[Geoff Bacon]

Hi Mike

My database contains about 430 songs and the majority of these don't have the duration field filled in.
This is primarily because I didn't need the information when I imported the songs and also because of the time/hassle it would take to play the songs and edit the metadata.
I suspect that majority of user's databases also don't have durations set for the majority of their songs.
Previously, this didn't matter to me because I just treated a set list as just a list of songs.

However, I now find myself having to create set lists for gigs and I find that the durations mechanism in MSP are a bit lacking.
I have turned on the "Show SetList Duration" but as nearly every historic setlist contains one or more songs without a duration, the displayed time is useless to me and just clutters up the screen.

There is also no easy way to see which songs in a setlist don't have a duration set. I know I could display each song's duration by customising Song Title Formatting but again, I don't really want to clutter the screen up with unwanted information; Basically, I'm only interested in durations when I am editing a set list. Knowing that a setlist has missing durations is only part of the problem; one also has to find which song(s), display it, play/time it and then work through the MSP menus so that one can edit the duration field.

So, what I would like is a, per Set List, setting that shows the duration of each song in the left hand pane of the editing screen (e.g. at right edge of left pane). I would also like a 2nd line added at the top to show the total duration of the set list e.g. "23:45 + 3 unknown". As screen space is limited, I'm not bothered about showing durations in the right pane (I can always move a song across and delete it if it is not suitable).
Note: If the user hasn't selected that durations shouldn't be used for this particular setlist then MSP should work as at present.

Now that the total duration can be calculated during editing, we also need a mechanism to easily fill in any missing durations. As one can't display a song from the editing screen, this would need to be from the displayed Setlist screen. An extra option could be displayed in the 3 dots drop down e.g. "Next missing duration" (this would be hidden if the user hadn't turned on durations for this particular setlist).
Selecting this would display the offending song and, near the bottom, show an overlay with "Time Song" (or similar) dialog. This would have Start, Never and Cancel options. For Never, set the duration to 1 second (this would cater for dummy pages used to mark breaks etc - timings are only estimates anyway so 1 sec is neither here or there).
When Start is pressed, MSP starts a counter (it doesn't need to be displayed) and removes the bottom dialog. After 30 secs (say) to let the user move away from the top of the page, MSP displays another, transparent, dialog close to top which the user can press to stop the timing. As you don't know what the user is displaying in this area of the screen, this needs to be a small button or something which, when pressed, brings up a larger dialog. e.g. Store time in database, cancel, retime.

Pressing the "Next Missing duration" would always start at the top of the list and work down. If all durations are set, this option should either not be displayed or should be grayed out (I prefer greyed out as one then sees the option exists but I think MSP tends to not show non applicable options)

I realise that there are other ways of attacking this problem e.g. loading an excess of songs into a setlist and jumping towards the end when time is running out. However, this requires one to repeatedly look at one's watch and the audience might get the idea that you are in a hurry to get somewhere.

Just my thoughts - others might have a different way of working - and there could well be some aspects of MSP that I am not using!

Great program

Geoff

[itsme]

Why not adding duration to the caption format? It is shown in the setlist editor and you can switch it on and off easily in the settings.

A second caption line would be a good idea imho.
And a default song length that is used when nothing is entered in a song's Duration field might help to calculate an estimated setlist length.

Filtering for Duration 0 finds all songs without a Duration entry. Combined with e.g. a Collection or a Setlist can help you to complete missing Duration entries.
see https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum...p?tid=4124

[Geoff Bacon]

@itsme

Thanks for the hints but they only partly help:

1) The Song Title Formatting doesn't recognise DURATION as a keyword; well it doesn't show it as a keyword, and it also didn't work when I manually typed it (with and without an S)
2) Filtering for a duration of 0 when displaying a setlist does help in that it restricts the input collection(s) to those with no duration. However, I still have to scroll the right pane to identify highlighted songs (the highlight indicates that the song is in the setlist). I then need to write down the names of the indicated songs so I know which ones need their durations set.

