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My clarinettist colleague and I share the work of preparing arrangements for our joint repertoire, and have just set up Shared Folders on Dropbox to make this easier. This way our two laptops should be kept in synch, and can provide mutual backup.
We freeze the RealTracks once we're happy with the arrangement, and each of us drops his completed files into his shared Dropbox folder, for automatic transfer to the other.
Although songs with frozen RealTracks are played correctly on the source computer, when they reach the destination the usual automatic generation of the RealTracks does not happen. On the other hand RealDrums are generated correctly, and any MIDI parts are played.
I've noticed a similar pattern on my iPad when I've transferred a song with frozen RealTracks - I need to re-generate the song from the iPad to get the RealTracks to sound.
The obvious work-around is to force the re-generation of the frozen source files on the destination computer every time they're played, but this takes time, and is likely to be forgotten in the heat of the moment when the backup computer is brought into action at a gig. Apart from this, the frozen track may well be the result of several attempts to get it to sound right, and re-generation takes it back to square one.
I can't believe that this is the way it's meant to work - could I have missed an option in Preferences? As the same problem occurs on the iPad, it can't be a matter of RealTracks being stored in different folders, as the iPad doesn't store RealTracks - what's exported is an audio file.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi Foxylady,
What version of BIAB do you have? Also, are you running the latest build for your version?
Regards,
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2024
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi again, Let me preface what I'm about to type by saying that I might be completely wrong. If that's the case, I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me  From reading the forums and comments made by some experienced users, I've formed the opinion that the "Freeze" function does not create an audio file for a frozen track. If it did, the SGU or MGU file would be tens of megabytes for each frozen track (whereas it's only 20KB or so). My understanding is that the freeze function writes a set of instructions so that a track can be identically created each time the song is loaded. The generation process is necessary because it implements the instructions required to assemble the frozen track. Your clarinetist would hear the same frozen track that you created because his generation of the track would have followed the exact instructions that were saved when the track was frozen. As I said at the start, I might be wrong. Let's see what others have to say! All the best, Noel P.S. By comparison, Realband does save audio information in its SEQ file. This is why Realband files can be a couple of hundred megabytes.
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2024
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Foxlady - as Noel suggested, the only true way to save a frozen track is to right click and render a wave file of it. Frozen tracks are just instructions - they don't create WAV files - unless you ask the program to do it. Now were the tracks all midi, then that info would be good for transporting between similar computers and software in SGU and MGU, as long as the voices and patches were the same. RTs are a different matter. At that point seems that DVDs and SEQ files and RB must enter the equation to do what you want to do. Now mind you I have never applied or tried to apply any of this to a live gig - so I strictly speak from the desktop - but have shared files over the distance. Perhaps it's a thought for a future version, where those frozen track instructions are saved or can be saved for transport and regeneration. Perhaps the PG can answer this and clear up any uncertainty. My two cents - Ian 
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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From other threads I've discovered that the generation of songs with RealTracks has two phases, one where a choice of what is to be played is made, and the other where the chosen elements are assembled into audio form before they're played.
What is stored when you "freeze" a track is the outcome of the first phase, and the second phase has to be performed each time the frozen song is opened afresh (as Noel96 says, the file is too small to hold the audio data).
I would expect such a frozen file to hold all the information that is needed for BIAB to reproduce the track whether on the computer it was created on, or on another computer which has the same set of RealTracks etc.
What I've found is that frozen files prepared on another computer don't behave in the same way on my computer as files I've prepared myself, in that the "Play" button causes BIAB to generate the RealDrums part, but not the RealTracks parts, so what is played back is the drums along with any MIDI parts that might have been left (we've been trying to replace all MIDI parts with RealTracks). I have to use Play=>Generate (even if tracks are frozen) to get these "foreign" files to work.
Obviously, we could decide to render our whole repertoire to WAV form, but we would lose the flexibility we have when running directly from BIAB.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Just curious, but is the drive letter and folder path to the realtracks the same on both machines?
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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No - I have my RealTracks on Drive F (drive C being too small), my colleague has a large enough hard drive to keep everything on Drive C. If the BIAB files we're exchanging depend on explicit paths to the RealTracks, this could well be the problem.
It doesn't explain how Play=>Generate (...) fixes things on the destination machine, though, nor does it explain why my exported-to-iPad songs lack RealTracks unless I force re-generation from the iPad.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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It's just a guess on my part but I suspect that the drive info might be stored in the .MGU (.SGU) file and when the track is frozen it just tries to build from that info but when you hit Play=>Generate (...) the process starts from the beginning and looks in the configuration file for the actual path to the realtracks folder...when I'm home tonight I'll try to do an experiment... Are your realdrums on the C drive for both computers?
Last edited by Ed J.; 01/31/12 09:59 AM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks, Ed.
I've got \BB\Drums and \BB\RealTracks folders on Drive C and on Drive F, but the Drive C copies are empty apart from a .txt file in each. I erased previous versions of BIAB completely, and installed from scratch, including all the RealTracks, when I upgraded to 2012.
