4.06 user observations...

[Harryoke]

Switched to 4.06 and have been using it on a Vista loaded laptop. I have not been pushing it too hard, meaning I do not load customers discs (I have a player and an A/B switch), or require any other heavy lifting of it.

I have been able to make it crash by trying to start a new song without finishing or stopping the first song... but then when I restart, it generally has the rotation still intact, maybe with the exception of the current song. No big whoop.

After using it, I noticed a lot of the SAV and Top Tunes discs that I had ripped had graphic errors. Thought it may have been because I ripped them on the old machine, so I reripped a few discs to see if a different drive would read them better, and alas, that did not work...so I have to accept that I am going to be surprised when playing a few of those discs that the lyrics may not show properly...then attempt to replace those songs with other versions.

Another pain has been some database errors caused by the auto naming feature. Most are accurate, but I am encountering discs that are not labeled correctly by the MTU program, and I have to manually go in and edit them...that and mispellings, such as looking for Goodbye Earl and not finding it, just to see it is listed as Goodby earl in the database by MTU...or not being able to find The Christmas Song because it is shown as Chestnuts Roasting, LOL! Doctor Music 104, the Kiss disc, was completely wrong from track 9-17. And on and on...overall no complaint, but it is the little things that aggravate, LOL...especially at the show when you KNOW you have a song, just are not able to find it quickly.

Perhaps a feature down the road would be to be able to search a partial term...like typing "lake segar" could turn up Fire Lake by Bob Segar.

As I encounter any other issues, I will add them in this thread, but just reporting in after using it for awhile. Overall, I do love it much better than the old version, BUT I am looking forward to new features bringing Hoster to the same level of another program I own but am not using at the moment. At least there are no major glitches!!!!

AS AN ASIDE...Mad Jim and his lovely wife made it out to one of my shows recently. That was cool...didnt recognize him at first without the hat, but he does not wear the hat without getting paid, LOL!

[madjim- with the Lord]

Originally Posted by Harryoke

AS AN ASIDE...Mad Jim and his lovely wife made it out to one of my shows recently. That was cool...didnt recognize him at first without the hat, but he does not wear the hat without getting paid, LOL!

Hey Harry,
Deb and I had a blast the night we met you at Finns. I can see that you've built a good group of singers there, fun bunch of folks. If we are in Florida during Deb's Chrismas break we'll stop in for some more fun.

I'm just "The Hat's" manager. If they want the hat, they have to hire me. Ha ha ha ha......

See again soon brother!

Jim

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by Harryoke

Switched to 4.06 and have been using it on a Vista loaded laptop.
I have been able to make it crash by trying to start a new song without finishing or stopping the first song... but then when I restart, it generally has the rotation still intact, maybe with the exception of the current song. No big whoop.

How are you doing this? Are you hitting Stop and then Play on the next song you want? Or are you highlighting the new song and hitting Play? If it is the first way try doing it the second. This was added with the version 4 to decrease the number od steps required. It also automatically controls the timing to prevent crashing.

Originally Posted by Harryoke

After using it, I noticed a lot of the SAV and Top Tunes discs that I had ripped had graphic errors. Thought it may have been because I ripped them on the old machine, so I reripped a few discs to see if a different drive would read them better, and alas, that did not work...so I have to accept that I am going to be surprised when playing a few of those discs that the lyrics may not show properly...then attempt to replace those songs with other versions.

What do you have your drives set for importing? There is a dropdown box in the CD\DVD drives setup for Play and for Importing. The settings are Fast, Better, Best. This controls the amount of error correction used. Fast would have very little correction and of course Best would use the most attempts to correct disk problems. The SAV disks do have problems with the title pages being garbled but the lyrics are ok as long as the disk is.

Originally Posted by Harryoke

Another pain has been some database errors caused by the auto naming feature. Most are accurate, but I am encountering discs that are not labeled correctly by the MTU program, and I have to manually go in and edit them...that and mispellings, such as looking for Goodbye Earl and not finding it, just to see it is listed as Goodby earl in the database by MTU...or not being able to find The Christmas Song because it is shown as Chestnuts Roasting, LOL! Doctor Music 104, the Kiss disc, was completely wrong from track 9-17. And on and on...overall no complaint, but it is the little things that aggravate, LOL...especially at the show when you KNOW you have a song, just are not able to find it quickly.

The Auto Naming feature only comes into play if you are editing the Title and Artist blocks. This helps to keep you from having to type in the whole Title or Artist. It has nothing to do with the database search buttons.

Which Search Database are you using (On-Line or Local)?

The On-Line database is not in MTU's control. This is a link to FreeDB a free internet database that users of subscribing programs have added all the entries you get. MTU does not subscribe to it so nothing we enter goes into that one.
The Local database is MTU's and they are using our imports and edits to correct and add to that database to try to keep it up-to-date. Every time you add a new CDG or edit the items in one you have that information is put in a file and transmitted to MTU when you connect to the internet. No it isn't a perfect database but it is getting better by our fixing it.

Perhaps a feature down the road would be to be able to search a partial term...like typing "lake segar" could turn up Fire Lake by Bob Segar.[/quote]

You can search by partial terms now, but the partial has to be all title or artist and cannot be in both. So search for lake or segar but not both. This is using a Windows search routine so that won't be changing to allow both, because MTU cannot modify that.

[Harryoke]

Thanks Dale! I will look at the suggestions and play further...

I will also look at the import settings and try to rerip the obvious ones...the SAVs for the most part ARE just the title pages, but there have been several instances where the words garbled too...one case was Alone Again Naturally. The Top Tunes disc with Josh Groban (TU125 I believe) is pretty much all garbled. Finding more the more I work.

The database was the local...the machine I used to rip my discs was never online. When editing though, I DO LOVE the feature that suggests the title and artist. That saves a lot of keystrokes!!!!

I intend to clean up my tracks as I work with the "show" laptop, then archive the edited tracks on the spare original backup machine so that I dont have to keep editing the tracks twice, which I started to do, but got to be daunting, LOL.

[marklwood]

Originally Posted by Harryoke

Perhaps a feature down the road would be to be able to search a partial term...like typing "lake segar" could turn up Fire Lake by Bob Segar.

That still wouldn't do it because it is SegEr

I do see where you are coming from though. my issue is crying or cryin or cryin'. I try to use sections of the string. For example Bob Seger, I would type "r, Bob" that way I would get a smaller list without knowing exactly how to spell it.

[Harryoke]

Right on...punctuation is a thorn in the side as well... Dont Stop is not Don't Stop. Just takes a little practice to overcome it's anal retention, LOL! Dont Stop Believin was a complete mess, LOL! Comes up something like "Don't Stop BelievinDon't Stop Believin" LOL.

No matter what, still better than jockeying discs. Still havent found the problem I couldnt overcome...yet. LOL!

[madjim- with the Lord]

Originally Posted by Harryoke

Dont Stop Believin was a complete mess, LOL! Comes up something like "Don't Stop BelievinDon't Stop Believin" LOL.

I type in "stop believe" Using only the first part of the word avoids the "punctuation at the end of the word" issue.

Jim

[billyo]

regarding the sav disc, it's been like that for a while, only the beginning and the end of the sav and some other brands are garbled, these happened on hoster 4.05 and 06 , but the rest of the songs of these brands will play alright, from want i read this was a low priority until they fixed all the bugs that happened a while back....