A song action should be individual. You might have a setlist where you want one song to go to next and play and another song where you might want a different thing. If it is set on setlist level where all actions are same for all songs you will loose this flexibility.
But if we mean “save song actions individually, but to a setlist” that might be ideal.
In that case same song can be in 2 different setlists and have different song actions depending on the setlist.
The real problem we have regardless of where and how to save the data is that there is no apparent way to know what a song does. If a create a new setlist I have no way to look at a list of songs and see if everything is set correctly for the performance.
If the setlist view was table view like below and editable like actions and shortcuts, it would probably clear a lot of the confusion in this thread:
Pos. | Song Name | Duration | Song Action | When | Start at Marker | Action Val. | etc..
P.S.: As a user of VSTL from very early versions I just realized that setlist view actually shows what song action it does. But it is not really clear what these mean (.) (>>) I kind of ignored it.. probably most users did it as well.
I don’t know where have you been so far @talporal but appreciate how good you described the situation and 100% agree with you!! :)( @musicullum )
@Detgyver : I don’t really understand the flame from your side and you know I’ve helped you with different questions so far. To apply song actions on your “setlist”, just click apply to all. It’s needless to make such a flame for one single click “Apply to all songs”. I - as playing week by week and sometimes different setlists, drives me craisy:
being blind what will happen (as @talporal exactly pointed out)
a given song [starting] or [not-starting] NextSong that was good in one setlist, might not fit to another setlist’s flow.
Simply that’s how setlist based professional-gigs are by nature, where all needs to be super-tight-flow.
Meanwhile “apply to all” is your super-tool-weapon that is available long-long time ago And finally… I remember how much of complains were by other users - default song actions - why weren’t applyed on all existing songs, omitting the fact “default” was just for newly created songs… And again, just one single click “apply to all”. Lucky man, can just Click and enjoy Meanwhile I’m getting surprised from gig to gig with “forgot to re-set action that was set previous day for another purposes”. Belive me, my situation is a problem, your is currently a single click…
Agree, but it’s not usual to follow songs from the setlist editor, therefore suggetsted this a while:
What exactly you don’t understand with these simple textual icons? It’s 100% intuitive. We asked for them and we got them. Thanks to the VST Live team!
(.) - dot always means Stop
(->) - Next Song
(->>) - Something more than simple Next Song - Start Next Song
(->*) - Guess what * means! Users use this key every day in almost all Steinberg programs. There was no reason to change meaning of this sign.
@ArthurNeeman I might have worded this poorly, but icons are not the real problem here, it is that that the UI doesn’t explain it. If a user sets all song actions to stop that means every song in the setlist view has (.) without context. Since the user does not immediately see that these icons change after setting a song action, this (.) can mean anything.
The dialogs/views for these actions are disconnected and not clearly labeled. You set a song action in a dialog, it does not show in the main song list, you look at the setlist view later on or while creating your setlist initially and these icons have no label/header..
If it was a table view with “headers” simple as: Position | Song Name | Duration | Song Action and kept the current icons any user would immediately associate these icons and understand them.
@fkalmus 100% agree with song end action icon on song list as well. It is always good to know when playing live what will happen next. And helps with the UI disconnect as well. Now once you set an action it will immediately show on your main window.
Most of the questions/feature requests and confusions in the forum posts are mostly UI related and not functionality related and could be fixed with small/easy updates here and there. But I understand the workload of the devs and appreciate their effort on trying to be open and cater to every body’s requests.
Back to topic, what I’m proposing for @musicullum’s question is:
Song end actions saved individually but to the setlist itself.
Setlist view: Make it an editable table view with headers/labels for song actions like “actions & shortcuts view”, so it is quick to prepare and clear to understand.
Add a song end action “icon” to the song list itself as @fkalmus suggested but keep them consistent with setlist icons. (chose current or suggested icons as long as they are consistent)
Optional: Add “Set song end action” and “Song autostart checkbox” type entry to the songs right click menu. –these 2 are the only directly editable options to the song other than “cut/copy/paste/duplicate” in the main “Song” menu that a user might look for in a right click context.
There is no connection between a Song and a Setlist; a Setlist is simply a list of Songs.
Of course we accept that y’all want that association, this is just to say that it is way more complicated than one may intuitively think. We’ll have to add those associations, and at the same time make sure downward compatibility is not broken. Then, the UI needs to be changed as well. Give us some time.
of course of course. We will warmly welcome it when arrives
(real-world scenarios that I forget to re-set song-end-action when loading different setlist for different gigs and running into “funny-situations”)
but appreciate how good you described the situation and 100% agree with you!! :)( 
of course of course. We will warmly welcome it when arrives