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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 693
Journeyman
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OP
Journeyman
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 693 |
Using 2008.5 has proven to be painful in that I can be entering a song only to have it completely disappear in an irreversable manner. I noticed that this happens usually when the song extends beyond an initial screenful of bars: changing a part marker near the bottom of the song suddenly causes the entire chord-entry screen to squash into nothingness (less than one line per character, so that the chords cannot be read); then paging up to refresh leaves me with nothing that I have entered from the last save onward. There is no undo that will work.
Unfolding a song into one big chorus also is very quirky. Definitely all bar modifications have to be reset before doing so, or the realtracks will not appear to be assigned, nor will they match the song (totally out of sequence).
Raising and lowering track volumes don't increment by fives, but by one then five.
Rendering to single audio tracks without using intro bars on the MIDI tracks still creates a mess with the RealTracks off by two measures. The workaround is to render to separate tracks and import into PowerTracks to fix.
There are a few other outstanding issues such as copy-and-paste into/out of tag endings and so forth that are still hanging around.
I have become extremely reluctant to upgrade at the expensive prices required when the basic engine is becoming more broken with each subsequent release.
Joel
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 5,278
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 5,278 |
Quote:
changing a part marker near the bottom of the song suddenly causes the entire chord-entry screen to squash into nothingness (less than one line per character, so that the chords cannot be read); then paging up to refresh leaves me with nothing that I have entered from the last save onward.
Never had that happen here. It would be helpful if you could post a file somewhere that reproduces this behavior. Might be worthwhile checking on a BB 2009.5 version.
Martin
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 693
Journeyman
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OP
Journeyman
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 693 |
It's really hard to isolate the problem to a particular song. I have encountered this issue rather infrequently, but frequently enough to be quite distressing. It happens usually upon entering an entire song from the beginning.
Clue: Often I don't know in advance how many bars are going to be in the song, since the song is one I'm composing in real-time. I mark the end of the song several times, extending "white-space" about eight bars at a time as I need it. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the problem.
Trigger: The issue almost always happens, as I stated earlier, upon changing the part marker near the bottom of the song. This event triggers a reflow of the bars to insert a part division (gray line) and move the marked bar to the beginning of the next line. It is at this moment that BIAB is trying to reflow the bar lines while at the same time attempting to shrink the text size to fit the window. For some reason BIAB "thinks" that it can display the entire eighty bars (for instance) in the window, but can't; so everything becomes squashed to the point that bar lines are overwritten to the point that no text can be seen, not because it's too small but because it is overwritten.
The only thing for me to do at this point is page up, hit play, or initiate some action that will refresh the window. Regardless of what I do, the refresh straightens up the display correctly, but the chords remaining are from some point much earlier in my work session.
I have pulled all the known tricks out of the book that I have known since BIAB version 7, but to no avail.
Joel
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,616
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,616 |
BIAB version 2010 has multiple levels of Undo. That may help.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502 |
Those kind of bugs and foibles are the reason I developed the habit of constantly using SaveAs when working up a song in BB.
I usually use accession numbers appended to the filename:
Mysong.sgu
Mysong.mgu
Mysong1.mgu
Mysong2.mgu
Mysong3.mgu
etc.
Whenever I change something in the song layout, I try to do that SaveAs.
Not only does it yield a way to "revert" to the last known working file without having to start from scratch again if a file becomes corrupted for whatever reason, a freeze, crash, or just something going bump in the dark, it has become a large part of my workflow process, when a new idea comes along it is often better to go back to one of the previous versions to try implementing that.
Even with the new 99 Undos, I will probably continue that work habit, for these and other reasons.
Incidentally, I have noticed that there have been far fewer weird instances like that happening when working up a song since I stopped using Software MIDI Output solutions like the DXi stuff and went over to almost always using the hardware MIDI solution. Except when traveling with the laptop, where the VSC DXi is just easier to carry around and all.
I think that the newly released BiaB 2010 has solved quite a few of these problems. Likely we shall have new ones, though. Update releases are your friend, always check for them on the PGMusic Updates page for your version of BB and download and install them before starting a new song project. May prevent problems before they show up for you.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 12,848
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 12,848 |
When I don't know how long the song is going to be, I always start by setting the last bar to 150 or 200 or some such silly large number. That way I can keep building the song from the inside, without having to keep adjusting (not say that is the problem, but is the way I accommodate an ever changing end point). Then, when I have it completed, I'll set the last bar accordingly.
John Laptop-HP Omen I7 Win11Pro 32GB 12TB SSD Desktop-ASUS-I7 Win10Pro 32GB 12TB SATA BB2026/UMC204HD&404HD/Casios/Cakewalk/Reaper/Studio One/Notion/Dorico/Noteworthy/NI/Halion/IK http://www.sus4chord.com (under rehosting/construction)
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 38,502 |
Quote:
When I don't know how long the song is going to be, I always start by setting the last bar to 150 or 200 or some such silly large number. That way I can keep building the song from the inside, without having to keep adjusting (not say that is the problem, but is the way I accommodate an ever changing end point). Then, when I have it completed, I'll set the last bar accordingly.
Now THAT is a really good idea!
Thanks for the tip, jford, I think I'll try that.
--Mac
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Band-in-a-Box for Windows
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333
Veteran
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Veteran
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 8,333 |
I hit myself along side the head. Tips and Tricks man.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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