[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by psinkiws

I just ran a show on 11/1 and had to revert back to the 3.40 version to avoid synchronization issues. The problem started when a patron brought up their personal CD and I inserted it into my CD Drive. The music stopped moments later but I was able to resume it by clicking on the play button. However, the lyrics were badly off-sync with the graphics. I ran the older version after that without incident. I have a Dell 9300 running XP Media Center Edition with 1GB RAM, a 60GB Internal HD, NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 with 256MB, 500GB External USB 2.0 HDD, and external Plextor PX-716UF USB 2.0 Drive. I do have the Process priority set for Real-Time but did not have any applications running other that Hoster. Background tasks include AVG 8.0 and PC Tools Spyware Doctor 6.

First turn off or stop AVG and PC Tools Spyware while you are running a show. These two programs will jump in and check files any time you pause your actions and you don't need them running when you are not connected to the internet.
Second try setting your Import quality (Tools-CD/DVD drives) to a lower setting. If the singer's disk is dirty or scratched it will require more resources for Hoster to try to error correct when it imports. This may show a few more glitches on screen but will lessen the chance of interuption.
Did you try restarting Hoster after the sync problem showed up?

Originally Posted by psinkiws

I have tried to use the intermission show display to have a slide show. I assumed that it could do that since the control is labelled Select Image Folder. I was disappointed to find that I could only select a single image and not a folder. I was later disappointed to find that I had to use MS Paint to scale down the size of the image since the Center tool did not resize the graphic to fit the screen while maintaining the proportion. Stretch forces it to the size of the screen but distorts it much like on the Desktop. Tile works the same as well.

The center, stretch and tile are Windows tools borrowed by Hoster. This will work exactly the same way it does in Windows (thus the same distortion you see on the desktop).
The Slide show part is not added yet. This should be in 4.10 early next year.

Originally Posted by psinkiws

There are still some Songbook creating issues as any use of special characters like / { or } actually take up additional characters when creating a songbook since the RTF coding requires a preceding slash character. Any long entries with special characters are thereby truncated.

I can't say I have seen this, but then I use MS Word to open it and that converts the file to a Word format.

Originally Posted by psinkiws

Also, when entering a long list of performers, Hoster causes display problems. I only saw this when I had someone enter a list of 12 people to sing the twelve days of Christmas. It was a clever performance but I had to hold their slip aside to properly announce the next performers as Hoster could not handle it.

Yes the longer the name and or title the more likely chance it will cause a display problem. The SND will only display a Maximum of 40 characters across. This is very unlikely to change.

Originally Posted by psinkiws

Also, there is no single click method of skipping the ending of a song. The skip button seems to be more for marking a track to be skipped.

If you want this then I would suggest you put it into the "New Features" forum. However keep in mind that what they have in the specs for future addition is to be able to set start and stop points for all you songs to take care of those long intros and outros. For the time being you can always click on (highlight) the next song you want to play and click on play. (I usually fade it out on my mixer to at least make a smooth transition.)

Originally Posted by psinkiws

Also, when importing CDs, the controls are awkward. The tracks do not show up on the list below unless you choose to search the online database. I find it awkward to make the necessary edits to make the information conform to the standards defined within your personal songbook. I can provide you with additional information, if necessary.

You can also choose the Local Database, but either way that is the only way that the disk is read and the tracks listed. This is the way it has always worked. The Local Database is being updated now, by us (the users). Everytime we enter a new CD (not previously in the database) or edit one then those changes/additions are sent to MTU to update the database.

Originally Posted by psinkiws

I think the intentions are good for version 4 but I think that there is still some polishing necessary to make this a viable product. I do appreciate your recognizing the need for a fallback position by providing a new version of 3 just in case you run into problems with 4. I don't know of many companies that go out of there way to do that. Thank you again.

Peter

The 3.4 version was included while they were struggling through all the Vista problems and getting the new Hoster setup to work with it (and XP) correctly. I would not look for it to be included much longer.