Hoster 3.321 locking up following video

[Joe Nieves]

Why can't you guys make it posible to just highlight your play list and past it to note pad.

This would be a quick workaround until you can find a more permanent solution?

I read that a lot of people been asking for this feature for a long long time myself included.

What can be done?

Thank's

Joe......

[Skybird74]

VERY GOOD QUESTION - one that Admin answered in March saying that combing lists and/or the ability to Print would be possible in 4.0. I posted several times since, including a QUOTE from Admin. in March, but have not seen any response to this subject.......

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

Why can't you guys make it posible to just highlight your play list and past it to note pad.
This would be a quick workaround until you can find a more permanent solution?
I read that a lot of people been asking for this feature for a long long time myself included.
What can be done?
Thank's
Joe......

This should have a separate thread since this is not about Hoster locking up.

[ddouglass]

Do you want to be able to print the playlists first or have Hoster working correctly? Give them time to get the core program working correctly with no errors, then the goodies can be worked on.

[Skybird74]

I understand what you are saying. However, this feature has been talked about for over 2 years!!!!

[ddouglass]

If Hoster isn't working printing your playlists is meaningless. When you only have a couple programmers you have to put the minor items on the back burner until you can get a solid base product out. You can't put the cart before the horse.

[Skybird74]

I do agree. However, I have felt that they have had a solid product for more than a couple years. Everything since then has been improvements and additions to an already good & solid product.

[admin]

Read my post of today to ALL our Hoster users.

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

Simple

Do any other video program you have in your system crash the same way when you use them?

If not them the problem is with Hoster. I have experienced the same problems you have and all my other programs with video operate normally.

All I can share with you is my own personal experience maybe MTU will fined a solution eventually. Joe.....

Ummmm.... Joe, you are a technically astute, articulate user, and one that is VERY WELCOMED in our community! However, read what you wrote.

FACT #1: So far, you and Bryant are the ONLY TWO Hoster users posting this problem.

FACT #2: When VideoDJ is installed, Hoster has a problem If VDJ's video control is "disable".

Well DUH...... it ain't our problem. Answer this... WHY did VDJ add that "disable" function? I'll tell you why... they KNEW they did it wrong, but that was the only way THEY could get their program to run on the second display!

FACT #3: When THEIR DRIVER is installed into Windows, whether they "think" they are disabling it or not... IT IS NOT.

Furthermore, Hoster uses the second display differently than VIDEO programs. Compared to what we are doing, video playing is a piece of cake. We have proven that some video cards/on-board graphics chips (actually, one of the Laptops MTU sells!) will play MPG video files, but NOT on the SECOND monitor! Go figure!

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

Any chance of Hoster and Microstudio getting a assignable sound card option?

This would be a BIG PLUS because then you are able to assign 1st Hoster to main sound card and the 2nd Hoster to another sound card for cueing or having the added feature of letting someone hear the song before they sing it you don't know how many times this was requested.

Joe, I hear you man! We've been working on and off for 2 years to finish our Sound Manager code that will provide for redirection on both INPUT and OUTPUT ports... what you want. Problem is Microsoft's OS's have become unstable and we've wasted at least 10 man-months now trying to learn how to make our products run on them again... stably and what we consider... Professional.

Do I sound frustrated???????

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

Why can't you guys make it posible to just highlight your play list and past it to note pad.

This would be a quick workaround until you can find a more permanent solution?

I read that a lot of people been asking for this feature for a long long time myself included.

What can be done?

Joe, the Playlist is a "linked list" with many parameters that we don't display, but need to control playing order. We have added several new fields in 4.0x that were requested by users (Key change, Tempo change, BookID) that complicates live even more.

It is not as simple a format as you dream of, so there is no "easy" copy/paste way here. We can ONLY program an export function to give you SOME of the data, in ASCII text, in a format other programs (Notepad, Open Office, Word, Wordpad, Excell....) can open and use. It IS NOT trivial. Open a Playlist .hst file with Notepad and you'll see the contents.

Originally Posted by Skybird74

VERY GOOD QUESTION - one that Admin answered in March saying that combing lists and/or the ability to Print would be possible in 4.0. I posted several times since, including a QUOTE from Admin. in March, but have not seen any response to this subject.......

VISTA..... VISTA..... VISTA...... there's your response dear Lady. I wish "our time" was OURS again, not being sacrificed on the Alter at Readmon, Washington! How much more blood does Microsoft want from their vendors before they are satiated?

