Studio v6.0.88 is BROKEN. Why is it out of BETA?

[IPNDDS]

I was told by live chat that Studio v6 was no longer in BETA and was released for general use.  That is very concerning because Studio v6.0.88 is broken everywhere. We waited a long, long time for these major updates and features that you promised and yet we did not get so many of the promised essentials like interface improvements, a new text editor for the scenes, an undo function, spelling corrections, better adherence to standard Windows functions.  What I see are old items left unchanged and that no longer work properly.

• Scenes that have layers (like weather items) do not display with the assigned layering properties.
  Scene items cannot be constrained.
  Embedded text scrolls pop on and then start scrolling rather than starting off screen.
  Text background color does not alpha to zero.  The only way I've found to turn it off completely is to log into the Studio web and make the change there.
  Videos and videos in scenes display with a thick black border around them in the web preview and embedded. 
  Timelines with common channels that have a text scroll will overlay that text scroll on top of another timeline with only local channels and no text scroll.

More and more issues keep popping up as I continue to use v6.  How can this possibly be released for general use?  Everything I'm experiencing should have been caught in the BETA stage of development.  How can I run a business as an Enterprise user of your software if it keeps breaking and I don't find out about it until I start getting lots of calls from my own clients with display issues?  PLEASE, PLEASE stop adding more and more and more features and concentrate on improving the ones we need and use.  I've been an Enterprise customer of yours for many years and I've been very patient with your development phases but I'm almost at wits end with all of this.

What is your plan to deal with all of these problems?

[Marks]

Word!  exactly!
Updates to the version 6 has been pouring in, but still much of the needed functions are missing or still in state of development?

Looking forward to see the version 6.1 with new improvements.

[steveRedMinnow]

Sorry to pile onto this, but it would also be extremely beneficial to have a roadmap of upcoming features and an approximate time they are going to be released, as well as release notes when an update occurs.

I will open up SignageStudio with an Update message, but when I install it I have no idea what has been updated, or worse, removed.

I also agree that there is a lot of instability in the current version, and a lot of items I have reported as bugs during the beta phase are still not fixed. At this point, we have intentionally steered our clients to other software packages, because we do not feel the current software is stable enough to use and always feels to be in a state of flux.

AS an AS3/Flex/Air developer, it is very frustrating to see some of these bugs that I know I could fix if it were my code. I would be happy to provide code samples, references, sign an NDA and help as necessary to make this platform more stable and be the system it could be.

[admin]

Thank you for reporting the issues.
I'd like to emphasis the fact that we need you guys to report the issues so we can fix them.

please use the forum to report EVERY SINGLE issue you are running into.
if you don't report it we can't fix it.
our goal is to make 6.0 100% bug free so if you have an issue, PLEASE be loud about it!

I will make sure all the items in this post are addressed ASAP!

[admin]

I was told by live chat that Studio v6 was no longer in BETA and was released for general use.  That is very concerning because Studio v6.0.88 is broken everywhere. We waited a long, long time for these major updates and features that you promised and yet we did not get so many of the promised essentials like interface improvements, a new text editor for the scenes, an undo function, spelling corrections, better adherence to standard Windows functions.  What I see are old items left unchanged and that no longer work properly.

• Scenes that have layers (like weather items) do not display with the assigned layering properties.
  Scene items cannot be constrained.
  Embedded text scrolls pop on and then start scrolling rather than starting off screen.
  Text background color does not alpha to zero.  The only way I've found to turn it off completely is to log into the Studio web and make the change there.
  Videos and videos in scenes display with a thick black border around them in the web preview and embedded. 
  Timelines with common channels that have a text scroll will overlay that text scroll on top of another timeline with only local channels and no text scroll.

More and more issues keep popping up as I continue to use v6.  How can this possibly be released for general use?  Everything I'm experiencing should have been caught in the BETA stage of development.  How can I run a business as an Enterprise user of your software if it keeps breaking and I don't find out about it until I start getting lots of calls from my own clients with display issues?  PLEASE, PLEASE stop adding more and more and more features and concentrate on improving the ones we need and use.  I've been an Enterprise customer of yours for many years and I've been very patient with your development phases but I'm almost at wits end with all of this.

What is your plan to deal with all of these problems?

Hi,

We ran tests on your concern.

