lyrics on the screen if the timing gets off.  The nice thing is that it wouldn't save so if you don't screw up that song next outing you're back to you're preferred text size.

[arlo]

Okay, the empty line approach is interesting.

Changing the text size while auto-scrolling would be problematic because that would require reloading the lyrics and recalculating the auto-scroll speed, and I know from the full-screen function that reloading or resizing while viewing lyrics leads to lots of bugs. It would be easier just to manually nudge the scroll position up or down, which you can do by dragging the lyrics position with your finger on the screen, or clicking a foot switch mapped to the Scroll Document Up/Down functions, in conjunction with Settings > Remote Control > Document Scroll Amount.

Just to be clear Bandhelper is already way beyond my original expectations I'm really just being a princess here asking for more. But at the end of the day, I know you are relentless in continuing to try to improve it, so I figure who knows maybe I'll have the odd idea that's helpful.

[Neill00]

I've been currently using the feature to nudge the lyrics up or down, but that won't be possible when I switch to the highlight feature I've been discussing. My thought is, once you've change the lyric size the next automation event that will snap the lyrics to the middle of the screen but now there'll be more lyrics on the screen.
Again, it's just if needed.. I'm hoping I can choose a lyric size that will work but when you're out there live it's nice to have a fail safe of some kind.  I have no idea what's more problematic with regard to programming, it just seemed the "decrease font size" would be easier than writing code that resets the timing when you go forward or backward in the automation events and have to also reset the timing at the same time.

[Neill00]

I've put this on my wish list, but I think this would only be useful in the very specific circumstance of using an automation track to do scrolling when not using a backing track or click track. Any other use of automation tracks pretty much requires a backing track or click track for precise timing, and then jumping forward or back in the automation track wouldn't make sense.

A more generally useful idea that's already on my wish list is the ability to step through events in an automation track manually. In that case, an automation track is not really for "automation," but is a pre-programmed list of actions, with manual control over the timing. This could work here if your timing gets off because you could then switch to manual control for the rest of that song, stepping through the remaining automation events. Of course, that's pretty similar to what you already have with your scroll up/down foot switches; you would just need to stop the automation track when your timing is off, and revert to manually scrolling for the rest of that song.

I've switched to using markers and using automation to advance the markers.  Something along the lines of what has been discussed here would be if you could automate the already existing remote control feature of "next page/marker or song" and "previous page/marker or song". That way instead of at a specific time it goes to page/marker 2 it just goes to the next one in the list or the previous one in the list.   This would allow you to advance with a footswitch if things are off and the automation would just carry on.  Also, if you use markers, you would have the option of going to the next song.

[arlo]

I think I should reiterate that automation tracks are meant to be used in conjunction with a click track or backing track so your timing doesn't drift, which it sounds like is the problem you're trying to solve here.

If your timing does drift from what your automation track relies on, I would suggest using a remote control action to simply stop the automation track and that point and change pages manually for the rest of that song.

Alternatives would be to start performing with a click track; forego the automation tracks and always change pages manually with your foot switch; or use auto-scrolling, which has some built-in timing leeway.

[Neill00]

Ya I recognize that the automation was implemented with click track or backing track in mind but in my view, for what that may be worth, the mechanics of it have proven useful even without click or backing tracks.  Of course what I am requesting may not work on every song as they are all different and there may be some anomalies in certain songs.  But with the method I have developed now I could be off 7 - 10 seconds either way and all it will change is where on the page you are reading the lyrics.  I have looked at a few songs in the automation edit and the time between markers is fairly consistent, maybe a variance of 2 to 4 seconds. 

To be fair, based on how I am advancing lyrics now and how forgiving it is, it would take a bunch of things going wrong at once for me to even have to use the footswitch.  I only made the request because the feature is already in the remote control and perhaps due to my ignorance in programming I thought it may not be that hard to patch that feature into automation so it could be used, or not, if needed.  If it was going to be something labour intensive, I wouldn't ask for the feature given the hope I have that I'll never need it.