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This is a problem I'm returning to after a skirmish with it in 2010, which was put on hold when I transferred to Ubuntu as my everyday operating system.
I've recently upgraded to 2012, and have purchased a number of extra RealTracks, so I'm going through my repertoire updating the songs so as to use RealTracks whenever possible.
The yellow card in the upper right corner of the screen which comes up with suggestions about these changes when you open a file is a handy prompt, and I decided to try running through the whole folder using JukeBox.
I've unticked all the boxes in the "Options for JukeBox" screen, except the "(Preview) Switch to next song after ... bars", and I've set the number of bars to 4.
Every time I try this, BIAB becomes unresponsive after the third song's introduction has been played. I've tried this numerous times, with the same result, and I've just tried the same test with 8 bars instead of 4, and BIAB hangs after the second song.
Is there some way of posting the offending files, so that someone else can check it on a different machine?
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I think this is due to the time required to generate RT's. You didn't say if these existing songs have some RT's already in them or if they're all midi. If they're all midi then this answer has no bearing on the problem. Biab has not finished generating the Real Tracks/Drums for one song before you go on to another. I don't use the Jukebox so I'm not positive about that but it sounds like it. Biab will allow a song with RT/RD's to start playing before the song has finished generating. If you stop the song before that happens and either hit play again or start a new song immediately it hangs and since the Jukebox just runs from one song to another the generation time could be the culprit and that of course is a function of how fast (or slow) your computer is. Normally, people use the Jukebox to play the whole song and even on a slow computer Biab will have finished generating after the song has played 8 or 12 bars or so. Try extending the number of bars per song to say 15 or 20 and see if that fixes it.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks, JazzMammal,
I previously tried extending it to 8 bars, and this time it died at the end of the second song.
I've just tried 16 bars, and BIAB died at the end of the sixth song.
I've generated and then frozen all the RT-containing songs before saving them, so I don't think that generation time should really be the issue. When this happened to me that last time (in 2010) I tested it out on two computers with widely differing resources (4 times the RAM and a much faster processor), and found they both got stuck at the same point.
My purpose here isn't to find a way of playing four bars of each piece with JukeBox (a pretty useless activity, I have to admit!), but to point out that I can repeatedly cause BIAB to hang.
I don't think a program should hang like this - particularly one which is used for live performance - and if BIAB is indeed "allow[ing] a song ... to start playing before the song has finished generating" it should be able to deal more elegantly with the consequences.
When I did some semi-professional programming in years gone by, I was delighted to be informed of reproducible problems with my code, as they often revealed problems in sections of code I would never have thought of checking, and which were causing other obscure problems,
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Quote:
I've generated and then frozen all the RT-containing songs before saving them, so I don't think that generation time should really be the issue.
Freezing the RTs doesn't remove the need to regenerate the song. Freezing just stores info about how to construct the RTs. It will still take roughly the same amount of time to generate. You could try checking 'this song has playback problems, disable fast re-generation' in the song settings menu and see if that helps. In theory that setting should cause the song to wait until the RTs are generated before playing.
BiaB 2013 b366, RB 2013 b4, WinXP Pro SP3, Toshiba M70, 1.8GHz 2GB RAM 100GB HD. Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Ketron SD2. BiaB Wiki
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Hi FoxyLady,
Thanks for that information. Hopefully we can duplicate it, and then we could solve it. For testing purposes, could you try pwarren's suggestion of trying the jukebox with the "PRefs-RealTracks-SpeedUp Generation" DISABLED.
This would make generation of all songs much longer, but provide us helpful diagnostic information, to see if they still hang or not.
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Hello,
I will be testing this with your examples and my own and submitting information on this issue to the developers.
Thanks!
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Quote:
I don't think a program should hang like this - particularly one which is used for live performance - and if BIAB is indeed "allow[ing] a song ... to start playing before the song has finished generating" it should be able to deal more elegantly with the consequences.
When I did some semi-professional programming in years gone by, I was delighted to be informed of reproducible problems with my code, as they often revealed problems in sections of code I would never have thought of checking, and which were causing other obscure problems,
This is exactly what's happening now and maybe your specific Jukebox question is separate from the generation problem and it is fixable but we'll see. When you're dealing with Real Tracks remember those are audio files. Even a super fast i7 with 12 gigs of ram takes time to generate those tracks because they're audio but a machine like that is pretty quick if not immediate.
