Printing Songs

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bobmre
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2020 4:04 pm

Printing Songs

Post by bobmre » Mon Jan 27, 2020 11:24 pm

If you print a song and then cancel it before printing, it still reduces your number of times to print.

andrewwegierski
Posts: 783
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:37 pm

Re: Printing Songs

Post by andrewwegierski » Tue Jan 28, 2020 2:12 pm

That is because our system has no way of knowing if you accomplished your computer's print dialogue once you exit our print dialogue.

Regards
Andrew Wegierski

Customer Support Representative
Music Arranger

support@playgroundsessions.com

dachraw
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2020 3:29 pm

Re: Printing Songs

Post by dachraw » Mon Dec 21, 2020 3:46 pm

I agree with bobmre. I downloaded my first song and selected "print" but never hit the print button as I didn't like what I saw. This function resides within the software and it should be an easy fix so that the number of allowed prints aren't reduced until the print button is actually clicked. Is there a way to restore a member's allowable prints when they didn't actually print?

Also, I read on another post that Playgroundsessions was looking into the option of removing the fingering numbers from the printed music. Any update on that?

Thanks,
Chris

mbvs
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:09 am

Re: Printing Songs

Post by mbvs » Thu Dec 24, 2020 6:59 am

I am pretty sure I get banned for lifetime for posting this, but I am doing it anyway, mostly because Playground obviously has no intention to respond to user requests (like the removing of the fingering) whatsoever. Consider it my christmas present to the community!

There is a way you can print (and edit to you liking) any score from Playground

In the app goto "Settings", hit "Show advanced settings", scroll down and click "System/Downloads". There you will find the location where Playground stores all its downloaded data. For me (on MacOS) it is "/Users/<username>/Library/Containers/Playground/Data/Library/Application Support/Playground/Local Store/assets" This is a very big folder and it is difficult to find a special song by its number - but there is help!

One folder above there is a file called 'PlaygroundLog.txt' where Playground Session logs all its activities. When you open a lesson in the app, the program adds some lines to this file, something like this:

Code: Select all

12/24/2020 11:39:44.499 [INFO] Launching Lesson: #1380 v8 (en-us)
12/24/2020 11:39:46.407 [DEBUG] XML Loading: /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/Playground/Data/Library/Application Support/Playground/Local Store/assets/Lesson-1380/7_yourbodyisawonderland_challengeutf8.xml
12/24/2020 11:39:46.411 [DEBUG] XML Loading Complete
Here it is: lession 1380 and the file in question is located in the assets folder (see above) at "Lesson-1380/7_yourbodyisawonderland_challengeutf8.xml"

Simply open the 'PlaygroundLog.txt' after you navigated to the lesson/song in the app and scroll to the end (or if you are nerdy issue a 'tail -f PlaygroundLog.txt' on the command line beforehand). Lesson or Song makes no difference, songs are considered lessons in the app.

Now comes the fun part. Grab yourself a copy of MuseScore https://musescore.org/ - a free music notation/editing program which can read the xml files used by Playground (the format of the files is called MusicXML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MusicXML a common open source format for interchanging musical notation)

Start MuseScore, hit 'Open a Score', navigate to the file you found in the step above, edit it, et voilà: fingerings gone, ready to print:

Image

The only thing left is to figure out how MuseScore works - but this program is great anyway, so time spent well.

I don't have a Windows Computer at hand, but I am pretty sure it works similar only the location of the assets folder may differ. Users of the mobile app are out - I doubt that you can access the files on the device, but proof me wrong!

Happy Holidays!

