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Hi Andy

The points you (and others) make are credible

Perhaps a direct written communication with PG Music Support, with concerns and suggestions, would be a direction to take to get the issue investigated / resolved.


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Originally Posted By: Andy Ling
Just to clarify. This is only rebuilding the list that takes time. Using the song picker is fine.

The issue I have is that if I want to use the song picker then every time I create a new song I have to rebuild the list. This used to take a minute or two. Now it takes 10s of minutes making the song picker much less useful...

Currently I consider the song picker to be unusable.


I got around this long "song picker rebuild" issue by creating a C:\BB\ subfolder - "My Songs" (includes related styles). I only rebuild the subfolder when needed.

Once in a while, I'll do a full rebuild at the C:\BB level before going to bed.


Cheers, Mike.

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Yes, I have a "MySongs" folder which has about 500 songs in and that's what I'm rebuilding. It takes 15+ minutes. Far too long.

I have contacted support and they have confirmed our speculation that loading the full song is what happens and the new realtracks and midi stuff is what has slowed it down. Nothing can be done with the current version to speed things up.

I still have and use from time to time the old BBFinder. Just out of interest I tried a rescan in that. Bear in mind this catalogues multiple directories and zip files and displays pretty much the same information as the song picker. It took just 3.5 minutes and said it had scanned 22,900 BIAB song files. Just shows what is possible. If the song picker could have done it, it would have taken about 13 hours!!

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Related, but it does not address your original issue: have you tried "Biab Explorer?" Since you mentioned BBfinder, I find bbfinder [no pun] to be problematic in Win 7 64 but "BIAB Explorer" works.

http://swingingsoft.free.fr/biabExplore2.html


Larry

EDITED Addon:

Well truth be told, older, REALLY older, .sg* files sometimes, except sgu's which all seem to be found for some reason, are not seen by Bbwexplorer.exe unless the song is opened and re-saved (nothing has to change [name, location, tempo, key, etc. all the same]) just open and save song . file gets larger (typically going from 1k to 3 k).

Clearly BIAB is saving MORE info then it use to in the late 80's early 90's
Obviously Bbwexplorer is examining not only file name extension but something TBD in "header" of file to declare it a BIAB song or melody file.

Last edited by Larry Kehl; 01/16/14 05:19 PM.

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Don't overlook the File->Find File feature inside Band in a Box.

Can find a song anywhere in my bb folder by entering the songtitle or even a part thereof and is quite fast after the first run in a session.

Can even load and play the song from there.

Great for finding Requests or at Jam Sessions.



--Mac

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Thanks Mac & Larry.

BIAB Explorer looks interesting. I will add that to my arsenal.

I like the song picker being part of BIAB and also the way it "jumps" to the song you currently have loaded. It just suits the way I work.

I will have a play with File->Find. I don't remember if I've tried it before. So it might help.

Otherwise I will have to wait for the new improved version of BIAB with a super fast song picker :^)

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When I enter a new song or change an existing one, all I have to do is click save as or save. I don't think I've ever seen a rebuild song list command. Later, Ray

Last edited by raymb1; 01/17/14 03:00 PM.

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While I do (as Mac says) open files with Windows explorer, you don't get all the additional information provided by the songpicker. Songpicker gives you the file name, the title of the song, the style used (and whether that style was even found), and a slew of other information.

Hopefully, PG will take a look at this and maybe we'll see a fix in the future. I still don't understand the need to actually load the file, when all that information should be available in the file itself and should be able to be read from byte offsets in the file according to the record structure that PGMusic should already have.

We'll see. In the meantime, it really does take too long.


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Originally Posted By: raymb1
When I enter a new song or change an existing one, all I have to do is click save as or save. I don't think I've ever seen a rebuild song list command. Later, Ray


If you never use the song picker, then what you say is fine. The song picker is another way of finding and loading songs. If you are using 2014, then click on the little arrow under the load song button and you'll get a menu. Top of the list is the song picker. Try it, you might like it, although not if you have to wait hours for it to build the song list :^)

Andy

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