Zynewave.
Zynewave2.42 beta1 is available in the VIP lounge download topic. It features an enhancement to zoom snapshots, as a result of a discussion in this topic:
http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2601
• Zoom snapshots can be configured to partially recall horizontal and vertical zoom settings. Each snapshot is configured independently, making it possible to for example set up a group of snapshots for timeline zooming, and another group of snapshots for vertical zooming. The snapshot button right-click menu has four new options for enabling timeline offset, timeline zoom, vertical offset and vertical zoom.
• Zoom snapshot buttons can be organized into groups using the new “First Snapshot in Group” option in the snapshot button right-click menu.
If you test the beta, be aware that the new zoom options are not yet saved in the project file.
While working on this, I thought it would be nice to be able to save your zoom snapshots as defaults. New arrangements you create will be initialized with the default snapshots. I could add two new commands to the snapshot button right-click menu: “Load Default Snapshots”, “Save As Default Snapshots”. The default snapshots would be saved in the Podium.ini file. Using these two commands you can also easily copy snapshots from one arrangement to another.
Let me know what you think about this.
I’m expecting to release 2.42 within a week or two.
thcilnnahojWorks nicely so far! Here’s what I noticed:
#1
It appears the settings you chose for the last created snapshot are applied when you create a new snapshot. This causes more problems for me than it does good, though, as it becomes impossible to create snapshots in many cases…
I think the simplest solution here would be to allow duplicate snapshots…?
#2
Clicking an active snapshot deselects it (remember this behaviour was changed for the editor profile bar buttons) – with multiple active snapshots, this can become confusing, I think.
Probably best if this is disabled like on the editor profile bar…
Please see the video (with annotations) showing these two things.
About default snapshots, it sounds good, but I can only see it working for zoom-only snapshots (which is good enough for me). I don’t see myself copying snapshots between arrangements, though – do you perhaps have an example of a situation for this?
Zynewave@thcilnnahoj wrote:
Works nicely so far!
Thanks for testing.
#1
It appears the settings you chose for the last created snapshot are applied when you create a new snapshot. This causes more problems for me than it does good, though, as it becomes impossible to create snapshots in many cases…I think the simplest solution here would be to allow duplicate snapshots…?
Yes. I think I’ll remove the restriction of creating duplicate snapshots. It was a nice safe-guard for preventing accidental duplicates, but with the new options, it can be confusing.
#2
Clicking an active snapshot deselects it (remember this behaviour was changed for the editor profile bar buttons) – with multiple active snapshots, this can become confusing, I think.
Probably best if this is disabled like on the editor profile bar…Please see the video (with annotations) showing these two things.
Agreed. Something needs to be done about this. The purpose of clicking an active snapshot button to restore previous zoom settings, was to be able to for example select a zoomed out overview, and then click again to return to the last zoomed in view. That benefit will unfortunately become lost.
About default snapshots, it sounds good, but I can only see it working for zoom-only snapshots (which is good enough for me). I don’t see myself copying snapshots between arrangements, though – do you perhaps have an example of a situation for this?
If you have refined a set of vertical/horizontal zoom snapshots, you could then migrate these to other arrangements you are working on. The default snapshots could also include the current (non-snapshot) timeline/vertical zoom settings. New arrangements will then use these as initial settings, instead of the current fixed 4 bar range that you see when you enter the arrangement editor the first time.
ZynewaveBeta2 is up, with the following additions:
• Added “load default snapshots” and “save as default snapshots” commands to the snapshot button right-click menu. Snapshot defaults are saved in the Podium.ini setup file. New arrangements will automatically be set up with the zoom snapshot defaults, including the initial timeline and vertical zoom range.
• The default Podium setup is modified to include a set of six default zoom snapshots for horizontal and vertical zooming.
• Fix: Zoom snapshots were not copied when creating copies of an arrangement.
Furthermore, the snapshot options are now saved in the .pod project file. I removed the restriction of creating duplicate snapshots. I did not yet remove the zoom restore feature when re-clicking a snapshot button, but instead I changed it so that it should only restore the settings affected by the snapshot. Let me know if this still results in confusing behaviour, in which case I’ll remove the restore feature completely.
thcilnnahojSimply 8)! The default snapshots help quite a lot as well.
One suggestion I have is to put the default V-zoom snapshots before the T-zoom ones, even though it seems backwards. I think most people will create new timeline position/zoom snapshots much more often than vertically zooming ones. With the default snapshots, creating a new one only stores V-zoom settings, which might be confusing to people who don’t know about the right-click options. Alternatively, maybe there’s a way to put the “+” button in a new snapshot group by itself?
