Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Beta testers needed / Play with my app! It's fun!

#161

OK, try this and let me know how it goes. I’ll be using this link for testing so I don’t burn up all of my upload credits on the production site.

https://cqsys-ares.com/mark_sandbox/app.html

Go to the Side Bar Menu and expand the Accessibility section. There, you’ll see the new Foot Pedal / Page Turner assignment buttons. Click on the Set buttons and tap your pedals.

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Now, since iOS already has the Space Bar assigned to scrolling the browser page, you may not be able to use that, so if you tap Set next to Play / Pause, then tap your pedal, and the app shows “Space” you’ll need to change your pedal settings to something else. From what I’ve read, your Joyo should have that ability.

Looking forward to your report.

#162

Wow, you burned the midnight oil on this one!:grin: thanks for all you have done with this! I never expected you to go to so much trouble. I’ll give this a shot later this morning when the rest of the family wakes up and let you know how it goes.

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#163

I just saw a video of a bluegrass band doing this song and it was awesome, so I worked it up in the app.

Star Wars Cantina Song / Mad About Me

#164

Made a landing page. Would you mind giving me your honest opinion of it? The buttons on the page don’t work. Just want your thoughts on the look and feel, the information, and the video. Does it draw you in? Does it make you want it?

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#165

First glance looks great. Like the colour choices. I think it will draw in students. Maybe throw in a link to a promo video?

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#166

A promo video in addition to the one on the page?

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#167

Mark, like Archie, I think a tour video / promo video with you giving a tour with your voice explanations would be good. If it was me, It could be just your voice guiding the tour or you have an imbedded visual of yourself also. That way, you would be engaging two senses of the person, hearing and seeing. Also, the motion of the video is jumping around very fast. And adding your voice guiding the tour will slow it down and allow the person to absorb it better, I believe. I am far from an expert on web design. As a user, when I have checked out any product or app on websites for the last several years, almost all have had a tour / promo video with voice. And my memory is most of them were anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes long, with an average of 5 to 10 minutes, from my memory.

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#168

Wow! Up to 15 minutes? Do people really spend that long engaging with a video for a product they haven’t bought yet? Everything I read said to keep landing page videos under 60 seconds, which mine is 57 seconds. So I guess we’re talking about a “If this interests you, here’s more detail” kind of video?

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#169

Well, in my experience, 15 minutes is rare, an outlier, there have been very few times, I have seen that. But for physical product, I believe the average is around 2.0 to 3.5 minutes. Strum Machine’s summary promo video is 2.0 minutes (actually 1 min 58 sec). For software products, for a quick summary tour, I have seen as short as two minutes, with an average of 2.5 to 5 minutes (depending on the type of app or software); this has been for 1000 foot level summary tours. I agree a summary tour/promo video should be fairly short while allowing the person the space and time in the brain to process what they are hearing and seeing. For this kind of app, I personally don’t believe one to two minutes is long enough, maybe 2 minutes if it is at the 1,000 foot level. This is my personal opinion and also based on what I have seen.

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#170

I didn’t even think to look at Strum Machine’s examples. I’ve been trying not to look there, because I don’t want to build another Strum Machine. I wanted this app to feel different, and hopefully better.

Thanks for your input. I’ll get busy working on a longer promo video.

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#171

My pleasure Mark. There is definitely a lot more to your app than Strum Machine. And I believe it would be great for your video to highlight all those great features that the majority of users will find very helpful.

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#172

I like the way it looks. Straight forward and simple to digest.

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#173

Apps can be daunting which is why I tend not to use them. A creator knows exactly every function but the end user is fumbling his/her way through the settings, the more settings the more complex the task of figuring out the functions.

A funny catchy promo video helps explain how things work

#174

Good morning Mark,
Just a quick update……I tried the accessibility feature on the link you provided and short story is that it works! So thank you.
The longer story, in case it helps in future development, is that it won’t work on my newer iPad. For some reason it won’t allow the set button to operate. I touch it and nothing happens. However, on an older iPad that I have, it works fine. When I hit the set button it registers as “enter” and then starts and stops fine. Maybe the newer iPad has an update or feature that is blocking it. I tried playing with the iPad settings to no avail.
But, it works fine on my older iPad so I’m gonna use it to jam. As a side note, I tried it on a Microsoft surface pro and it also works fine.
Once again, many thanks for your work on this. It is a great tool for practicing.

Chuck

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#175

Hey Chuck! Well, that is both good and bad news. I did a little research and it looks like newer iPads are more aggressive capturing keyboard strokes than older ones. So the iPadOS is grabbing those pedal taps before they make it into the browser.

I found a possible work around, though. Can you toggle your Full Keyboard Access setting?

To do that, go to Settings → Accessibility → Keyboards on the newer iPad and toggle the setting for Full Keyboard Access.

I’m curious to know if that changes anything. There’s a possible conde fix I could try, but it has a real potential to break a lot of other things in my app, so I’d really hope this works.

#176

Unfortunately, I set the accessibility to full keyboard and it didn’t change anything. Definitely don’t risk breaking other things to address it. I will continue to experiment and if I figure something out I’ll let you know. Thanks again!

Chuck

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#177

OK y’all. I don’t know if I’m cut out for video editing. This is agonizing work!

That said, here’s my first video tutorial on my brand new YouTube channel. I hope you’ll watch it and let me know what to change for future videos (Cuz I’m NOT changing this one :crazy_face::laughing: )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy0G0T46IXk

2 Likes
#178

In my opinion, that is very good getting started how to video. I really like that first visual “Built by pickers for pickers” with the banjo in the center and the phrase “Jam Trainer” in the center; that is cool. That might be a good lead in for all your future videos. I am throwing thoughts out there for brainstorming. Your pacing is good, and tour with explanations are clear and concise. I realize that video is longer than you want for an introduction promo video. Maybe this video could be the second video, the “getting started video”. And another shorter video could be your promo video, where you simply describe what a person can do with Jam trainer, and some use cases, for example, in addition to the jamming backing tracks, might mention some of the other features, like multiple people can connect to the same session at the same time (as described in the thread), and any other cool features that pickers would be thrilled about. Then at the end of the short promo video, you could mention the getting started video to get started. And future videos could focus on other aspects of the app. Again, I am sharing my thoughts and throwing ideas for brainstorming. Yes, about video production and editing, I imagine that is very involved; I have never done it. I imagine you want to minimize the number of videos. These are my initial thoughts. If I have any others, I will post.

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#179

Those are some very helpful initial thoughts! Thank you for the ideas. I think you hit the nail on the head. This video really isn’t one that would be on a landing page. It doesn’t show off the features of the app enough. As much as it pains me to think about, I really need to make one like you described.

The silver lining is that a lot of time today (literally took me 14 hours to make that video) was spent learning the video making and editing process. I’m using new tools, processes, and resources I wasn’t familiar with, so the next videos should go a lot more quickly. Heck, I bet I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how I was going to have it voiced. I knew it wasn’t going to be MY voice, even though that would have been a lot faster. I have a voice made for silent movies, so I had to figure out which text to speech engine I wanted to use.

I suspect I’ll be up and at 'em bright and early in the morning working on that next video. Thanks for all of your valuable input. It’s been immensely helpful!

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#180

This looks great. I like the idea of an intro video like this and then more detail tutorials of other features that someone could watch if they were having trouble with a certain areas of the app. You have done an impressive job with this.

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