Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

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Volkov73
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Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2016 10:50 am

Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Volkov73 »

Hey, I was using SynthFont yesterday, and I loved what it is capable of doing, so I purchased SynthFont 2 Just now. I feel it somewhat more responsive than the original program, and I love using it - as well as some of the new features that were added. However, after only 1 hour of using this program, several reoccurring bugs have started to bring a LOT of frustration.

First of all, I am finding that I am not able to delete noted in the Pianoroll view. I click "Select notes", use the cursor to select a group of notes. Then I click "Erase". Nothing ever happens. Then (while notes are still selected) I tried pressing the "delete" key on my keyboard, a confirm dialogue comes up asking "Delete notes?" I clicked yes, and only the first note i had selected was deleted. I tried to select more notes, and then press delete. nothing happens. I close the program. I re-open the program. I go to Pianoroll and select a group of notes. I press Erase, nothing happens. I press "delete" key, nothing happens. This is painfully inconsistent. I want to make copies of a track, several times, and delete certain notes from each track, but this just does not seem possible.

Second bug I encountered. I load a midi file, and there are 16 tracks. Next to each track is a tick box which seems to signify if the track is active (active meaning it can be edited or played back when you press play). I select a few of the midi tracks and press "delete track". Now I have, let's say, 9 tracks remaining. However, the tick box now only appears next to the first 2 or 3 tracks, making it impossible to edit or mute the remaining 7 tracks. This is another bug, that has happened often, but does not happen every single time. Very frustrating to say the least, I have to keep opening and closing the program, hoping for a series of events to take place that would allow me to get the job done without encountering a random bug.

Another bug I encountered. I have a percussion track. I make a copy of this percussion track, and the copy is not designated as a percussion track (I'm unsure how to change whether or not a track is a percussion track or not - or how much significance this even say (see next bug)). However, after a few editing sessions (because I keep opening and closing the program), I made a copy of a percussion track (the same one I had done previously) and a dialogue pops up asking me "Do you want this to new track to be a percussion track?" Well, that's very inconsistent, can you please shed some light on this?

Another bug, this one pretty annoying. I am pointing all my midi tracks to a soundfont file (DLS file). Everything works fine. I want to change one of the tracks to a different preset so I press F4 (which is the shortcut key). The menu comes up and there are categories "Melodic only", "Percussion only" or "Both". What is very annoying, when I want to go through many different presets to test percussion sounds, when editing my percussion track, it would always default to "Melodic only" every time I Press F4. This slows down my editing speed a lot as I have to keep clicking more things, just to see how something would sound with a different preset. I would prefer it to "remember" what I picked and choose that option next time the menu comes up. BUT WAIT, after about 30 minutes or so, I pressed F4 to change a preset, and what do you know, it has automatically chosen "Percussion only". Another inconsistency I just can't understand.

In Pianoroll view, I would hover over a note to see the information, and it only shows for a short time, and the "Move over any note for information" pop up keeps coming up also, cluttering the workspace. This is a simple bug that did not greatly effect my time using the program but thought I would mention.

Finally. Another bug I encountered was when I was muting certain tracks and listening to my project (I would press space to play the sound). Randomly, and only sometimes, pushing space would also mute or unmute the track I had selected. It made playback very inconsistent and I could not understand why this would sometimes happen.

This program has huge potential and a nice array of features. However, my usage of it, it just a few hours has left me very frustrated and I ended up trying some other programs (which ended up not working as there were plenty of issues I encountered there also).

I want to keep using this program, as it has the potential to do all the things I need to do. I just wish for some consistency in the seemingly basic features I was attempting to use.

I also used Viena and tried to edit the sample playback form one not to another note, and kept getting errors when trying to save, error codes which I looked up and found no information about, so I just gave up on that, and tried to edit the actual notes in the MIDI files using SynthFont. Then being unable to delete notes made working on my simple projects basically impossible.

I would appreciate any advice or tips on how to better use your application, or at least some news on if these are known bugs / exclusive to my environment perhaps?

Thank you for your your time in reading this post. I'm sure I encountered other problems while using the software, but I believe I covered the important ones, that seemed especially "breaking" in terms of (what I believe is) simple usage of the program
Admin
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Posts: 671
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:22 am

Re: Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Admin »

Thanks!
I wish more people would take the time and write reports like this - it makes my life so much easier.

I will eventually address them all in due time, but let me first tell you how to delete the selected notes. It is easy when you know how. At first you naturally select a group of events in any of the many ways you can do it. Drawing around them is ONE way. THEN you need to select the page "Batch edit" and here the button highlighted in this image:
Image

I realize that this is not the best possible solution. Using the "delete" button on your keyboard ought to do the trick, but - as you know - it doesn't. Well, that's easy to fix.

The erase tool is then a completely different bastard. With this you can paint over notes to delete them, so it acts more like a standard eraser.
Admin
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Re: Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Admin »

#2 in your list seems difficult to reproduce. I've tried a few times with various midi files without success. But I will continue. If you have more information then please give me a hand.

#3. A percussion track has the midi channel number equal to 9. That is the whole "secret". You can make a copy of it by creating a new track, but by default SynthFont2 will look for the next empty midi channel number. SynthFont2 will ask you if you want to create a percussion track ONLY when midi channel 9 is not already in use. (Normally there's not much to gain by having two tracks using the same midi channel number, even if it is possible).

#4. If the track you have selected makes use of channel 9 then only the percussion presets will be shown by default. SO ... say you have made a copy of a percussion track. This copy does most probably NOT use midi channel 9, but any of the other 15. Thus, this track is by definition a melodic track.

So keep an eye on the channel numbers.

I will leave issues #5 and #6 until later.
Admin
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Re: Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Admin »

#6: Did some research. And yes, I can reproduce it. And yes, there is a reason for it. The default behavior for a checkbox is to toggle its status when the space bar is pressed. So, if the checkbox has the focus, it will change state. In order to avoid it you must click on a track to give the track list the input focus. If I find a way to make the checkbox not respond I will make use of it. But I doubt there is a way... (Alternatively you can defined the HOME key as the play/stop key in Setup and Options).
Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 671
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Re: Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Admin »

#5: In Pianoroll view you are disturbed by the hint text always popping up. You can disable ALL hints (for the whole application) by toggling a menu item. In main menu View there is an item that - now - reads "Hide popup hints". Turn it off.
Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 671
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:22 am

Re: Several annoying bugs I have noticed PLZ fix

Post by Admin »

#1: A new button will be introduced:
Image
This will make it easier, I guess.
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