Topic: Preview 2.17: Changes to the installer and startup

First things first. I think you are doing a great job of refining Podium. =D>

Further additions to the changelog:

• The installer no longer creates the “Zynewave Podium Projects” folder in the Documents folder. Instead the user is presented with a “project folder preferences” dialog the first time Podium is started. The user can let Podium build the default folders, or configure the folders in the preferences.

Nice!

• Removed the “Relative to project path” option from the sound properties dialog. Sound files are now always referenced with a relative path in the project file, if the sound file is located within the project folder.

Will this solve the problem PDM currently has with audio files being dragged / imported into a project but not being copied to the project folder? :-k

If your answer is no 🙁

…then please consider this additon as a solution. Manually copying imported clips can be very time consuming in PDM.

How about something like this instead…

…that pops up if..

A. You have not saved imported clips into the currently used project folder in PDM.

B. You are importing / dragging in a file into a project.

C. Or why not simply extend the functionality of the Save All Changes command on the Project Menu list to also copy any imported clips to a Project file?

• Multiple VST plugin scan folders can be specified in the preferences dialog.

:D/

• Added “automatically search for missing plugins when loading a project” option to preferences. This option is enabled by default.

Excellent. I wonder though could this idea not be extended to Auto Loading a device set up? I would really make use of this as I have to manually do this at the moment. Less clicks.

• The track inspector embedded in the project window is automatically opened/closed when an arrangement editor is opened/closed.

Makes sense. 🙂

More suggestions…

1. Move to new folder exists but what about Move to existing folder? I would love to avoid having to carefully drag mappings to existing folders. It can be quite tricky to do at the moment on the Devices area of the Start Page.

2. Direct Links to the WIKI tutorials. Presonus Studio one clearly borrowed the PDM Start Page idea, no problem of course as you can return the favour by borrowing the idea of providing a link to Tutorials (WIKI for PDM in this case). 😉 There are a lot of very helpful write ups now in the WIKI. This should help get new users up and running a whole lot faster.

3. Better management of colour presets. Loading and saving. I really think it would be better to add a colour saving option to the bottom of the colours menu. I think there should be a Load and Save Button at the bottom of this menu. That would be far more intuitive than having to make colour tweaks , click ok then go to the Setup menu and scroll all the way down to Save Colour Set Up. It can be much easier surely. I think this idea will place more logical Save / Load buttons for colour presets where they are far more likely to be looked for in the first place.

A user could also set and forget a path for Colour presets to be saved to in Preferences.

4. Download updates from the Start page. The Start Page can be even more engaging, Presonus have a link to download updates right on their start page. Why not Podium? A link to the VIP forum thread where updates can be accessed. Of course if you are not a paid customer you cannot get in. 😉

5. User Option to set an Audio Editor to use. An option to set a path for this in the Preferences area. (Browse for .exe file).

@thcilnnahoj wrote:

Also, did this happen with the betas, too, or didn’t you get a chance to try them?

I did try one of the 2.16 betas briefly but I did not try this particular action until recently. I was dragging the navigator left and right from it’s edges when I used one of the 2.16 betas.

How strange! So, does the view jump to the clicked position after recovering, then?

It does and…it does not. It did once but then I tried it a second time and the screen froze up for 30 seconds or more and the view did not jump back to where I wanted it to. The GUI and play cursor simply resumed from the current playback position further down the project timeline.

@Zynewave wrote:

Also when installing Podium it is not possible to install by using the Run as an Administrator command. Can you please change the installer to reflect this? Any thing to help with compatibility and reliability when installing on Vista /W7 can only help. Thanks.

The installer tool I’m currently using is very basic, so I don’t think I can control this. I’m going to look for alternative installer solutions in the near future. Why do you want to run the installer as administrator?

Have you tried Inno Setup? It can do elevated setups, as I recall. A quick search (like this one) shows it has come up before. I use to use Inno alot and it’s a great tool, and has progressed alot in the last 5 years since I last used it much.

🙂

DSP