New user issues

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velocitysnare
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2015 12:41 am

New user issues

Post by velocitysnare »

Currently I have some issues on my iMac.

1. The audio and drill are not lined up by one count at the beginning.
2. Tried the syncing option but this actually made it worse. Now it has changed my tempos to random wrong tempos and I can not change them back because the tempo box is grey'd out and does not allow me to edit it.
3. Cannot unedit sync once I have edited it, resulting in me having to start over after one movement.
4. Now when I try to add a set it overlaps on the set before and does not allow me to edit the set.

I'm not sure if it's something hidden that I have checked or what, but I don't think it shouldn't so difficult to edit once.

Help! Me! Please!
I have work to do. I purchased this software to make the process easier, not harder.

Thanks
William
Posts: 620
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2011 2:59 pm
Location: Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: New user issues

Post by William »

Hi velocitysnare,

I am very sorry to hear that you are having trouble. Tempo and music synchronization is a tricky issue and it seems like you have come across a variety of different problems. It looks like some of your issues are expected behaviour, some are problems that can be fixed, and some might be bugs in EnVision that will require investigating.

I'll give a short overview of some of the salient points and then I'll give a more in-depth overview of the music synchronization system to give you a better understanding of how it all works.
  1. If you don't have music loaded, or you have music loaded without syncing it, the first count of the production will be at time 0:00. However EnVision puts a count before count 1 (count 0) where the set is actually edited. This is expected behaviour. When you sync music Count 0 will still be created before count 1, it just might not be at 0:00 any more.
  2. You can clear the current music selection from the 'Production' section of the 'Show Manager' tool which can be found in the Toolbar or the File menu. Scroll to the bottom of the tool and press the 'Clear' button. This will not reset your set times but it will allow you to change the tempo of the sets manually again.
  3. With synced music (or otherwise) you can edit the set times manually directly from the Timeline. Unlock the timeline from the timeline control area and click and drag the sets. Make sure to lock the timeline again before attempting to edit drill.
  4. There is a known issue where music playback doesn't stay synchronized, or doesn't start playing at the right spot for some systems and certain types of music. This issue is actively being investigated and we hope to have a fix for it shortly. In the meantime, using low to medium-quality mp3s seem to have the best results.
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Here is a more in-depth look at the music synchronization system. Firstly though, your fourth point seems like it could be a bug. If you still have drill in that situation I would appreciate if you could get a screenshot or a picture and either post it here or send it to me at contact@box5software.com.

The issue is about how the sets align with the music. The important point is that where you press space bar in the Sync Music tool, and where the sets display in the Timeline are different from each other on purpose. When syncing music, the idea is to press space bar on count 1 of the beginning of each phrase / set. In my opinion that is the most natural way to think about phrases in music. However, when writing drill, you rarely want the set you are editing to be on count 1, because when running drill (with some exceptions) you expect to hit a set on the last count of a phrase and take the first step of the new phrase in a new direction. EnVision tries to capture this dichotomy by doing both these things.

The result of this is that EnVision takes the set times you created when syncing music, along with the number of counts in the given set, and adjusts the 'working' sets back one count. This is obvious in two ways. The first is if you have a long set (time-wise) with very few counts and a small BPM, followed by a set with a high BPM. The space between the 'working' set position and count 1 of that set will be much bigger than the rest of the counts in that set. The second way is by unlocking and locking the timeline. You can do this with the timeline lock button, on the top right corner of the timeline control area. When you unlock the timeline to adjust sets manually, then the sets move to the actual positions that you set them in Sync Music. i.e. on count 1 of every set, instead of on the last count of the previous set. The assumption here is that when you are adjusting the times of sets you would want to work on lining the sets up with the beginning of the phrase, like you do in Sync Music.

So relating to your issue, when you sync the first set of a song there is no previous set to work off of, but you still want your 'working' set to be on count 0, so your first count is moving in the direction of the second set. To do this EnVision creates an additional count at count '0', before your first count 1. If your song starts right at the beginning of your sound file then your count 0 will be before the sound file begins.

Lastly, when you sync music, its natural that there will be some fluctuations in tempo because of the imperfection of humans. You might press spacebar slightly ahead or behind of where you intended to, and this will create fluctuations in the tempo from set to set. If you are using a live recording then this effect could be amplified because the recording might not be playing at an even tempo. The key here is that if the playback lines up with the soundtrack then the tempo shouldn't matter. In fact the tempo isn't used anywhere except in generating the marching animation so if its off by a couple beats it makes no difference. That being said, as I mentioned above, there is an issue in EnVision right now where the music doesn't always line up with the times that you've synched. This is obviously a major problem for EnVision and we are working to correct it. Again, the best workaround right now seems to be to use a low to medium-quality mp3 to sync to.

I hope this helped clear things up a bit. Please let me know if you have any more questions or need more specific assistance.

Have a great day!
William Lee
-----------------
CEO
Box5 Software
https://box5software.com
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