I have finally sat down to play with the new setlist/songlist function and here is what I have found so far!
1. I have found that I can get the bulk work done of importing songs by editing the XML file that you get when you export, and then importing it back in. I usually use Notepad++ for complex Search & Replace, but considering these were pretty easy, it can be done in almost any text editor that has S&R capabilities and I used Dreamweaver. I was able to do search and replace on the Section Names, preset number, scene number etc., which gave me a fully populated list of 128 songs which had my default preset and scenes therein, inserted. I have about a dozen songs that I will have different presets for, but the other 40+ songs all use one preset and its various scenes (with an occasional effect thrown in), so rather than putting each song in and then clicking on each song section for preset, scene and name of section, I was able to get them all populated in a minute or two by searching and replacing in the XML and then importing it to Axe! I will most likely write some script or a spreadsheet macro to automate this process down the road a bit, so that I can take my list of songs in a spreadsheet when modified and output a XML file with this formatting and structure to import into the Axe FX. Would be great if I could just throw a CSV or XLS with structured columns and rows and the Axe Edit pulls it in to proper setlist/songlist fields, but that is not here now so a workaround will have to be implemented for easing this import/export/modification process.
2. The P# in the "Song Sections" area and the S# are not in sync (P# is zero based in machine, but 1 based in the XML, S# is 1 based in both machine and XML). So in the XML (that you get from exporting a song list) I have the following structure for a song:
<Song id="0" name="Bad Moon R">
<Section name="INTRO" preset="992" scene="5"/>
<Section name="VERSE" preset="992" scene="6"/>
<Section name="CHORUS" preset="992" scene="7"/>
<Section name="BRIDGE" preset="992" scene="8"/>
<Section name="OUTRO" preset="992" scene="5"/>
<Section name="LEAD" preset="992" scene="4"/>
</Song>
The preset in the example above I actually want is 991, but if I put that in the XML file, it pulls up preset 990 once imported because that number in the machine is a 0 based number (zero is first number, not 1) so preset 991 (zero base adjusted) in your machine is preset 992 in the XML. But with the scenes, 1=1, so there you put the actual scene number, not your scene number +1 in the XML scene="".
3. If you get an import error saying "0 files will be overwritten", there is most likely a flaw in the XML document (something in the content that is not supported)! In my testing, it seems that the "&" symbol in song/scene names can cause this but the "@" symbol does NOT cause this. It would be great to have a list of special characters that are/not allowed in these name fields so that I can avoid them when editing my XML outside of the system.
4. It seems that the XML document will allow more than 10 characters in the fields and that will NOT affect the import process of that XML, however the display of those characters >10 will be getting chopped off in views and other scenarios as the display systems are only set to support 10 characters for display. In addition, based on comments made about the allocated space for this information being very minimal, it could poach on some system limits, but I have not tested that far.
Overall, this is a dream for me as I was always running a spreadsheet on my laptop for my setlist, and did not want to create special presets per song, now I can ditch that spreadsheet (although I was also rating the performance each time I did a song via that spreadsheet, so I will need to figure out a new way to keep track of my ratings). Saves me a lot of time and will save me even more in the long run!! Thanks again to the team for giving us this fantastic new feature, LOVIN' IT!!!