Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Many thanks for the useful tips and links. I’ll go through them eventually. To begin with I’ll leave my Vista installation at defaults, to test that Podium and all my development tools are working like I was used to with XP.
I think that is the best way to go. You may not need to change anything. Better to leave things as is and then see if changes are needed especially on a machine used for software development. Thanks for the feedback. 😉
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
I’ve set the poll to run a year. Next year I’ll make a new poll so that all users can vote again. It will be interesting to see how many will stick to older Windows versions.
Good idea.
Personally I’m now running Podium on Vista Business 32-bit. I bought myself a new Dell PC this Christmas, so I’ll be working on full Vista compatibility in the coming releases
Excellent news.
I have been running Podium on Vista for about a year now with few issues (all resolved now). Official support is still a big deal IMO as I would not have used Podium if I was trying it out for the first time and noticed it had no Official vista support. I would have waited for that first.
Many are understandably still cautious about moving to a new OS and want to see the dev make the first move to support it, before they migrate over. So official Vista support in Podium is great news thanks.
Additonally…
This is really just a write up for any user just starting out with Vista. Of course any changes to any OS or feature should be after a full back up. You are getting user feedback here though so I have sucessfully done this. As always though YMMV.
You may already know of the suggestions listed here or maybe not know of any of them. Hopefully it can serve as a helpful resource in one way or another. It might get the voters out and drive more traffic to this thread…
Perhaps the very first stop for any Vista Musician is thisaudio forum optimisation page for Vista Musicians
I would then say for an excellent broad breakdown of Vista, you really should read this great summary of general ideasand suggestions for Optimisations to safely try or avoid.
Disk thrashing / excessive disc activity / slow access
This is a problem I encountered very quickly even on a quad core PC with 4GB of ram. A big surprise that was. It would appear it has a number of possible causes. Here is a list of these possible causes…(FWIW I have since made the tweaks below and have no more excessive disc usage or thrashing).
Ready boost
Hereis an interesting article on Ready boost & Super Fetch.
Another can be found here.
Superfetch
It does speed app’ launching times (so fast there was not enough time for my Outlook 2007 splash screen to show up) but when I switched Superfetch off in Services, my free memory soared to 1 – 1.7GB and my apps took about 1 or 2 seconds more to load. Booting up took about 1 or 2 seconds more. Not much difference. Again YMMV.
If you are still not sure about Superfetch…this is a really excellent thread on Superfetch.
System Restore
Nice idea and seems better than in XP, much better, but takes up too many resources and is not something I want working in the background while I am using Podium. I disabled it on all my drives. With Vista Ultimate I have the surprisingly fully featured Back up and Restore centre, which I think is as good as any commercial product I have used.
Sidebar
Lovely with even more gadgets here but it can access the internet at unexpected times…gadgets refreshing info e.t.c so I disabled it.
Indexing
10 times better In Vista than in XP. WOW.
Apart from the search field in the start menu (one can even search for Podium and start it from there) there is a Search box in every windows Explorer window (top right). So if you cannot find something in a folder open My Computer for a far wider search. Within a few seconds of typing, whatever you are looking for will show up, or as you type (if it is there of course). Brilliant.
But…I think because Indexing tracks changes to files constantly or as you work it leads to disc thrashing or at times excessive disc activity…so I have disabled it. I noticed windows still searches very quickly. Still way better than XP. YMMV.
Hibernating
Another nice idea but when I switched it off my excessive disc activity finally stopped completely. Disk thrashing reduced with other tweaks so I guess this was the last of tweaks required for seriously smooth performance. Better than XP even. I am extremely happy with Vista’s performance now. Love it.
To make the necessary Hibernation tweak..
1. Go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance >Power options
2.Simply choose your existing plan
3.Click on your existing plans “Change plans settings” link and then click on Change advanced power settings (at the bottom of the screen)
4.Once there, on the Hard disk setting set it to Never
5.Sleep settings:…all three including Hibernate after are set to Never, off and Never on my system.
Aero on or off?
