Clipping lyrics in Composer-created songs

[Renard]

This seems to be a common issue when songs are created using Composer: the last syllable of phrases doesn't render fully, and the game clips to the next phrase.

Here's a brief frame-by-frame breakdown showing the issue. Focus on the blue bar and notice how it doesn't go all the way to the end:


















YASS seems to be aware of that common issue, and offers a way to fix it automatically in its own editor.



However, using that feature might break the song.

I don't know of any reliable way of fixing the issue yet, so just keep syncing as usual and we'll figure out how to resolve this eventually.

[kokairu]

I think this problem has occurred because line breaks have been set to "interrupt" notes. That is, they occur before the note has had chance to finish.

The easiest way (that I know of) to fix this is to load up the songs using the ChallengeMod edition of USDX (http://ultrastardx.sourceforge.net/usdx-downloads/usdx/). Both this and the normal edition of USDX create an "error" file in the main US directory when the songs have been loaded, detailing issues with the songs. However, only the ChallengeMod will give you handy hints like this:

23) Note length error in sentence 2, on beat 161 in song c:\Program Files (x86)\UltraStar Deluxe\Songs\My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic\Cutie Mark Crusaders\notes.txt

This means that I need to go to open up the text file and find beat 161:

: 161 6 27 crowd
- 166 167
: 180 3 34 Lis

The reason that the .txt file has errored is because the line break is set to appear at beat 166, but the "crowd" syllable lasts from beat 161 up to (and including) 166 (it lasts for 6 beats from 161). The line break has thus "interrupted" the syllable and it will finish early.

The file will also tell you if notes overlap, giving you a chance to solve the problem.

I'll happily set to work on tweaking these files, but thought it would be handy to post the solution anyway!

Let me know if this isn't the case.

[Smilley]

Unfortunately, US-DX loads the new line a few milliseconds sooner than the beat it's supposed to be on. That can be rectified if there are ~3 beats between lines. With rapidfire songs like most of Pinkie's shorts, where you might have 0 beats between lines, you have 3 choices:
1) Shorten the last note before the linebreak. This may or may not work depending on the line in question.
2) Merge lines or rearrange them so you get a brief pause during the linebreak. This can lead to awkwardly long lines, though.
3) Live with it. An unfortunate truth, but until they fix this, it may be the only possibility. And given that the last version update is a year old, I wouldn't hold my breath.

On the upside, even if they aren't visible, the whole notes do count towards the total.

[Renard]

So that's an Ulstrastar-specific issue, then... and Ultrastar is being abandoned (the devs are moving toward Vocaluxe). Ultimately, I believe the best option is 3) if we can't really fix the TXT themselves; after all, we're only making a song pack - it's up to the software devs to fix such blatant issues (and it's not the only issue USDX has either - I'm thinking of the "no delay before a song starts" feature request).

I have no idea if that issue is present in Vocaluxe too. I know Performous doesn't suffer from that, but since Vocaluxe is a Windows-only software because of weird dev choices, I'm bitterly left in the dark.
(In b4 Vocaluxe becomes plagued by the same issues USDX currently has)