Ideally one doesn't want to scroll the right pane because this would be really annoying for a large database.

What one needs is to be able to easily identify offending songs in the left hand (setlist) pane because this will only have about 20 entries (say)

Using the Caption mechanism (if it recognised Duration) would work for me because I don't currently use this to display anything else (but others might). However, it does require me to go into Settings to enable/disable it (extra operations; being able to enable /disable Captions directly from the 3 dots would make it more usable). 

Displaying a 0 duration in the captions would save me having to write down the names of offending songs. This would simplifying selecting each offender.

Still a pain because, after timing a song, one has to plough through the menus to update the duration field.

Still have to exit from a set list to see it's running duration (in the list of setlists)

Obviously, the problem diminishes as more duration fields are completed - but they will never all be filled in i.e. one will always need to do most of these actions just in case one has inadvertently selected a song without a duration. It would therefore be nice if there was an easy way to identify/update the songs with the minimum of menu operations.

Having a default duration for a song has some merit in that the set list times will be more accurate than just using 0. This might work for some but, when several songs have no duration, I'd prefer to set the default to 0 because I can then easily recognise that the running time is rubbish ( if I set it to 3 mins say, I might believe an incorrect setlist duration).

Geoff

[itsme]

see screenshots

Note that the filter "Duration 0:00" keeps only 28 out of 48 songs of the setlist where length is not specified

[Geoff Bacon]

@itsme

Many thanks for the screen shots (I must learn how to do that!)

Using this info, I now see that, when displaying a searchlist, setting the Search field to Duration and it's value to 0 does filter the setlist so that only songs with a zero duration are displayed, This means no more trying to filter against a collection of songs with a zero length. It also means that I don't have to resort to writing the offending song names on a piece of paper.

I can also now see how I can get the Duration in the caption (don't know why I missed it when I previously went into that three dot extension button, possibly because it was at the top! ).

All I really need now is an easy way to time a song without reverting to another device and ploughing through the menus to update the field. This however might not be so onerous in that we use a restricted group of songs when we do a gig. Consequently, this means that most songs are likely to have the duration filled in from a previous gig.

It would still be nice to know the total duration of a setlist as it is edited.

Many thanks again; it is help like yours that makes this such a great forum.

Cheers
Geoff

[itsme]

The setlist's total duration is shown on top of the setlist in Setlist Editor. The numbers in brackets e.g. (20/48) mean 20 out of 48 songs in the setlist have Duration set and summed up.
Duration is not shown when a setlist is open in the Setlists tab.
For the list of setlists (Setlists tab with no setlist opened) setlist duration can be configured to be shown.

How to make a screenshot depends on the model and manufacturer of your device. Ask Google or the search engine of your choice how to do that.
To add the red frames I used PicPick. That's a nice little Windows graphics program. It's free for private use.

There's a bug with filtering by Duration that I reported here: 
https://zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/forum...&pid=23890

[Geoff Bacon]

Many thanks again.

The first screenshot shows what I need - I missed it because it is so small and dim (I'd already sussed out the other two screenshots).

Thanks also for the hint on the duration bug (I was aware of it as I now read all the posts each day; how sad is that?)

I used to do screenshots but they were never so clear as the ones you produced. Thinking back, I would have been doing them in the days of XP with, compared to today's technology, poor resolution screens and not so brilliant colours.

I think Mike should be treating Duration as a special case in the filters. To my mind, no one is likely to filter for a non-zero time on a song (e.g. 3.59) because they are unlikely to know the exact time. This means they are only interested in 0:00, an artificial time like 0:01 (e.g. for setlist separator pages) and perhaps songs that are more or less than a specified value. I've found that to do the filtering, I do have to specify the full "0:00" - I originally thought that 0 would be sufficient but that still selects any song that has a 0 character in the duration string.

Thanks again
Geoff