Filp 3D for instance needs Aero to work (AFAICT) and is very cool indeed. You can even click anyone of the 3D scrolling windows to bring that to the front not just the window in front of the 3D flip…however when I disabled Aero dwm.exe used 10 times less memory. yes you read that correctly.
You of course will know if it is a big enough memory resource to give away or not. YMMV. Being able to see a live preview (scrolling project in Podium for instance) in a mimi window on the task bar is ultra cool but I personally can do without it on my Music PC (Vista ultimate). I have another PC (Vista Premium) for a full on Graphical Vista experience.
More info on Dwm.exe here.
UAC
Great for security but I eventually switched it off. As I am an administrator, I should not need those consistent prompts to get permission. Having said that, a developer may need to see them to mimic most users Vista setups correctly.
Other personal discoveries over the last 12 months in Vista…
Favourite Links (Drag and drop favourite / frequently used folders):
I love this feature!
Top left of every Windows explorer window is a Favourite Links area. Simply drag and drop any folder to have it appear there every time. You can drag re order the folders in that list as well. You can also maximise that view by clicking on the Folders bar below it. Or dragging the Folders bar down.
Save a previous search:
Any searches can be saved. Great idea. I tend to search for the same things from time to time so this is a time saver.
Preview of file contents without opening the file:
This works with almost any file including PDF’s…fantastic.
Open an explorer Window, make sure it is fully maximised then go to Organise > layout > Preview pane. Click once on any note pad file, word doc, PDf or even spreadsheet to see a preview of the files in the left of the Explorer window. It gets better you can drag that window to the left to make it bigger. if you click on an audio file a mini version of Windows media player will appear in the preview pane and preview the audio file. Great!
Resizing folders:
If the folders are made large enough you can see a tiny preview of the contents as 3 D images. Very nice. Yu can reallyg et some jumbo icons in Vista. Great for folders with a few items in it.
Adding tags:
This works for almost any file (word docs, excel files and images), this seriously adds to the ease of finding files. You can simply click once on a file to bring up the properties below the window. Add or change any editable info there to taste. Lovely.
Developer friendly tools in Vista:
Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Administrative toolsIn particular the Event viewer and the Reliability and Performance monitor may be of some help.
Having said all this…you may find that Vista is 100% fine when you use it out of the box with no need to tweak anything, if that is the case don’t change a thing. :wink:. I just put this together so that people can have a better idea as to what might be good starting points for a tweak or solution to a problem. I might update this post or add more optimisations over time.
Almost forgot…here are some very useful forums for Vista users
The official Windows Vista magazine is a great source of info. I am a subscriber to their physical mag.
Here is their home page.
Here is their forum that deals with general comments e.t.c on Vista.
Hopefully some of the info in this post will help you (Frits) by gathering useful links into one place for you, to save you having to google for the more useful Vista resources out there. I spent the last year doing just that. Of course this post is also for any Podium user starting out with Vista for the first time as well. 😉
HTH.
ConquistadorMerry Christmas to all !!! 🙂
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Thanks for all the comments.
I’ve added your swap panel text to the original feature post. I didn’t forget about it, as I figured it could go under the “redesigned inspector” part. Still it is worth mentioning as it affects workflow and not only appearance.
Cheers.
I thought it would be highly unlikely you forgot. 🙂 It is a very helpful additional change to Podium.
ConquistadorCheers Frits 🙂
I think you may have missed some thing…
“The position of the input and track panels in the inspector have been swapped. This means that the track panel is now at the top and F1 is used to open it instead of F5. Visually this makes more sense, since the panels are now placed in the same order as the controls in the group panel and the mixer”
A slight ammendment of one of your own quotes. 🙂
This change is not a small addition IMO as it provides a much more logical and consistent interface and as a result a quicker and easier workflow. Definitely worth a mention.
I guess the more recent transparent Beta process is making it bit tricky to keep track of all the changes. I am pretty sure you have a change log of sorts to reference as you go along so maybe this just slipped through the net, unless you think this change is not really worth a mention.?!?
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
You can Shift+Click the solo/mute buttons or press Shift+S/M. This will toggle solo/mute on the track and reset solo/mute on all other tracks. So if your current track is not soloed you would press Solo and then Shift+Solo to clear all soloed tracks.