Also, a request I have for another time perhaps is to (optionally) center the view on the selected track during vertical zooming, instead of on the mouse cursor.
By the way, when you press END in the arrangement view, this centers around the selected sequences. If you don’t have a sequence selected, it scrolls up to the top instead. So selecting a track and pressing END doesn’t seem to work…
@Zynewave wrote:
I removed the restriction of creating duplicate snapshots. I did not yet remove the zoom restore feature when re-clicking a snapshot button, but instead I changed it so that it should only restore the settings affected by the snapshot. Let me know if this still results in confusing behaviour, in which case I’ll remove the restore feature completely.
It’s good now, as far as I’m concerned. It’d be nice if someone else could chime in with their opinion, though. 😉
Zynewave@thcilnnahoj wrote:
One suggestion I have is to put the default V-zoom snapshots before the T-zoom ones, even though it seems backwards. I think most people will create new timeline position/zoom snapshots much more often than vertically zooming ones. With the default snapshots, creating a new one only stores V-zoom settings, which might be confusing to people who don’t know about the right-click options. Alternatively, maybe there’s a way to put the “+” button in a new snapshot group by itself?
:-k Hmm, thinking about it: Maybe the “first snapshot in group” option is not needed at all. The grouping of snapshot buttons could just be determined from the four other options. A space would be inserted between two snapshot buttons, if their timeline/track options differ.
The question is then, what should the “+” button add? Should it add a snapshot with the same options as the last existing snapshot, or should it add a snapshot with all four options enabled? If it should add all four options, then there would be a space between the “+” and the last existing snapshot button, if the last snapshot does not have all four options enabled.
thcilnnahojI do think that the “+” button should create a snapshot storing all four states at least when it is clicked the first time in a newly created project (or when you open a project in general – I assume the last snapshot settings are not stored in the setup file). Otherwise it’s going to be confusing for new or occasional users.
For experienced users, it’s certainly going to be useful if the “+” button remembers the last snapshot’s settings. As a personal example, since seeing what you did with the default snapshots, I’ll most likely only adjust snapshot #5 (default vertical zoom) and never have to worry about zooming in manually. Those three sizes are perfectly sufficient.
With the previously mentioned zoom centering option, I’d probably never have to use the vertical track offset option either. 😉
So the only options I’ll regularly use are timeline position and zoom. It’d quickly become a chore if I had to disable the other two options on each snapshot I created…
Zynewave@thcilnnahoj wrote:
For experienced users, it’s certainly going to be useful if the “+” button remembers the last snapshot’s settings. As a personal example, since seeing what you did with the default snapshots, I’ll most likely only adjust snapshot #5 (default vertical zoom) and never have to worry about zooming in manually. Those three sizes are perfectly sufficient.
2.42 is now released. I ended up with making the “+” button always create a full snapshot. As you mentioned, new users would otherwise not realize this feature if the “+” button just creates copies of the last default partial zoom snapshot. Instead, I added four new shortcut commands to the “+” button right-click menu, for adding single option snapshots. I hope that is acceptable for quick setup of snapshots.
thcilnnahojIt’s good enough for me. The only suggestion I have that’d make it quicker to use for me would be shortcut keys for the “+” button menu. I don’t know what the term is (shortcut mnemonics or something?)… I’m talking about the underlined letters for each menu option.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen those used anywhere in Podium, so it’s probably not a quick thing for you to implement. Well, it’s just dandy as is! 😉
thcilnnahoj@Zynewave wrote:
:-k Hmm, thinking about it: Maybe the “first snapshot in group” option is not needed at all. The grouping of snapshot buttons could just be determined from the four other options. A space would be inserted between two snapshot buttons, if their timeline/track options differ.
Oh, I assumed you meant they’d be automatically arranged, as in if I add a timeline zoom snapshot, it’d be appended to the timeline zoom “group” as it were. It turns out it’s not quite as neat to have snapshots with similar settings all over the place, so I’ll actually be using the insert command most of the time, I think!
Zynewave@thcilnnahoj wrote:
It’s good enough for me. The only suggestion I have that’d make it quicker to use for me would be shortcut keys for the “+” button menu. I don’t know what the term is (shortcut mnemonics or something?)… I’m talking about the underlined letters for each menu option.
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen those used anywhere in Podium, so it’s probably not a quick thing for you to implement. Well, it’s just dandy as is! 😉
There are some menus in Podium that use the underline shortcuts, but Windows will only show them if the menu is opened with an Alt+key shortcut. You could try with Alt+E for the edit menu. Same thing with dialog boxes, where the shortcut underlining only appears once you press the Alt key.