What Are Your Initial Thoughts About Esperance??

[sweet-lovelle]

http://www.otsav.com/esperance/

"Any item played within the last 12 hours is displayed in an alternate colour (even in other lists), making it really easy to visually notice items you have already played at a gig before perhaps selecting them again by mistake."

[jeff wood]

@Jeff

also,,I like having the media libary box on 1.85,,,the fact that when you search for a song, you get a list,,,,that to me often gives me inspiration, ie other songs that might have similar words in,, i think oh thats a good idea , I'll play that later etc etc etc

I kind of work mostly categories but also the search box is open a lot...so Ive got two avenues open at the same time for finding songs...

Works well for me:)



ps,,dont quite get your point about clicking edit select all etc

I just open the search box and type what i want,,,couldnt be easier...

[nextgen1]

For me the lack of the Cats are a huge thing. I do mostly weddings. And to have my wedding flow basically how I set up the Cats. With each portion getting it's own. Including clients choices of must plays and play if you can. I have loved having my ceremony music and other special things in its own category.

[Dub2Dat]

In the past we have commented that often Ots will seem to have a favourite artist randomly selected when generating a playlist from an event table template. I have often noticed it and will sometimes remark that for example Ots likes U2 today!

Check your ratings number for the overly played track.  Higher ratings plays the track more often.

[Jumpin' Jeff]

For me the lack of the Cats are a huge thing. I do mostly weddings. And to have my wedding flow basically how I set up the Cats. With each portion getting it's own. Including clients choices of must plays and play if you can. I have loved having my ceremony music and other special things in its own category.

What do you mean lack of cats? They may not be what some consider as easy to get to, but they are still there, and from what the intro for esperance commented on, the cats will soon grow to 255 from 127. That's good news.

[nextgen1]

I just mean that they were easy to get to and easy for me to use thats all.

[Dr.J]

I too don't understand the issue with categories. I just tried playing with Esperance again to make sure I didn't miss anything, as I use categories all the time. No double-click necessary, just a single-click on the down-arrow > move down one spot and wait for the pop-up menu to show > scroll the list just the same as 1.85. If I'm missing something please let me know, maybe I'm just missing the obvious.

[djnpd]

Having been playing with 1.90 since its release I am to like it more and more.
The only issue I see that could affect it long term is the non ability to resize the playlist area, in terms of what it is used for; simply cueing songs to play it takes up a lot of real estate on the screen.

What I personally would prefer is a smaller playlist area and NO Dynamics processor instead have a side bar with categories, a resizable library and prep window and the ability to either have or not to have the Karaoke option.

Another feature that VDJ has that is useful is a menu allowing you not to see video and karaoke files with just one click, you guys need to remember we are not all computer programmers we are the end user.

Above all good software in the main however a few tweaks are needed quickly rather than later.
I think to bring OTS into the new centaury it needs to have options for skins as many controllers use different parts of the software.

If I do say so myself I believe you need to release another update within two months.

[jeff wood]

I too don't understand the issue with categories. I just tried playing with Esperance again to make sure I didn't miss anything, as I use categories all the time. No double-click necessary, just a single-click on the down-arrow > move down one spot and wait for the pop-up menu to show > scroll the list just the same as 1.85. If I'm missing something please let me know, maybe I'm just missing the obvious.

Hi Dr J,

The issue with cats on esp isnt the end of the world,, as yes they are still there.

I've just been saying that I prefer the cat system on 1.85 because firstly you have 5 cats that you can directly click on,, and for the other cats, its just one button to click and then you get the drop down cats.

And are all in the same area, so not much mouse movement is needed, all works great.

With esp, you dont have any cats that you can directly click on, and to get to the list of cats, you have to click on on the arrow, and then choose select all files or whatever it says,, so you have to do more to access the cats.

To me, this is adding to the workload

Not the end of the world as I said, but a PITA all the same,,,,



Add to that, the loss of the separate media libary search box, which I think is fantastic, are the reasons why I'm sticking with 1.85.