Those KB/S do work thanks, but I was referring to global SMR buttons above the tracks region instead or in the GP header area. I still think that is a good idea.
@rinxai wrote:
I wondering whether there is an updated list of all such keyboard/mouse functionalities and operations. Perhaps a stickied post comprehensively listing current keyboard shortcuts, combined mouse ops, changes, options, etc. Just a thought.
Piltdown Man recently put a Keyboard Shortcut Reference together. Updating a list of this nature is probably a bit of a moving target because of continued development of Podium, of course but Piltdown Man seems open to feedback on it so perhaps he might even be happy to keep it updated as well.
This is the thread he started for it.
Of course we still have the keyboard shortcut list in the Podium Guidebut as I very rarely use Keyboard shortcuts, I don’t know how up to date it is.
A fully updated sticky list would be useful or if the current list in the Podium guide could be (maybe it already is) fully updated.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
The downside of that (minimal but still) is that the “Podium User Community” command/link in Podium will not work if Podium has been blocked as an application from accessing the Internet.
That command only attempts to open a website link using whatever internet browser is installed on the OS, so I doubt that you would get a warning on this.
I blocked internet access for Podium with Onecare (as a result of the TAL plug issue earlier ) but having just checked this now, your theory appears correct. I was able to reach the Zynewave site using the “Podium User Community” link /command in the view menu even though Podium was blocked earlier.
That’s good to know as there is a very high likelihood that a new user will click on that link even if they had to block an earlier attempt by Podium (triggered by another plug) to access the Internet. While Firewalls can differ in how they block an app, the community link should still be OK based on my experience.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
If you do a rescan, and the scanning skips plugins found on the quarantine list, the message box appearing at the end of the scan has an “Open Quarantine List” button. You can also open the PluginQuarantine.txt with a file explorer. The file is located in the same folder as the Podium.ini file.
I have seen the prompt in Podium before, but I did not know how to add an entry to it manually without knowing it’s location but now that I know it’s location yes even notepad should easily open the file for editing if need be. The quarantine function certainly works well.
The firewall warning does not seem to appear once the plugin is on the quarantine list.
Makes sense, since I’m guessing it was the quarantined plugin that was the cause for the internet access. I would guess that this plugin is using an OS service to send a crash report to the developer.
Clearly yes the plug appears to have triggered it. Seems strange that a plug can piggy back a host in that way but…
Podium.exe is calling functions in the plugin dll. The dll can do anything it wants, including accessing the internet, but to the OS it will appear as if the Podium “application” is the sinner. Likewise if the plugin crashes or mistakingly overwrites memory used by Podium, it will appear as if Podium is crashing. Podium cannot prevent this. There are alternative methods of isolating plugins in separate processes to improve security, but this will affect performance.
I certainly do not want perfomance to be affected unless it was a really tiny amount but in any case if Podium attempts to access the Internet as a result of a plugin triggering this behaviour I would imagine a user would block the access with their Firewall.
The downside of that (minimal but still) is that the “Podium User Community” command/link in Podium will not work if Podium has been blocked as an application from accessing the Internet.
A minor deal as one can access the Website directly in other ways but perhaps some sort of disclaimer can be added to the guide about plugs that might cause Podium to attempt to access the Internet without notifying the user first. ( A definite no no, in this day and age of Worms, keyoggers, bots e.t.c) Just a thought.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
I like the change but…will we still be able to access undo history?
Of course. The undo/redo menu buttons are still available, so your setup will not change unless you load the default setup. And as I described above, the standard undo/redo buttons can now also show the history menu.
Ok, thats excellent. Thanks for clarifying.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
I’ve changed the default toolbar layout back to using the undo/redo buttons instead of the undo/redo menu buttons. Coming in Podium 1.96.
I like the change but…will we still be able to access undo history?
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Any idea why Podium is trying to access the internet during a scan?
Podium does NOT contain any code that accesses the internet. It must be a plugin that attempts the internet access, either deliberately or indirectly as a consequence of the crash. If you add the TAL-U-No-what to the quarantine list, does the OneCare pop up the warning on subsequent scans?