Scenes that have layers (like weather items) do not display with the assigned layering properties.
- known issue with SWFs that have no way of setting to static texture like the weather images

Scene items cannot be constrained.
- not able to replicate. tested a small scene on a larger screen division and the scene content with constrains adjusted to screen division dimensions. tested a large scene on a smaller screen division and the scene content with constrains adjusted to screen division dimension as well

Embedded text scrolls pop on and then start scrolling rather than starting off screen.
- not able to replicate. embedded rss starts up with the length filled and starts scrolling

Text background color does not alpha to zero.  The only way I've found to turn it off completely is to log into the Studio web and make the change there.
- not able to replicate. used rich text component and assigned background on the commons tab. background alpha set to minimum (0.00, slider all the way to the left) makes the background color transparent

Videos and videos in scenes display with a thick black border around them in the web preview and embedded. 
- not able to replicate. i don't get black borders around the videos when using the web preview

Timelines with common channels that have a text scroll will overlay that text scroll on top of another timeline with only local channels and no text scroll.
- not able to replicate, rss on common channel does not display when channel is not assigned to screen division - whether it's on the same timeline changing screen templates or switching to another timeline

[admin]

Hi guys,
as you can see we take your comments and bug reports very seriously.
we are asking that you help us and provide video of how to reproduce the issue as well as your account login email (no password)
the faster you can provide the info, the faster we can work on fixing it asap!

THANKS AGAIN for the support!

[steveRedMinnow]

Here is a bug I reported months ago that is still an issue.

If you have a slideshow of images that have any kind of transition effect AND a transparent PNG above them to provide a visual mask, the images will pop above the PNG just before the transition, the transition will start and after the transition is complete, the new image will go back below the PNG.

Please note, the PNG is not used as a mask layer (like you would do in AS3), it is just a graphic with transparent "windows" to provide a border around the slideshow.

[admin]

Hi Steve,
Can you take a video and post so I can share with the team?
and login of account to reproduce?

[IPNDDS]

How do I get private links and images to you for review?

[admin]

You can contact Lawrence or Sherwin at live chat or just post a Dropbox link

[steveRedMinnow]

If you login is as steve@redminnow, go to the schoolItems folders in Campaigns, select the CampaignTest, then run the V6/v6Timeline and you will see the issue. I will try to record it but I am not going to be able to get to that today.

Thanks!

[IPNDDS]

Now we're at Studio v6.0.92 and nothing has been fixed.  I emailed Admin with screen shots and links to view a web page with a live embedded example of the issues.  It was passed on to Lawrence.  What is the status of the work on getting these issues fixed?

[admin]

Yes, the bug reports have been logged and they are in the queue of bug fixes to be patched.

[epic paul]

Not to flog a dying horse but I have to agree with Red Minnow and IPNDDS.

Lots of enhancements that no one is asking for - fun - but fix the basics first.

In my past career we had a customer advisory board along with an end user joint application development process. Only the suggestions from our clients went on to become new enhancements no matter how good things looked in "creative land" and absolutely nothing was released until our CAB said it was good to go. 

I worked and managed product development for a fortune 1000 sized company for over 20 years and understand that it is hard for the truly creative to not wander off into creative land.  Sometimes "Hey - This would be neat" is not a good thing if it is coming from an internal voice.  This creates creeping elegance and that is not always a good thing.

Lastly - DigitalSigange.com seems to have a firewall between the customer and the middle and upper levels of the company.  This can be deadly.  Your customers are the best source of new and needed ideas.

So:

DS 6.0 can not even display a horizontal RSS feed correctly - wow - how did that get past the beta? 

The studio URL Preview no longer displays campaigns correctly - poof - there went our ability to live demo a potential client.

Enough said.

Here are just few abilities that would be nice features - Steve at Red Minnow could certainly code these for you:

A timeline resource to restart the players with current updates - this actually would solve a lot of bugs.
 
A timeline resource to clear the cache on a player - This would solve most Google Drive and Dropbox issues .

More scrolling speed on the RSS feeds.

An affordable low end player - I miss the media droid 90.  I have and will pay extra for a pre-loaded hardware solution.

3 enhancements and one hardware offering - These are all I need.

For context:  I have a service for the vision impaired that has been on hold for 2 years now.  All the coming RSS enhancements sounded great but I just needed more speed. I even said please.

http://script.digitalsignage.com/forum/index.php/topic,6636.0.html

Sincerely,

Paul Wheeler
Local Business Patriots / Email to my TV
mr.paulwheeler at Gmail
(Paul of Mo)

[Marks]

Please check also the player. Couple of things to investigate.

1. Don't know when or which version 6 update broke the video playback, but now you can see the videos stretched from the bottom or from the right side. If i would use a 1440x900 px screen and add a screen division that has 1092 x 84 px size, you can see clearly that the video is stretched. And yes, I do have my videos in correct resolution.

2. I wanted test the stretched image effect on older player build 5.0.99. All hood here, but the events are not working for me on anymore.

And
3. Can you remove the ext/app text from the version 6 player. When I load an external program, the text appears on the screen.

Thank you.