NEW computers as of July 30 ONLY come with Vista! Thus, until we get stable under Vista, we can't sell to NEW customers! Think about the pressure that put on us that was NOT in our schedule! How would you respond? I'm sure the same way we are.

FYI... we DO NOT pay for our development costs from charging YOU and other EXISTING customers for upgrades. NEW SALES pay for NEW DEVELOPMENTS, and new customers are not asking for this feature. Or... maybe you would like MTU to charge you FULL PRICE for 4.0 as our competitors do? And if you think our "T" competitor who copies MTU gives you free upgrades for life, well they do! Problem is they DISCONTINUE their products every year! So your "OLD" product gets NO MORE UPGRADES, only bug fixes if even that! How's that for truth and honesty? Their marketing folks are laughing at you all the way to their bank!

We CANNOT ignore VISTA! It is the same magnitude we experienced a few years back when we heard from two Plextor VPs at a private dinner with us in Las Vegas that they were removing the CDG decoder chip from their newer drives! Plex was the ONLY drive left on the market with this chip, and MTU was a MAJOR customer (why we were invited to dinner). We were FORCED to write our own Software Error Correction code to do what that chip did in hardware.

On top of that, the whole industry shifted from using ASPI interfacing for CD/DVD drives, to Microsoft's newer MMC interfacing. Thus, we ALSO had to develop new code to interface to the drives.

Over a 3 year period, we perfected our Software Error Correction... best in the world... in Microstudio and Hoster's IMPORT features.

We accomplished MMC interfacing, only to find some POPULAR manufacturers still use ASPI. So.... we MUST now auto-detect which method each and every drive uses, and auto-adjust our "talking" to them to what they want.

We are 99% finished with our new WRITE code (our READ works perfectly). That... was scheduled to be finished in JUNE 2008. But... Vista took that time also.

Good grief Charlie Brown... does it ever end??????????????? NO, and you roll with the punches and try to let your customers know what's happening.

So some yo yo at Microsoft dreams up a nightmare that in all their Arrogance, which is not yet perfected.... they should also FORCE FEED Vista to the world. MTU is NOT alone! If you look in the market place you will see MANY software vendors claim their wares will NOT run on Vista. My Momma didn't raise no idiots! We've been on Vista problems since June last year. We disabled their security mess and Hoster ran fine! But... that's not the "professional way" in some folks minds... just as Joe above accused MTU of being the culprit.

Originally Posted by Skybird74

I understand what you are saying. However, this feature has been talked about for over 2 years!!!!

Some features now in Hoster 4.0 have been requested for over 4 years!!!!!

Exporting the Playlist is NOT a trivial task, or we would have "worked it in" earlier. It is a week+ task, and we don't have any week slots open for a long time yet. Do we put aside fixing crashing in CUE state, or when Dur hits 00:00 countdown, or removing the unprofessional partial display that is appearing at the start of a song, or last but not least... fixing the out-of-sync we have that PREVENTS use as a professional tool?

Do you know why the "Keep Songs After Played" option is in the Tools menu? Because the default... which was DEMANDED by hundreds of Hoster users years before you came to us (and very glad you did! ).... was to DELETE the Playlist entry after the song plays. The VAST majority of Hoster users DO NOT KEEP the songs after they play. So why do we want to service a minority of uses, asking for a "special feature"? That's the true picture on this feature. But it is in our spec, and one day it will surface and be done... just not this year.

Originally Posted by Skybird74

I do agree. However, I have felt that they have had a solid product for more than a couple years. Everything since then has been improvements and additions to an already good & solid product.

Uh......... just read the Hoster Help Forums by clicking the "New Posts" button on the blue navigation line above. You'll change your "solid" belief real quick, just as we have. That's the facts. We are in quicksand.

When you're up to your armpits in alligators, its hard to remember you are on your way to a new, uncharted island to plant NEW palm trees!

Originally Posted by ddouglass

If Hoster isn't working printing your playlists is meaningless. When you only have a couple programmers you have to put the minor items on the back burner until you can get a solid base product out. You can't put the cart before the horse.

A wise voice in the wilderness who DOES use "New Posts" every day.

Read my post of today to ALL our Hoster users.

[Skybird74]

Originally Posted by admin

Read my post of today to ALL our Hoster users.
It is not as simple a format as you dream of, so there is no "easy" copy/paste way here. We can ONLY program an export function to give you SOME of the data, in ASCII text, in a format other programs (Notepad, Open Office, Word, Wordpad, Excell....) can open and use. It IS NOT trivial. Open a Playlist .hst file with Notepad and you'll see the contents.
VISTA..... VISTA..... VISTA...... there's your response dear Lady. I wish "our time" was OURS again, not being sacrificed on the Alter at Readmon, Washington! How much more blood does Microsoft want from their vendors before they are satiated?
NEW computers as of July 30 ONLY come with Vista! Thus, until we get stable under Vista, we can't sell to NEW customers! Think about the pressure that put on us that was NOT in our schedule! How would you respond? I'm sure the same way we are.
.....
Some features now in Hoster 4.0 have been requested for over 4 years!!!!!