The generation times issue has been talked about to death since RT's were first introduced several years ago. The "fast generation" feature was implemented maybe two years ago in response to those concerns. If it was simply something in the code I'm pretty sure it would have been done by now. If you stop and hit play again too soon Biab will hang but it hasn't crashed. That had me fooled for some time. I thought it had crashed and got all kinds of freezes and error boxes when trying to close out of the program. Just wait and the song starts playing again. How long is the wait depends on your machine of course and like I mentioned in the other thread talking about "antique" PC's my new machine can generate and start playing a 6 track RT song in about 7 seconds. That's fast enough for a gig. Trust me unless you're truly permanently short of cash, you'll get tired of messing around and upgrade to something fast.
As to the freezing of tracks, that was specifically implemented for live players because real time generation of RT's takes too long on a gig if you don't have the latest and greatest PC.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Thanks, Peter.
I've disabled the Speed-up generation option, and am running a four-bar JukeBox job on a large directory of songs. It may take several hours, but it didn't crash after three songs this time.
Perhaps you can clarify the meaning of "generation".
I have understood it to mean the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song, and that this would be done every time a song is played UNLESS the part is frozen.
This implies that, if all of the RealTracks in a song are frozen, the decision about what phrases to play has already been made, and the delay between pressing Play and the start of the song relates to the assembly of the phrases.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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I can report that with the Speed-up option OFF, the 4 bar JukeBox exercise got through 231 of 233 songs in a folder, without hanging, but it stopped with piece 231 open.
There were two sets of "Large Lyrics" on the screen at the time (I'd previously noted that persistence of Large Lyrics after a song had been closed was a feature of the exercise), so clearly there are circumstances where these aren't shut down with the song itself.
BIAB is able to play piece 231 in the normal way, and it shouldn't have been too challenging, as it only used RealDrums and MIDI - no RealTracks. Piece 232 was all MIDI, and piece 233 was RealDrums and MIDI, and played through without trouble.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Quote:
Perhaps you can clarify the meaning of "generation".
I have understood it to mean the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song, and that this would be done every time a song is played UNLESS the part is frozen.
This implies that, if all of the RealTracks in a song are frozen, the decision about what phrases to play has already been made, and the delay between pressing Play and the start of the song relates to the assembly of the phrases.
Yes, frozen means "the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song" is completed. This is what takes so long each time you hit play and regeneration is performed. Howver,when you freeze the tracks this is already done and playback will be immediate.
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Quote:
Yes, frozen means "the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song" is completed. This is what takes so long each time you hit play and regeneration is performed. Howver,when you freeze the tracks this is already done and playback will be immediate.
Although it would take a comment from the programmers to confirm, I believe this isn't quite correct. While the calculations to fit the phrases to the song have already been done the bulk of the work remains. The phrases still have to be assembled from the master audio files and any pitch correction and stretching still needs to be done. It'll be faster, for sure, but not immediate.
BiaB 2013 b366, RB 2013 b4, WinXP Pro SP3, Toshiba M70, 1.8GHz 2GB RAM 100GB HD. Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Ketron SD2. BiaB Wiki
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Quote:
Quote:
Yes, frozen means "the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song" is completed. This is what takes so long each time you hit play and regeneration is performed. Howver,when you freeze the tracks this is already done and playback will be immediate.
Although it would take a comment from the programmers to confirm, I believe this isn't quite correct. While the calculations to fit the phrases to the song have already been done the bulk of the work remains. The phrases still have to be assembled from the master audio files and any pitch correction and stretching still needs to be done. It'll be faster, for sure, but not immediate.
Paul, I did see you earlier comment here, but I am 99% sure of this response (of course I could be wrong  ). But this has been my experience as freezing the tracks was a life saver to my show providing immediate playback when frozen (~1 sec?). And I do believe this has been confimed by Peter in the past. Heck, give it a try and see. 
BIAB – 2025, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, 1TB WD Black NVMe SSD, 2TB WDC Blue SSD, 1TB WD Blue, 2 TB SK NVMe, 6 TB External, Motu Audio Express 6x6
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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FoxyLady,
Thanks. A followup question... Can you also get it to happen by simulating a jukebox, by 1. 1. Playing a song (**not** using jukebox) from the folder that has the 3 offending songs that you posted.
