Auto Scroll Jitters On Linked iPad

[fleahead]

Our first rehearsal since 4.0 we now have my partners lyrics screen jumping up and down, like bouncing off the bottom of the screen, when the end of the song is reached. Displays are normal while the lyrics scroll. My "master" iPad display does not have any jittering. Only the linked device. It happens on every song on the list. We are both using the perform layout. Basically, we are using the same settings as pre-4.0. Any suggestions?

[arlo]

Do you mean you are using screen sharing between the two devices, and the master device looks normal but the document jumps around on the device that's sharing the screen?

[fleahead]

No we never had much luck using the screen sharing method. We always have used remote control method.

[arlo]

Remote control only selects songs, it doesn't control the scrolling. So theoretically any scrolling issues should occur whether you trigger the song from remote control, or you just trigger it directly from the screen on the slave device without any device linking at all. Can you confirm that?

[robbaron]

SUPER interested in this one. Just had the same experience with 2 remote slave iPads tonight. iPhone 5S slaved fine with no jitters. All 4 devices in Perform-Portrait.
Will try to get the iPad users to test un-linked tomorrow.

[fleahead]

I think the problem may be in how my partners iPad is optioned. I tried linking to my own iphone and didn't have any jitters. This past weekend we switched to screen sharing mode, as before we had issues with his screen keeping up with mine. Sometimes, but not always, it lagged mine. When that happened he had to step over to see my lyrics. Obvious solution would be to actually learn the lyrics like we used to do in the "old days"?

I'll experiment with another iPad I have. I'm sure is something with optioning.

[robbaron]

I appreciate that! I'm the kind of fella that will dig through options and try to understand them. I've had several instances with my group since we started using the app last year where I've figured out a setting conflict some members were having and had to incorporate "settings confirmation time" at practice. This consists of everyone verifying installed version, navigating as a group to each settings page, and reading out my choices for each page as they verify their selections. We just did that last practice, but still had the jitter issues at last nights performance. It's exhausting.
The app is so in depth. It's hard to force all my members to embrace the learning curve for the end result. As much time as I've spent with it, I'm learning new options and their functions every week. I'm hoping to see many of these options explained further on the web help, or expanded help within the app.
If you read all that, thanks for listening. I'm sure we'll figure it out.

[robbaron]

I'm gonna feel like an idiot yet again if the following is the case:
Should the device Broadcasting remote events be the only one set to auto scroll?
I mean, is that device transmitting it's scrolling, zooming, and "catch up" swipes if the scroll is off due to performance variations?
If so, my minions have a bunch of settings to change.

[arlo]

If you are using device linking for screen sharing, the auto-scroll could well lag behind because the master device just can't transmit all that data -- a whole new screen image every second -- fast enough. So I don't recommend screen sharing for auto-scrolling or anything that requires constant screen updates.

If you are using device linking for remote control actions, no scroll messages are transmitted, so each device should be configured to perform its own auto-scrolling. That's why if you are seeing jitters when following remote control actions, you should just test the device that exhibits the problem on its own because I don't think it's related to the device linking.

As for all the settings ... they could be synced across devices, but many of the settings should be device-specific, so they are not. In BandHelper, some of the settings are synced across all devices owned by a given user, but not all, because you might want to use two devices for different purposes and you would need to maintain separate settings.

[arlo]

Actually, I forgot that the device linking options do include a Page Position remote control action, so with this enabled the master device will send scroll messages to the slave devices. However, this was intended to be used with infrequent movements like initially zooming a document, or changing pages in a multi-page document. If you use it in conjunction with auto-scrolling on the master, the result will be jerkier than if you run auto-scrolling natively on the slave. If you use it in conjunction with auto-scrolling on the slave, then the master's scroll positions and the slave's scroll positions will fight with each other; that might explain the jittering.

[fleahead]

OK after discussions with Arlo, the only good solution is to have the "slave" unit control it's own scrolling. I should probably explain how our setup works. We are a two piece group. I have the master SLM on my iPad. My unit has all the backing track recordings, and all the midi information. So when I tap the next song we are performing, my master unit does the following:

1)  starts playing the backing track
2)  sends all initial midi patch information to our midi devices
3)  activates the automation recording for midi changes during the song
4)  displays the lyrics on our linked iPads.

These are the options I had set:
OPTION                              MASTER        SLAVE
DEVICE LINKING                      NA             Follow Remote Control Events from my iPad
REMOTE CONTROL
Song Selection                      ON            ON
Page Position                       ON            ON   (Turn this off on master and slave)
AUTOMATION
Calculate Auto-Scroll Duration      Auto          Manual
Recalculate Speed If Overridden     ON            ON
Play Automation Track               ON            OFF
Open Documents or Lyrics            ON            ON
Auto-Scroll Documents or Lyrics     ON            ON 
Send MIDI Preset                    ON            OFF

With these settings, everything happened as expected, but we had this horrible jittering or jumping around of the lyrics screen on the slave unit that it was unreadable. By simply turning off the Remote Control Page Position option on the master and slave, the problem was eliminated. Apparently, my remote control commands were conflicting with his scroll information. At any rate, scrolling is again smooth.     

[arlo]

Great, thanks for posting the conclusion here.

[robbaron]

Thanks guys. This solved it for us as well.

Now if I can just figure out the magic combination to start a remote control session over if it bugs...