Zynewave.
ZynewaveThis version presents some major changes to the way project files are managed. Podium now supports having multiple project files open at the same time (limit set to 10). As a consequence I needed to rethink the way that the main window tabs and menus are laid out.
There is a new ‘Project Start’ page which will appear as the first tab. This page shows large tiles for all your recently opened projects, as well as tiles for all the project files that Podium finds in the ‘New projects folder’ as configured in Preferences. If you have moved some of your project folders into subfolders then these subfolders will be shown as tile groups with the subfolder name as title. If Podium finds an image file in a project folder it will display this image on the tile. If no image file is found then Podium will save a screenshot of the arrangement editor and show this on the tile. The idea with the screenshots is that in addition to the project name it can be helpful when you are looking for a specific project file. The tile images are stored in a new ‘ProjectImageCache.db’ file located in the New projects root folder. You can safely delete this file and Podium will regenerate the images.
In previous Podium versions you had a tab for each object that you had navigated into in the project hierarchy, so e.g. the project was on the first tab and the arrangement was on the second tab. Now a project only has one tab, and if you open an arrangement or a sound on the project page it will show up in the same tab. To get back to the project you can use the backspace key, or the new ‘Close Arrangement Editor’ in the File menu. The old option of showing a project as a folder page with tiles for each object has been removed. Everything you could do on these folder pages can be done in the project browser list.
The previous Project menu has been replaced with a Podium menu that currently only has two items. I intend to move the Help menus into the Podium menu. At the top of the Start page is a File menu which contains some of the Project menus. The Project menu items that relate to a specific project can now be found in the File menu on the individual project pages.
I still need to do more work on the support of multiple open projects and various other adjustments to the main window menus and the help panel. I noticed yesterday that when you e.g. copy a track from one project to another project the sequence and sound objects on the track do not get copied to the destination project. I have not done extensive testing yet, so there may be other undiscovered bugs. So please keep backups of your projects if you decide to try this beta version.
If you try the beta, I would be glad to hear your opinion on this rather major redesign of the Podium startup experience.
The beta version is available on your account download page.
4micaHi Frits-
All runs just fine here on the new Win10 setup, no bugs so far. It’s good that you have only the cpu load for whatever tab is open atm. Switching between tabs is fine. I like the new start page, and the layout is intuitive. You mentioned working on copying tracks and such from project to project – have you considered being able to drag and drop the same? As in dragging, say, an object by hovering the object over the target tab which opens it. That sounds like a bit much so I’d be fine with regular copy and paste.
A good first beta, stable and progressive! Thanks man.
LevendisHi Frits,
Podium projects feel consolidated under the command of Podium’s new interface.
A great remodelling of Podium’s front-of-house!
While i’m here, i have a couple of things to report.
Thank you 🙂
BalázsHi,
I have a few questions about the new 3.30 beta version:
1. How can i save projects to different files? I couldn’t find the Save project as… option when I’m working in the arrangement view.
2. I tried to copy a track from one project to a new one. The copied track worked fine in the new project until I closed the source project. After that every effect and the synth disappeared from the copied track (only the slots left). I tried saving the new project after I copied the track from the source project but it doesn’t help. Is there a way to copy one track to another project in the new version?
LevendisBalázs wrote…
How can i save projects to different files? I couldn’t find the Save project as… option when I’m working in the arrangement view.
The File menu on the Project Page, the one with the Content & Devices panels, has the Save Project As… entry.
Balázs wrote… I tried to copy a track from one project to a new one. The copied track worked fine in the new project until I closed the source project. After that every effect and the synth disappeared from the copied track (only the slots left). I tried saving the new project after I copied the track from the source project but it doesn’t help. Is there a way to copy one track to another project in the new version?
i have a vague recollection of copy/pasting tracks has been reported as buggy and confirmation of addressing the issue. In the meanwhile, you can save a track’s instrument, effect chain and (optionally) the timeline events, as a track template. It may be more reliable to do so and load the track template in another project/arrangement.
BalázsThank you for the answers.
z_sfyrI have another (slightly off topic) feature suggestion for 3.3. Would it be possible to add an option for colour coding the track markers? i.e. verses are red, choruses are blue (I know I know there’s a song in there somewhere 😉), bridge yellow etc.
This would be immensely helpful when recording at a distance from the computer screen. I think that even if I had a young person’s eyes I would still struggle to read the markers from half way across the room, & it’s probably simple enough to code without taking time away from the main features of the update.
Cheers.
ZynewaveThanks for testing. Beta2 is now uploaded.
I have not yet worked on solving the issues with copying stuff from one project to another open project, so keep in mind there are still unsolved bugs there.
For this beta2 I’ve worked on the other major part of the 3.3 release, which is an update to the inline help system. I posted about this a while back in another topic:
The easiest way to explain what’s changed is to paste the new help text that appears in the help panel:
The project window has an embedded help page that can be opened/closed by clicking the **Help** page tab. Help windows can be opened with the **New Help Window** command in the **Window** menu.
The help page displays context help for the UI element that you point to with the mouse cursor. This offers a quick way to learn about features in the Podium UI, and can also be helpful as a quick lookup of mouse and key shortcuts for the various Podium features.