Perhaps I have misunderstood you here, I said before in my previous post “the scan was successful” and AFAICT Podium adds a plugin to the quarantine list automatically..how would I manually edit this file?
The firewall warning does not seem to appear once the plugin is on the quarantine list.
You said that “Podium does NOT contain any code that accesses the internet” but even if the plugin is the culprit to a user clearly Podium is trying to access the internet based on the information in that screengrab I posted.
So even if it was the plug that triggered the access attempt, Podium still attempted the access. Perhaps something can be done to stop plugs from using Podium to attempt accessing the Internet because the Firewall states Podium as the application attempting access (whatever the trigger for it).
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
What I described was a suggestion of how it could be implemented. Currently it is only the timesig/tempo that is shown in the transport toolbar. This field could be widened to show timesig/tempo on the bottom line of the field, and marker name on the top line.
This idea sounds very good.
Conquistador@sam c wrote:
having the marker change name as the play cursor passes it? it really makes sense.
thanks!
I totally agree with the idea. I think you FR’d this before. No harm in mentioning it again of course. 🙂
Based on recent comments by Frits he still has some things to work on in 1.96 (although maybe this FR will be included in 1.96) but in any case it would be nice for this to make it into Podium sooner rather than later IMO.
I also like Acousmods idea from your previous thread…
“when you double click between two markers a corresponding time selection is made”
I don’t know of any way to do this in Podium currently, unless I have ovelooked something. But I would very much like to see this kind of functionality in Podium.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
I understand and admire your focus on the current Compact mode, but why not add those “Free G” type of features (standard in some hosts) to Podium, now that you are focusing and making plenty of changes in that area?
Because it will take time to implement those new features. What I’m doing this time around is to make all existing functionality found in expanded mode available in compact mode (track templates and drag-reordering effect tracks comes to mind).
I would also add the absence of global SMR buttons as a consistently problematic issue I faced. As this was another persistent problem when mixing in 1.95 and has been since I first started using Podium years ago.
Constantly scrolling up and down a busy arrangement just to deactivate a Solo button to hear the rest of a mix is a needless waste of time and is an expected feature after all this time IMO. Just giving some user feedback here.
In any case thanks for your clarification. I understand that you as a developer have your own development goals and priorities for Podium that you must maintain your focus on. Hopefully at some point in future the features I suggested can be integrated into Podium to provide a much better overall user experience.
Conquistador@Zynewave wrote:
Please try the new beta6. I’ve added four new options to the tracks region properties dialog:
“Show track color bar at right edge of header”
“Show pan and gain sliders instead of dials”
“Show effect chain on header”
“Set minimum track height to fit contents”.If you disable these options you end up with a header layout that is very close to the old expanded mode.
That is a clever approach. That might very well be the way to bring in Expanded modes features into Compact mode without affecting Compact modes ease of use. Nice.
I don’t think the Tracks region is too difficult to find for an advanced Podium user either but I guess time will tell.
You mentioned possibly doing away with the expanded view, but wanted to spend more time making compact mode more complete before doing so.
I am surprised you have not made mention of other extremely useful features like the one’s mentioned here…
Surely those kind of features are essential to “complete” track level features?
I recently completed a track in 1.95 the overall experence was very good but…there were three issues I kept running into…
1.Lack of more advanced track features like those mentioned on the “Enhanced meters and mixing thread”
RMS meters, Trim e.t.c standard features when mixing. Really. I kept reaching for FreeG every time.
2.Drag and drop of FX tracks within a Track chain panel in Compact mode.
3. Automapping.
Of course recent changes are very welcome and make using Podium even easier (in many ways) but as you are clearly working on refining the Inspector and other track elements I think this is a great opportunity to add just a few more track related features to reallly take the mixing process at track level (and/or the mixer) to a far more advanced professional level.
I understand and admire your focus on the current Compact mode, but why not add those “Free G” type of features (standard in some hosts) to Podium, now that you are focusing and making plenty of changes in that area?