[nextgen1]

Doc, nope it was me I was missing the obvious. 

[nextgen1]

Jeff, the old setup is what I liked about it as well.

[DJMartin]

Hello there
I installed the Trial version and have it run now for a couple of hours. No glitch so far. Great.

From the first glance, I somehow like and dislike the new visual approach choosen by OTS. I like the more cleaned up and structured screen. After I could turn off this 'tube' kind of animation, it feels much relaxed  (I do not need a light show on the music pc, therefore I do have my light fixtures doing a much better job ).

The color scheme do require additional color combination as mentioned by lots of users here. Working in a fully lighted room, this all black approach makes the users eyes tired very fast. (@OTS-crew, please have look at some studies about color combinations, that are business approved, that means work ergonomically). Used in a FOH in a theatre this black might be the choice for me to not disturb too many audiences around you, but sure not in a studio or outdoor job.

As said, it looks cleaned up. I like the programm window size to be adjusted to whatever size of desire. I would even go one step further and make a dockable approach with the various tabs like history, media library, karaoke, prepare... make them detachable to an own window and have them e.g. on a second screen. That would then free up place for the the other tabs the user wants to leave within the main window. Column size adjustment is a MUST !!

Is OTS aiming a cooperation with DENON? Or is it pure coincidence that the decks model are in the same naming convention like DENON controllers (HC7400). I like DENON products and considering myself to buy some HC4500 or MC6000 for the production cases.

One thing I complained long time ago are the handling of Placeholders in playlists. Every once in a while files do change and a refresh might cause the software to no longer find a particular title. OTS guys haven't made yet a right click menu item to display what artist/title stands behind a placeholder. That would be very helpful to correct the playlists. The playlist files at least do have that information stored as plain ACSII text, so retreival of that piece of information should be easy. We do have hundreds of playlists for almost every occasion and having e.g. 3 out of 5 files missing in the list makes not fun.

Another long time wish is to have a better prelistening possibility. Yes, an additional simple player. I do not mean the third and fourth deck required anyway. The player I mention should be customizable  to a particular audio channel like the air and cue channels today are. I know you can double click on an item to bring up the album window, then select 'Play in OTS player'. Using that method ends up in two windows which need manual closure. If you are in a rush this slows you down. Move the item into the unused deck and send it to cue is another solution, but then the song goes into the history list. We usually save the history to be used for future reference or for paying the copyright fees. So we don't want to have unplayed prelisten songs there.
My suggestion would be to click the little OTS logo icon in front of each item to open that particular player intended for PFL. All it needs is a timeline to skip forward/backwards in music and a close button. That's it. Above method can be used if you want to browse thorugh multiple songs in an album. But then OTSPlayer should be customizable to choose which audio channel to be used and not only go to the default windows system sounds channel.

Another wish is to have the Inser Directives enhanced when it comes to placeholders. Now with the colored appearance of the placeholders, it would be helpful to have a editable place holder. Maybe better called a customizable text tag. That would help to separate songs visually and name blocks like 'Start_R'n'R_1' and 'Stop_R'n'R_1' or any other one liner note useful for the production.

To finish one feature I just discovered. In history it shows the time the song was last played. That is neat, but when searching the library, this time is also shown and this is VERY helpful, especially when there is more than one DJ working the evening. Just great, thanks OTS guys.

That's it for the moment. Let it rock.
Martin

[sweet-lovelle]

For the future I like to see a search option for an specific year in the library!
It's still not possible now.
Would be really helpful if we can do a search for example 1984 instead of 1980s and see only the songs from 1984 and not all the songs of the 80s.
This way I hope to use the specific year selection in the advanced playlist generation too.

[Jumpin' Jeff]

Sweet, In the next update, it seems they want to increase the cats/genres from 128 to 255, so with this addition we can affort a few more assigned to year.

[dgrimm]

I waited years for this !!!! 

I won't be upgrading anytime soon.