Scrolling and Formatting

All types of attachments can automatically scroll with playback, and there are some options for controlling how this is done.

Scrolling

If the Scroll switch at the top of the panel is turned on, the attachment will automatically scroll as the song plays. BackTrax attempts to calculate the best timing for scroll start, scroll end and the rate in between based on the length of the attachment and the duration of the song. The scroll rate will be imperfect (more precise scrolling options are planned), but there are some fine tuning options (more below under Options).

The - and + buttons at the top of the panel allow you to incrementally decrease and increase the scroll rate on the fly. This adjustment is not stored, it’s only for live changes.

Options

Tap the More button at the top right of the panel to open the Attachment Options. These are formatting and scrolling options specific to the current attachment.

The Lyrics Options section allows you to choose text formatting options, only if the current attachment is lyrics.

The “Pre-formatted text” option acts like an HTML “pre” tag; it will preserve the original plain text formatting of the lyrics, specifically concerning line breaks. With this option on, the lyrics will not be wrapped unless there’s a line break character in the original text.

The “Monospace font” option uses a fixed width font, rather than the default variable width font, for the lyrics display. This means that every letter, number or symbol is exactly the same width. This option may be necessary to correctly display lyrics that have lines of chord notation aligned with lyrics on the following line. The default, variable width font would not place the chord notations in the correct position.

The Advanced Scrolling section allows fine tuning of the auto-scrolling feature. By default, BackTrax will automatically calculate three factors used in the scrolling of the attachment, all designed to keep the relevant lyrics line or other data around the middle of the panel based on the current song position. With these options you can manually set these individual factors:

  • Start: The number of seconds from the start of playback when the attachment will start scrolling.
  • Stop: The number of seconds from the end of playback when the scrolling should reach the end of the attachment.
  • Rate: The speed of attachment scrolling in pixels per second. If populated, this overrides the Stop option.

Clearing these fields restores the automatic calculations. Tap the Save button to keep your changes.

You can also delete the current attachment by using the Delete Attachment button.