Exporting the Playlist is NOT a trivial task, or we would have "worked it in" earlier. ..... The VAST majority of Hoster users DO NOT KEEP the songs after they play. So why do we want to service a minority of uses, asking for a "special feature"? That's the true picture on this feature. But it is in our spec, and one day it will surface and be done... just not this year.
When you're up to your armpits in alligators, its hard to remember you are on your way to a new, uncharted island to plant NEW palm trees!
Read my post of today to ALL our Hoster users.

ADMIN, THANK YOU for responding. I really did feel like I was being ignored. AND, I really did think that more users had been requesting the "Copy/Print" feature of the Playlist. And I really did NOT UNDERSTAND the vastness & complexities of adding this feature. I'll be more patient in the future. I REALLY DO LOVE HOSTER!!!! And, more importantly, MTU CAN BE DEPENDED UPON to take care of it's customers!!!!!! And, that really is a rare commodity in "today's world".

[bryant]

FACT #1: So far, you and Bryant are the ONLY TWO Hoster users posting this problem.

FACT #2: When VideoDJ is installed, Hoster has a problem If VDJ's video control is "disable".

Well DUH...... it ain't our problem.

Admin is exactly right and VDJ has been aware that it is their problem. And apparently, since then I have traced it back to a plugin "slideshow" developed by a customer, and we users of VDJ are always aware of that risk as well. The slideshow developer has contacted me and is aware of HIS problem and trying to fix it. I only brought it up here to see if someone on this forum (and there are a few) that use VDJ and Hoster side by side, and if they could think of any work around for me or have knowledge about the "causes of activation and falsely deactivating videos". I think I mentioned that in my initial post too that it may NOT be a Hoster problem at all. I think this is unique in my situation as VDJ has many many problems with videos running , and many of their users cannot even get videos to play on their laptops and computers. I think Joe may be having a separate unique problem of his own as well.

My work around at the time is to use the default slideshow (that doesn't size pictures correctly and makes them "fat") that comes with the program for now.

Again, this is no problem of Hosters.

[bryant]

"Today, we're taking a new... yet old... direction. It is CLEAR that our older Lyrics player from Hoster 1.000 to 3.321a IS in sync with the audio, did not flicker, did not crash when Duration hit 00:00, and IS as stable as the Rock of Gibraltar!"

I was wondering if the new approach will mean that HDzips will not have to be converted over to HDmp3G
as a result of using the older code?

[ddouglass]

Bryant, I would doubt that part will be changed. Zip files have been a problem from day one, because of the diverse formats and compressions. So I believe that they will still be uncompressed back to MP3+Gs.

[Joe Nieves]

I copied my backup files back to original folder all songs play on Microstudio but now my reinstalled Hoster 4.1 wont play them any more. I don't know what to do for tonights show 2nd day no show on job maybe my last.

Thank you for all your help

[Skybird74]

Hope you use 3.4

[billyo]

Originally Posted by Joe Nieves

I copied my backup files back to original folder all songs play on Microstudio but now my reinstalled Hoster 4.1 wont play them any more.

Thank you for all your help

sorry to hear about your frustrations, but you should be able to do your gig tonight using your back-up cd's, if you dont mind logging your player and cdg's, i know it's gonna be a pain in the butt to carry all those gears,but it's a minimal hardship compare to losing your gig, there are some kj's that are looking for some other kj's mistakes and believe me they will steal your gig, it happened to me, not by not showing up or gears not working...but for something else..

[swany]

Way I'm figuring it is that Hoster uses a lot of the PC and it should.

It should be more than it is, and MTU is trying. I figure give hoster all the good pts of using media player ect. Get rid of all DJ, KJ and Video systems but hoster and your PCs even with Vista will work much better.

Reasons I use WMP is simple I can build a DJ stack file simply by giving a right mouse click and adding it to my stack file. Give me the same option with hoster and I'll delete WMP from my PC, just the simple ability to make multiple selections would do it for me. Making Hoster stronger and more efficient at that same time.

I've got one PC with WMP, Hoster, Avrack, and a couple of other players I don't use. I use the WMP and Hoster.