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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I have found that when saving a new song it sometimes gets automatically added to a song list and sometimes I have to do a rebuild.

I get the feeling it is related to the size of the song list. For short lists the new song gets added automatically, but for long lists it doesn't.

Is there a limit? If so, what is it? Can it be changed/removed? It would be nice if saving a new song always automatically added it to the song list rather than having to do a rebuild.

Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Andy: This may have something to do with the problem.

This seems to not work at all they way it was described to me in the help menu:

I am talking about this option in the Action Menu in Song Picker.

It says from the help menu:

"Auto-rebuild the song list if number of songs is less than __: If this is enabled, the song list will be automatically rebuilt every time you open the dialog, but only if there are fewer songs than the number shown."

I tested it this way.

I have currently had 1102 songs in the folder and that number shows up in Song Picker.

I set the number of songs to 5000 in the options so it should automatically rebuild the song list every time I open Song Picker since there are less then 5,000

I deleted 50% of the songs I have so that left me with 551 songs in the folder.

I closed BIAB and restarted it.

I clicked on Song Picker

It did not automatically rebuild the list and it still shows a total of 1102 songs. If it worked according to the help menu, it should show 551 songs because it should have automatically rebuilt the list since the total number of songs is less then 5,000. It only changed the total number of songs after I manually rebuilt the song list.

I closed BIAB

I then restored those songs from the Recycle Bin so the total number in my song folder went back up to 1102 on the HD

I restarted BIAB and clicked on song Picker. It still showed only 551 songs and it only went back up to 1102 songs after I manually did a rebuild of the song list.

Anyone else seeing this?

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BIAB2026
Windows 10 Pro (Never Windows 11!)
WA6NCB

Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Interesting, I hadn't noticed that option. Mine is set to do an auto rebuild if the number is less than 100, which is probably the default. So that is probably what is happening. I save a new song, open the song picker and if there are less than 100 songs, then new song appears.

For the folders with more songs in, I'm not sure I would want it to do a rebuild every time I opened it. Doing a rebuild by hand usually takes 10s of seconds and I wouldn't want that delay every time I opened the song picker. Maybe I'll play and see how long it actually takes.

I would have thought it wouldn't be that difficult to just add a single song as part of the "save song" process or even a background rebuild. Something for the WIBNI list.

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I've had a quick play with this option. I tried setting the limit to 1000, I have about 600 songs in the folder.

It now adds new songs automatically, but it does add a noticeable delay when opening the song picker. This varies, it's worse the first time, then gets quicker, probably because stuff is in the disk cache. For my case it's on the verge of unacceptable, so I'll see how it goes.

I think a new option to do the rebuild on save rather than every time the song picker is opened would be better. Save already takes longer and only happens occasionally, so the extra delay would be more acceptable.

I haven't tried deleting songs to see if they disappear. I would guess this is what causes the problem you are seeing. The auto rebuild is much quicker than the full rebuild done by the button in the picker, so there must be some optimisations that cause the problem you are seeing. Maybe something like only updating songs that are newer than the last time the list was rebuilt and ignoring deleted files. Just a guess.

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I did notice that the automatic song rebuild will work on my system IF I delete the SongzW1.bin file from the directory. I reckon that BIAB will look for the presence of that file in the home directory when you click on the Song Button and if it does not exist, it will rebuild it. With 1,100 songs in the directory it takes ~ 4 seconds.

I made a sub-directory off the home directory and COPIED all 1100 songs to that and it took ~ 8 seconds to build the SongzW1 file to show 2,200 songs

Did it again off the Sub Directory and it took ~ 12 seconds to rebuild the SongzW1.bin file to show 3,300 songs

So logically with 6,000 songs it would take around 24 seconds to rebuild the song list.

I can see where with a large amount of files and NO SongzW1.bin file present, it would take an unacceptable length of time.

Now for the kicker: I deleted the sub directories (2200 songs) leaving a total of 1100 songs in the home directory and DID NOT delete the SongzW1.bin file, started BIAB and then clicked on Song Picker and BIAB STILL shows a total of 3300 songs. It did not do an automatic rebuild to show the actual song total off 1,100 songs. To make the actual total right, I had to do a manual rebuild.

The way I am interpreting this, the automatic rebuild will ONLY work if the program DOES NOT see the presence of the SongzW1.bin1 file.

Normally with that option turned off, BIAB will prompt you to rebuild since it sees there is no SongzW1.bin1 file present

In it's present state, for me, I would consider that option not worth the time to use.

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BIAB2026
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