It would be odd if BIAB did the sensible thing for the RealDrums and not for RealTracks, if it didn't find the files where it expected them to be.
I've noticed that if I double-click on one of the imported files in Windows Explorer to open it, generation of RealTracks goes ahead as if I'd opened it from BIAB and hit Play=>Generate, and the song is played correctly,
I've tried looking at a hex-dump of one of the problematic files, but can't spot anything that looks like an explicit reference to a folder such as C:\BB\RealTracks - presumably the RealTracks section is compressed.
I'll try renaming C:\BB\RealTracks and see what happens.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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PS renaming C:\BB\RealTracks didn't work.
Also, I was wrong about double-clicking a file in Windows Explorer - I'd just happened to choose a file that my colleague hadn't frozen before he passed it on to me.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Just tried this out here using the latest updated version of BB2012, loaded PGMusic Demo Songs, Combo->Freeze all tracks after hitting play to generate, SaveAs, then used USB memory stick to transfer from one computer to another that had no idea of this frozen and renamed songlist. All worked as expected. Load song, hit Play, no track generation at all, song immediately starts to play with same frozen version here.
Can't duplicate the problem.
*Are both of you using the very same version of BiaB (ie BB2012 with latest Update applied)?
*There is a possibility that you have one or more corrupted songfiles. Try freezing one of the PGMusic demos and see what happens when using that.
Don't forget about what I always do whenever BiaB stops doing something that it is supposed to do, I go to Options and hit the Return to Factory Settings button...
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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FoxyLady, I did pretty much the same thing that Mac did above and I also could not duplicate the problem either. The frozen realtracks played back on both machines without having to regenerate. I agree with all of Mac's suggestions. Maybe you could post a link to one of the files for one of us to try on our setups.
Last edited by Ed J.; 01/31/12 06:56 PM.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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PG Music Staff
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- Transferring songs between *** desktop*** versions should work fine with frozen songs, as long as the RealTracks exist on both PC's. Please email a song that is not working to support@pgmusic.com, referencing this thread, ask them to forward the song to me, and we can look into it. - The *** iPhone/iPad*** version doesn't transfer frozen songs. That is not implemented.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks to all for your help in checking out my problem. I've checked out the Drive C/Drive F problem using "junction.exe", which has allowed me to make symbolic links from c:\bb\RealTracks and c:\bb\Drums to f:\bb\RealTracks and f:\bb\Drums, and switched the BIAB preferences so that it looks for RealTracks and RealDrums on Drive C. [The symbolic link means that when a program asks Windows for the contents of a file in (say) c:\bb\RealTracks, Windows supplies the contents of the corresponding file on drive F. I think the more recent versions of Windows incorporate this useful feature as part of the OS]. The files I've created on my laptop work correctly, exactly as they did before I effectively enlarged drive C and put all my RealTracks on it. This leads me to suspect that my colleague's files are in some way incompatible with my system - I'll be sending one to support@pgmusic.com, as requested. As to the iPhone/iPad App - it would have been handy to have a warning about frozen songs when I tried to convert them... On the other hand, I did find a work-around - render the file in the PC, download it to the iPad, and then Regenerate it from the iPad.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
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Hello,
I understand one of the two computers runs Band-in-a-Box 2012 349 in the original post, does the secondary computer also run 2012 349?
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2000
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PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
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Hi foxylady,
I tried out the song that you sent. There aren't any RealTracks on the frozen tracks.
This can happen if RealTracks were disabled when the file was saved. We'd need to know the version of BIAB that the other person is using.
Anyway, we tested this issue when different PC's are using RealTracks folders on different drives, and it works fine (the path isn't stored in the BB Song, just the name of the RealTracks.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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As far as I know, my colleague is using 2012 build 349. I'll check with him.
The exercise we're going through at present is to update our repertoire, previously MIDI only, to use RealTracks wherever possible. Our procedure is to open each MIDI-only file in turn, change to a RealTracks style, play it through to test the arrangement, freeze the tracks once a good arrangement has been reached, and save it as a new file.
Next time we meet, I'll go through the process with him again, but it seems odd that he could be using RealTracks for the arrangement, inadvertently switch RealTracks off when he saved the file, and turn RealTracks on again for the next piece.
Would it be a case of his using Opt.=>Preferences=>RealTracks to disable RealTracks before each save, and the same route to enable?
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And does your friend have all the same RealTracks that you do?
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 2x2TB, 1x4TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 2x1.5TB, 2x2TB, 1x4TB SATA BB2025/UMC404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/MixBus/Notion/Finale/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com
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Confirmed - same 2012 build, and the same RealTracks.
I've also found that he has been having the same problem in playing back the songs he's converted to RealTracks as I have, although those that I send to him work as they should.
It looks as though his copy of BIAB is failing to save the RealTracks component, and causing all this trouble.
I've suggested that he should try Opt.=>Return to Factory Settings. If that fails to resolve the problem he'll probably have to uninstall BIAB, clear out all other BIAB-related files, and install again from scratch.
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