Hello there,

I was inputting chords in the main window and after approx. 60 bars, I made the mistake of pressing the spacebar instead of a comma (,) so to add more chords in the same bar and the bloody thing crashed on me after BIAB tried to play what I had already done.

I had not saved any work yet.

Is there any chance of me getting back what BIAB lost?

The message log has no reference about the ordeal. It shows previous information from many days ago but nothing about during the work that I put in today.

Really, there should be a simple routine that will warn the user to complete the chord entry before we are allowed to play the song. This will avoid such a crash, data and time loss.

I assume there is nothing I can do to recover the work that I done.
I don't use BIAB often and this unreliability want make me use it even less!

Please prove me wrong. Thanks.

Forgot to mention that it is the 2021 (829) Windows 10 - 64 bit.

Sorry that happened.

I don’t recall if BIAB has an auto save function; I’ll check later.

I think if you had not yet saved the song, you have nothing to retrieve.

Just checking: What you report as causing the crash is entering a chord - a fully typed chord - then pressing space instead of comma. If that’s correct we can test it and see.

Do you remember the message when it crashed? Or did it just freeze up? More details would help.

Hi biab-user! We tried replicating what happened, entering a chord and pressing the space bar before clicking away from the bar, and it played no problem and no crash. But we also have build 832 installed. You can download and install it from here: https://www.pgmusic.com/support_windowsupdates.htm#832

The song must be saved as either an SGU or MGU file on your computer to access it. The program does not save automatically.

There was no message.
When I pressed the space-bar by mistake, BIAB started the process of compiling the song. The top of the screen showed the process percentage numbers, then without warnings, BIAB disappeared from the monitor, needing a new program start.

I made the space-bar mistake a couple of times before this event and although it took nearly 1 minute to complete, the song started to play without crashing.

My laptop has Pentium i7 chip and 8GB RAM and using it with other audio programs it's flawless, even while recording live events on 18 individual tracks at the same time.

I did check for updates yesterday via BIAB and did not see any!

Anyway, I did redo the work, making sure I saved on every 10 bars of input. This made me apprehensive. BIAB could do with Auto Backups on every 5 minutes, just like Reaper DAW. Not that Reaper is unreliable, infact I have only experienced a program crash ONCE in about 7 years of use, and ONCE it wouldn't load the project due to a corrupted project file. The AUTO Backup saved the day! These backups use very small file sizes, hence you can have a hundred in a day, without affecting HDD space much. Even then, after the project is complete, I can manually delete most of them if I want too, but they are handy to go back several days if needed.
Having the reliability of the program and a solid backup makes me want to use the application more, unlike with BIAB, just the opposite infact.

BiaB user,

There isn’t an auto save feature now. Yes, an auto-save feature is a good idea. We will put it on the list.

The updater built into BIAB is often one version behind - this is intentional. You can always find the latest update patch on this page: https://www.pgmusic.com/support_windowsupdates.htm

You said you have a laptop. It's very important to check the Control Panel for Power Options, Advanced Settings, Processor Power Management and make sure the CPU is set to 100%. If you do nothing else for tweaks, do that one. Otherwise, your CPU can throttle down and isn't ready when you need it, and BIAB uses the CPU intensively. Then make sure your hard drive and USB ports stay powered on.

Although an autosave is a good feature to have, Reaper's Auto Backup is separate and different from saving a file, as it makes incremental filing. Auto Save would indicate that the same file would be saved at specified intervals. If that file got corrupted during a Save, the project would be lost. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Thanks for the suggestion, I have already maximised audio settings for high power use within windows 10.

Gig Performer 3 website have a downloadable, in depth PDF file about ALL you can do to maximize your system performance, with explanation on what each setting is for. Including Scheduling activities.

Here is the link:
https://gigperformer.com/how-to-optimize-your-pc-for-the-stage-download-free-ebook/

Hope this can be of some help to some people.

I like this guide! Just in the first two items I learned something. Thank you.

You're welcome!

I think it should deserve a place on the Stickies section, its the best information that I have come across for fine tuning computers for audio use.

Yes that guide is great. Thanks for the link.

>> Auto Save would indicate that the same file would be saved at specified intervals. If that file got corrupted during a Save, the project would be lost. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Multiple copies of the file would be saved, which is the same thing as incremental saves.

Thanks for the clarification. I'll look forward to seeing it implemented.

This is an excellent guide. Thanks for posting.

Jeff

Glad that is useful to you!

Similar but different question..

Started work on a song, saved the .sgu on windows 10 laptop running BIAB '21, came back next night (hadn't updated to the latest version)...got about 30 bars in, saved came back next night, noticed the date/time was wrong on the laptop, changed them to the correct ones..worked on the song up to about 60 bars, saved, exited..came back next day, tried to find song but only the .sgu name was there, no other info...is there an 'undo' level I can go back to? Any idea where the correct .sgu went? Thanks.

I doubt that you can go back to an 'Undo level' after closing the program.

If you changed the date though, search by date modified, not file name. If you changed the date to an earlier date, it might be appearing further down in the list.

Also add the different date search criteria for your search (created, modified etc).

.
Based on my recent work, both BIAB 2021 and RB2021 are buggy, no matter how many folks comment about your settings etc..

My temporary solution: Every 30 seconds or every minute, even if I just change one chord, I always save my files...

save your file, every minut...

Great suggestions, thanks, will try!