EFlatMajor
Posts: 147
Joined: Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:51 pm

Re: Printing Songs

Post by EFlatMajor » Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:39 pm

Hello @mbvs,

We are stuck at home for Covid Christmas (no one is travelling) So I thought I would reply to your message,
mbvs wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 6:59 am
I am pretty sure I get banned for lifetime for posting this,
Actually, you probably won't. They might delete your post, but probably not disable your account. They focus primarily on removing spam, and since the forums are accessible directly from the app, they need to make sure everything posted is child-friendly.
mbvs wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 6:59 am
Playground obviously has no intention to respond to user requests (like the removing of the fingering) whatsoever
PGS no longer does customer support through the forums. They stopped about a year ago or more. Lots of posts about how to get support but I'll put it here as well.
You can send an email to:

support@playgroundsessions.com

or you can call them. They implemented a ticketing system to track support requests.

How to contact Customer Support

As for your hacking instructions for removing finger numbers, they suffer from 2 fatal flaws.

First, you are having the user open the actual PGS music file with Musescore. If the user corrupts that file and PGS crashes when accessing it, what can they do? You should consider editing your post to have the user copy that file to their home directory, then edit and print it with Muscscore from there. This way there is no chance the edited file (edited correctly or not) can break the PGS app.

The other issue I saw is you provide no instructions on how to remove the fingerings from the file while in Musescore. Musescore is a great tool, but it has a steep learning curve. Anyone trying it for the first time would probably fail. You might consider adding instructions on how to select and delete the finger numbers and also how to print it from Musescore.

You have a great holiday as well!

User avatar
sw1tch73ch
Posts: 539
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2016 1:23 pm

Re: Printing Songs

Post by sw1tch73ch » Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:32 pm

Echoing EFlatMajor... and...

Don't give up on them removing the finger numbers from Printed Scores. I've seen comments by Playground Sessions representatives that echo that they are considering this. We'll see how that goes and don't hold your breath for it, but they do acknowledge the popularity of the request. The primary focus is on new content and the long delayed release of the new version of the app. I imagine anything like this request will be waiting until after that.

But I don't want to put words in their mouths, and so far there isn't any solid ETA on the new version yet either.

Here's to hoping for a better 2021 and finally the release of Playground 3.0 (or whatever they call it ;) ) and finally the fulfillment of so many outstanding requests (Outstanding in the sense that they have yet to be completed, and also that most of the requests are pretty awesome).
== Just keep playing. Just keep playing. Just keep playing, playing, playing! ==

-- jbs --

lucidmusicinc
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu May 30, 2019 1:14 am

Re: Printing Songs

Post by lucidmusicinc » Sun Dec 27, 2020 6:49 am

scores can be printed or saved as pdf from the website. they're in your account menu.

TheDestroyer
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2020 11:35 am

Re: Printing Songs

Post by TheDestroyer » Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:21 pm

mbvs wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 6:59 am
I am pretty sure I get banned for lifetime for posting this, but I am doing it anyway
wow I I think I just learnt how to legit hack playgrounds.
and the code section makes feel like a tutorial on how to become a hacker.

Moreless
Posts: 41
Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2017 12:45 am

Re: Printing Songs

Post by Moreless » Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:34 am

mbvs wrote:
Thu Dec 24, 2020 6:59 am
I am pretty sure I get banned for lifetime for posting this
No, i've posted about modifying a score's finger numbering, lyrics, positioning of finger numbering/letters, color of finger/number, etc. Even modifying the .ogg file to add in the original lyrics back in on top of PGS accompaniment. They haven't removed my posts or requested I stop.

What i'd like to figure out is how to extend a song to merge two or more .ogg files and their respective scores. That way I can make one long playlist.

FlatPanda
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:56 am

Re: Printing Songs

Post by FlatPanda » Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:15 am

What i'd like to figure out is how to extend a song to merge two or more .ogg files and their respective scores. That way I can make one long playlist.
There is one file in each PGS-song dir, which is an LZipped XML. If you unzip that, adjust it, and rezip it, PGS won't notice :roll: I managed to put own scores into PGS with some hassle (although formatting, etc. is a pain, and you have to keep some optional elements in the music XML from the PGS, Sibelius-generated ones, putting the output of Musescore into it without manual adjustments didn't work for me).

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