PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Windows Display Problem

It looks like I've discovered another BIAB Windows display problem (sigh!). Its been reported it to PG Support, and they have confirmed this to be a problem. They have forwarded it to software development. I have observed this problem with both Windows 7 and Windows XP (SP3). I tested with BIAB 2011 running Build 312 and 319b. I assume since Support just tested it, it exists with BIAB 2012 as well. I believe that this program feature was added in 2008, so it is possible that this problem may exist in all Builds from that time forward.

The problem discovered pertains to the Section Paragraph feature which places a Part Marker at the beginning of a new line in the chord display. When it works properly, the program places in a gray filler in the unused bars of the line immediately preceding the Part Marker. I have a library of over 10,000 song files created in BIAB prior to 2008. I have found that, not all, but about 5-10% of them are experiencing the display problem described below. I don't know if this only affects song files created prior to 2008, or if newer song files can be affected by this as well.

The problem seems to be that BIAB is graying out bars which actually contain chords on the display. If you manually left-click on the grayed out bars in question, the display will shows “hidden” chords. Actually, the program shouldn't have grayed these bars out because the song file has chords contained within them. Any Part Markers and/or Bar #'s associated with these “hidden” bars NEVER shows up on the display. If you play the song, as the program cursor moves over these “hidden” bars, the cords will show (but not the Part Markers and/or Bar #'s). The visibility of the “hidden” bars is only temporary, however, because as soon as the screen scrolls, the gray out reappears over the affected bars. The song, however, does play correctly, even though the bars and/or chords are hidden. The program also sometimes inserts an unneeded line of gray between two properly displayed lines (e.g., the rightmost bar on a line, say Bar #68, and the leftmost bar on the next line, say Bar #69, will be separated on the display by a line of four unnumbered grayed out bar cells). The unneeded line of gray isn't hiding any bars containing chords. The unneeded gray bar is probably being caused by the same software problem.

The only common characteristic observed between the song files exhibiting this problem is the fact that the graying out of bars containing chords, seems to occur on lines with less than 4 bars of music. Both the "hidden chords" grayout problem, and the insertion of an unneeded gray bar problem, seem to show up for those song files which need more that a single page to display all of the chords. I usually spot the problem at the very bottom of the first page of the chord display or near the top of the second page of the chord display. What makes it even more difficult to analyze is that when these "rogue" gray bars show up, sometimes the first grayed out bar in the string of bars actually contains a Part Marker and sometimes it doesn't.

I hope that PG will develop a fix for this. I can't edit those song files experiencing this problem. I have to open the affected files in a pre-2008 version of BIAB to actually see what's going on, but then I can't use the current versions of BIAB to work on them (i.e., the current versions of BIAB are not fully backward compatible with some of the old song files unless a fix is developed).

I also hope that if a fix is developed, that a patch for 2011 is made available, as well as releasing a patch for the current 2012 version (what about 2008 thru 2010?).

Since you can't attach files to Forum posts, if anyone wants to test out their system, you can email me directly (see profile) and I will send some song files that exhibit this display problem.

Love the program...........hate the bugs!

Dave R.

I'm not disputing your experience, but I routinely work on old BIAB files without having this problem, so it must be rather random or depend on something particular that my systems do not have?

I have 10,000 files and miles to go and miles done but I've never seen the likes of what you are talking about. Might be a bad video driver.

John,

If you re-read the beginning of my post, you'll note that this problem has been observed on at least 3 different hardware platforms. I observed it on two different Windows PC's, one running Windows 7 and the other running XP (SP3). I have observed the problem with two different Builds of BIAB 2011, Builds 312 and 319b. Also, PG Support has confirmed the problem as well, and they probably tested BIAB 2012, since they always check out the latest version for issues. A "bad video driver" is not likely!

This past April, I discovered another display problem and reported in to PG Support:

http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/showthreaded.php?Number=314217&page=

PG addressed this problem with the release of Build 318:

Summary of Changes for Build 318 (May 30, 2011)
Improved: Sometimes after resizing the main window, parts of screen wouldn't redraw.
Added: Some new style definitions.
Fixed: Sometimes using metal guitar soloist, would play a "too long" riff.
Fixed: Save Soundtrack wasn't working if the song was playing.
Fixed: Non-English versions only: Medley names were messed up.

All we're trying to do here is help to identify the root causes of the problem and make users aware of a potential problem, and perhaps make it easier to develop a fix.

Shoot me an email and I'll send you some of the song files that seem to provoke the problem.