The displayed help text is taken directly from the Podium guide. The Podium guide is a markdown document that contains hidden markers identifying the sections of the guide. When Podium is starting up it will load the Podium guide and use the hidden markers to find the help text that should be shown for a given UI element. Not only are the help texts taken from the guide, but also all Podium UI texts for titles, labels, menus, dialog boxes, message boxes, and so on. It is thus possible to translate the entire Podium UI and documentation just by translating the single guide document.
The guide that comes with the Podium installer is written in US English but preparations have been made to help the user community to create translations of the guide. Translation instructions are available on the zynewave github page.
Most of the sections in the Podium guide are linked to Podium UI elements and thus can be shown on the help page, but there are some chapters in the guide that are not linked, such as the quick introduction chapter and the control surfaces chapter.
In previous Podium releases the text that was shown in the help page was embedded in the Podium.exe file, and it was mostly just short titles with key shortcut hints. These embedded help texts are now removed. By loading the help text instead from the guide document it is possible to show more comprehensive help.
In the beta2.zip file you will find a podium-guide.md file which eventually will be included in the Podium installer. For the beta2 you will need to place the .md file next to the Podium beta exe, or load the .md file in the Preferences>Appearance page.
Rewriting the old Podium guide html into the new .md format has been a huge task, and I’m not done yet. There are some pages that have a “todo” reminder, and many sections are not yet linked to their corresponding UI element. I’ve had to restructure/rewrite the sections so that each section can be linked to a specific UI element. When the rewrite is done, almost all of the sections in the guide will be viewable in the help page for the UI element they describe.
If you try beta2, let me know what you think about the new help system.
4micaI like the new help system a lot. I had no problem with just placing the .md file next to the exe, no loading into Preferences>Appearance necessary. A truly comprehensive way to help, deeper than most! Others could learn from this method. Runs fine here on Win10 64.
LevendisThanks Frits, and i too had not problems running the new help system on Win10 x64.
The content of the panel has improved legibility, with bulleted lists and indents, though it wasn’t a problem before. The option to lock content is handy for when the text body needs scrolling through.
Similar to 4mica, i too believe it’s a comprehensive integration of help files. Much more convenient than Alt-tabbing between Podium and a pdf, or html, reader.
ZynewaveThanks for the feedback. Beta3 is up, with more enhancements to the help system.
Dialogs are now linked to the corresponding sections in the guide that describes the dialog
controls. When a dialog is open you can press the F1 key to show/hide the help page.
Since the inline help system is now much more comprehensive, I’ve decided to remove the old system where you could press Shift+F1 to open a specific guide chapter in a web browser. The ‘Help’ buttons that previously were located at the bottom left corner of the dialogs are also removed.
Shift+F1 is now assigned to the ‘lock content’ feature of the help page. This was Alt+F1 in beta2.
To make the inline help system as accessible as possible I also made a change to the function key shortcuts which unfortunately may annoy some users. I’ve frequently regretted that I originally assigned F1-F5 for the panels in the inspector. The F1 key is universally accepted to be the ‘Help’ key in most Windows applications, and since there now is a proper help system in Podium I’ve reassigned F1 to toggle the help page. The previous F1-F7 shortcuts are now moved to the F2-F8 keys. I hope users can adapt to this change 😳
ZynewaveYou mentioned working on copying tracks and such from project to project – have you considered being able to drag and drop the same? As in dragging, say, an object by hovering the object over the target tab which opens it.
Good suggestion, 4mica. The previous Podium versions allowed you to drop objects on the tabs for moving objects into that object folder, but that no longer makes sense with the new single page per project. I’ve changed it so that dragging over a project tab will open that page.
I’m about to start patching the drag-drop and copy-paste code so that it handles moving from one project to another project. There are a lot of tricky situations to take care of, like when you drag a plugin onto a track in another project, it will possibly need to copy over all the device objects that define that plugin if the plugin is not already imported in that project.
ZynewaveI have another (slightly off topic) feature suggestion for 3.3. Would it be possible to add an option for colour coding the track markers? i.e. verses are red, choruses are blue (I know I know there’s a song in there somewhere 😉), bridge yellow etc.
This would be immensely helpful when recording at a distance from the computer screen. I think that even if I had a young person’s eyes I would still struggle to read the markers from half way across the room, & it’s probably simple enough to code without taking time away from the main features of the update.
Your feature request is noted. This requires an update to the Podium file format to be able to store a color property for marker events, so I’d like to postpone it for an update with other additions to the Podium file format.
LevendisThanks for the update Frits!
i’d like to report a few issues:
ZynewaveRebuilding, Updating or Loading Plugin Setup from Template, yields an empty Device List, until you navigate away from the Project Page, and back again.
Fixed in the new beta4. Thanks.
i still have the issue whereby a crash in Podium x64 (Win10 x64) doesn’t release ASIO driver. i have to physically unplug, or power down – then power up my external soundcard (Roland TriCapture). Switching Audio driver in the Setup isn’t sufficient.
What causes the crash?