PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist An idea to fix the dreaded "255 bar limit"

I had originally posted the following in the "Band in a Box for Windows" forum under the "PG Music Products" heading but have decided to post it here as well per Lloyd's suggestion:

"Since becoming a proud and grateful BiaB user in December 2018, I have hit the dreaded "255 bar limit" with several of my songs. And even though I've always been able to work around this limit, the amount of extra time I have to spend going through my workaround process has been very frustrating and disappointing. As a result, I've come to the conclusion that the "255 bar limit" is BiaB's biggest and most unfortunate handicap.

Recently, however, an idea occurred to me that could be a way to put an end to this limit and the need to work around it for songs that exceed it. So, I decided to share my idea here to see what all of you think about it and to find out whether or not it's feasible. But first I want to say that I'm not sure if this particular forum is the right place for me to post my idea. If it isn't, please let know which forum I should post it in so that I can obtain the proper feedback I'm seeking.

Before I share my idea with you, I need to mention how I use BiaB because of the role my process has played in the formation of my idea. Instead of manually entering the chords to my songs one at a time into the chord entry section of BiaB (as most of you probably do), I use BiaB to open a .XML file that I created with MuseScore, which is an open source music notation program. My .XML file contains the complete melody, lyrics, and chords to a song that I previously had entered into MuseScore. For those of you who have never heard of MuseScore, please read the following article on Wikipedia's website:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuseScore

In the above article, MuseScore is compared to Finale and Sibelius, which are the two most well-known and most expensive music notation software programs available today. However, unlike Finale and Sibelius, MuseScore is free. In other words, until last year, the development of MuseScore since its infancy in 2002 has been made possible entirely by donations, and that's why it is 100% free. This brings me to my idea on how to put an end to the "255 bar limit" in BiaB, and this idea is based on the premise that the "255 bar limit" could be eliminated if BiaB's code was completely re-written with a 16-bit, 32-bit or even a 64-bit base. I'm sure there's a lot more to it than just re-writing BiaB's code, but I believe that this is the core issue. However, to accomplish this is going to cost a lot of money to pay for the necessary resources (software programmers) to get the job done. Here's my idea:

If PG Music is unwilling to set aside the money that is needed to pay the programmers to eliminate the "255 bar limit" (in spite of all the users that have asked them to do so) because of the possibility or even the probability that it will have to increase the price of BiaB to recoup that money, then perhaps the users of BiaB would be willing to donate the money if a fund was set up (KickStarter, perhaps) for this purpose. I don't know how much money it would take to accomplish this task, but if enough users expressed interest in participating in such an effort, I'm sure that PG Music would come up with a target amount that we would have to meet. So, that's my idea. What do all of you think of it? And what does PG Music think of it?

One final thought: If MuseScore can become such a powerful music notation program through the donations from its users so that it rivals both Finale and Sibelius, then surely BiaB's "255 bar limit" could be fixed through the donations from its users."

Do we really want a second thread with a discussion on this? The original post was here: https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=539225#Post539225

While I support the fixing of the 255-bar limit, I am not willing to give advice to PG Music on how they should do it. I trust that they know their business better than I do, and I know they are already well aware of this limitation.

Of course, this is a Wishlist forum, and this is a wish, with a suggestion for a fix. So let's see where the discussion goes, but perhaps try not to duplicate that discussion in both threads.

+1 on ANY idea to get the 255 bar limit bumped up!

I agree, Matt, especially considering how far the discussion over there has progressed. So, perhaps this discussion should merely consist of +1 bumps that support the idea and reinforce the need for this limitation to be fixed. My understanding is that fixing this limitation has been the most requested item of all time on the wish list for BiaB.

I've been here a long time, well before the forum date of 2000 when the 'new' forum software started the post counts over. Yes, I agree, this has to be the #1 request.

I agree (again) that the 255 bar limit has to be resolved.
+1

+1 again.

-1 for the idea of crowd funding this! I "donate" every year to get the latest RealTracks and I wouldn't pay one dollar more for the 255 bar limit to be removed.

RealBand will go way over 255 limit.
But the funny thing is it's Biab that generates up the tracks for it (bbw2.exe) it will also generate up tracks with decimal point tempo maps (as Biab will round the tempos down 110.573 > 110 then have the next bar at 111).
This was 384 bars with 5 tracks 600meg so as Biab generates the tracks direct to RAM this would not be an issue.
The Biab plugin has the same problem and should be fixed soon with a new save format rather than .SGU just like ReaBand has .SEQ it will save more than 255 bars and will save decimal point tempo map.