2. pressing the Next button to go to the next song as the other one has just started
Does the same issue happen - a hang (ie without involving the jukebox)
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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BIAB – 2025, Reaper (current), i7-12700F Processor, 32GB DDR4-3200MHz RAM, 1TB WD Black NVMe SSD, 2TB WDC Blue SSD, 1TB WD Blue, 2 TB SK NVMe, 6 TB External, Motu Audio Express 6x6
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Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Yes, frozen means "the process of selecting appropriate RealTracks phrases for assembly into the complete song" is completed. This is what takes so long each time you hit play and regeneration is performed. Howver,when you freeze the tracks this is already done and playback will be immediate.
Although it would take a comment from the programmers to confirm, I believe this isn't quite correct. While the calculations to fit the phrases to the song have already been done the bulk of the work remains. The phrases still have to be assembled from the master audio files and any pitch correction and stretching still needs to be done. It'll be faster, for sure, but not immediate.
Paul, I did see you earlier comment here, but I am 99% sure of this response (of course I could be wrong ). But this has been my experience as freezing the tracks was a life saver to my show providing immediate playback when frozen (~1 sec?). And I do believe this has been confimed by Peter in the past. Heck, give it a try and see.
I have tried it. When I click play on a song with a frozen soloist you can see the track generation in the title bar. It is definately faster but still takes long enough to see the info. Peter said in a previous thread that only the info for the track is saved with the song not the actual waveform. Which is easliy confirmed by looking at the file sizes.
Quote:
Freezing wouldn't make a difference, since the BB MGU files don't contain the audio anyway... Just pointers to the audio files.
Quoting PGannon from this thread
That means the track still has to be assembled from the master audio files. I would guess that your PC is fast enough that it seems immediate.
However, in the absence of official confirmation I will label this as my opinion rather than fact.
BiaB 2013 b366, RB 2013 b4, WinXP Pro SP3, Toshiba M70, 1.8GHz 2GB RAM 100GB HD. Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Ketron SD2. BiaB Wiki
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>> Although it would take a comment from the programmers to confirm, I believe this isn't quite correct. While the calculations to fit the phrases to the song have already been done the bulk of the work remains. The phrases still have to be assembled from the master audio files and any pitch correction and stretching still needs to be done. It'll be faster, for sure, but not immediate.
Paul,
Yes, this is correct. On a fast machine, this appears to be instant, maybe 1-2 seconds until playback starts.
(RealBand is different. It saves the actual audio, so playback there would be instant, and every song is "frozen")
Have Fun!
Peter Gannon
PG Music Inc.
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Quote:
So Paul, I guess that answers our question for us from Peter himself. 
I was still typing as Peter replied. As I suspected, your PC is fast enough that reassembly appears immediate. On my PC not so much. 
BiaB 2013 b366, RB 2013 b4, WinXP Pro SP3, Toshiba M70, 1.8GHz 2GB RAM 100GB HD. Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, Ketron SD2. BiaB Wiki
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Quote:
Yes, this is correct. On a fast machine, this appears to be instant, maybe 1-2 seconds until playback starts.
Exactly, Peter. If the OP had a i5 with 8 gigs of ram or my machine, this thread would not exist. Yes, the question comes up all the time "does Biab work on my older machine?" and the answer always is sure it will, no problem. The problem is that question is incomplete. Yes, the programs run fine but do they run to your expectations? That answer is usually no.
Doing normal household stuff on your computer like emails, web surfing, sharing a few photos on Facebook, maybe creating a few Wordocs, stuff like that sure, a 10 year old machine is ok but start doing digital audio work? No way. It will do it but it also spawns tons of threads like this one.
Speed is your friend with computers and digital audio/video work. Gotta keep fairly current or you will just frustrate yourself.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Thanks, Peter.
With fast generation turned off, I have no trouble in cycling through the three songs.
When I turned fast generation back on again, I was able to play the first four bars of the first two pieces, but when I pressed "Next" at the 5th bar on the second one, BIAB hung - by which I mean that the menu bar at the top of the screen went white, the Title bar included "(Not Responding)" at its right hand end, and the cursor became an hourglass when hovering over any part of the BIAB screen except the title bar. It's not so unresponsive that clicking on the "Close" box doesn't work, however, which is different from the occasional Access Violation, which does require the Task Manager.
Incidentally, if I watch memory and CPU loads with Task Manager while BIAB is regenerating a song, BIAB doesn't seem to be overstretching the CPU or using much system memory - is BIAB being too "nice" for its own good, and being unnecessarily parsimonious with system resources?
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