I notice that there have been a number of posts with "Access Violation" errors in BIAB. This post is rather lengthy but I have written it so as to give others some "food for thought" if an "Access Violation" error arises. This post may or may not solve your particular situation but it might help. I have fully documented:
(a) how I produce this error;
(b) how I solve it.
If you simply want to get to the end result, you might like to skip to point #4, Summary.
NOTE: In the below, I have used a demo style. If you try to replicate this error out of curiosity, please make sure that you save the style's demo with a new name so that you don't overwrite the existing style.Style: Burkes @ 210 bpm (a MIDI style)Using demo file modified as below- Bass: #538 – Bass, Acoustic Pop Sw 190
- Piano: MIDI
- Drums: MIDI
- Guitar: #374 – Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming Hank Sw 190
- Strings: MIDI
- Melody: as per demo file
- Soloist: #818 – Guitar, Electric, Soloist Country Classic Swing Sw 190
1. How I get the error- Load song demo for Burkes.STY and return to the chord sheet window
- Add Reatrack instruments (as above) to Bass and Guitar.
- Mute Melody.
- Use “Soloist” button to activate soloist.
- Select Realtrack #818 and generate solo in “Middle chorus only”. (When I play the song now, it sounds fine.)
- Save the song with some temporary, new name. (On my computer, a message pops up and tells me that the Soloist has been locked and that the Realtrack solo has been saved... etc. At this stage, if I unfreeze the Soloist and save the song again, the Soloist will freeze on saving. )
- Save song with the frozen Soloist.
- Exit BIAB.
- Restart BIAB and open song.
- When I try and generate the song, I get the error Access violation at address 00405F74 in module bbw.exe. Read of address 00000004 at 00405F74
- Click OK.
- Now when I try to generate the song, I get a pop-up message saying Playback generation is already in progress. Load another song if this message persists.
- If the above does not cause the problem for you, try un-checking "Soloist" under the "Freeze" icon and then save.
NOTE: If I load another song with Realtracks in it at this stage, I get now get an Access Violation error. I can load a MIDI-only song and generate it ok.2. A partial fix for the problem- Load a MIDI-only song, generate it and let it play for a few bars to check that it works. Exit BIAB.
This allows me to now load in a Realtrack files. However, the file with the saved frozen Soloist is still problematic. 3. How I get the problematic “frozen” song back- Start BIAB and load the problem song
- Right-click on “Soloist” on the menu bar and “Erase” the Soloist track.
- Save the song. At this stage, the song will still not generate for me
- Exit BIAB and restart it (after saving the song with the Soloist data erased).
- The song now plays for me.
4. Summary- Seems like my problem is caused by the Soloist's freezing when being saved and then reloaded after BIAB has been restarted.
- Unfreezing the Soloist track, erasing all data from it, saving the song and restarting BIAB allows me to load the song again without incident.
FINAL NOTE: Mostly, I can get the problem to occur (around 90% of the time) but very occasionally I cannot. I have yet to discover why this is the case.I'd be interested to know if others can produce this error or if it is mine alone! Hope this information helps.
Noel.
Just as you so nicely presented, I get the same results as you did. I found that playing a midi style and exiting BiaB then re-entering it will stop the access violation problem. I did not figure out your last part on removing the soloist and re-saving the problem song (never thought to try that). But, as you stated, the problem piece will work after doing that and restarting BiaB. Thanks a million. Now PGMusic needs to work on a solution that will still allow us to save a soloist track with a RealTrack instrument playing, but for now we can at least re-generate the soloist part (though different) each time we want to play the song. Of course, the other way around that problem is to use the DAW plugin and ship it over to RealBand or DAW of your choice and then be able to keep that awesome solo you just got from the RealTrack Blues Trumpet Player. :-)
Thanks for the info!
Rich
Hi Rich,
Thank you for taking time to go through my post. I'm glad that I'm not alone!
Noel
I've been having the same problem, so I've tried your suggestions and come to the same conclusion you have - i.e. using a RealTrack on the soloist track, then freezing this track, seems to be the root cause of the problem.
Thanks for spending so much time on this - here's hoping a solution isn't too problematic!
Please send this to support in an email, pointing to this thread even
Hi Rharv - I emailed Support a few days ago and attached a song I was having problems with, so hopefully they're on the case! :-)
Hi John,
Try disabling VSTi, unchecking the Soloist under the "Freeze" icon, regenerating the song, saving it, and restarting BIAB?
Tonight I discovered that occasionally I cannot reproduce the error. I did the above and the error returned. It might have been coincidence, though. I'd be interested to see what happens for you.
Noel
You guys are on the case providing excellent reports and clues here.
Myself, like Silvertones, cannot duplicate this particular problem on my end *at this time* but I'd sure like to be darn good and sure that it never pops up here either, so stay on the case. Development will appreciate the hard work, I'm sure.
FWIW, I've been using Hardware MIDI synths the majority of the time, and I think Silvertones may be also. Another clue?
--Mac
Now my friend is pulling out his hair with this.
Sorry Noel still can't reproduce it here.
Unless I've missed it somewhere, please post exactly how you have your system set up and what you're using for midi, audio, mme, asio, synths etc.
Bob
Noel:
Thank you for all that hard work. My results are completely consistent with yours. The problem does appear to be the real soloist. I've tried several tunes with different soloists, and the result is the same, so it does not appear to be a particular soloist file. I've also sent a file with the problem to support, so we'll see if they can resolve the issue.
If it helps, I'm running WinXP, SP3, with 2 gig RAM, plenty of room on the hard drive, ASIO using a MOTU Ultralite and Cakewalk TTS for midi sounds.
Thanks, everyone!
Quote:
....
Restart BIAB and open song.
When I try and generate the song, I get the error Access violation at address 00405F74 in module bbw.exe. Read of address 00000004 at 00405F74
...........
I'd be interested to know if others can produce this error or if it is mine alone! Hope this information helps.
Yup, reproducible here also, using different style & (Real) soloist. (Different addresses in the error message.) Using build 292, WinXP, SP3, ASIO, DXi (TTS-1) loaded.
Thanks for working this through! -RonL
Crazy idea: Buried in New Features is this simple statement: "Rendering RealTracks no longer require you to have a DXi or VST in use." (I believe that's in response to issues raised in prior version threads.) I suspect implementing it required substantial code mods, perhaps causing this bug. Just a wild guess. I tried testing with and without the DXi and/or midi driver enabled, but didn't defeat the bug.
Both of you guys are using ASIO, try it with MME and see how it goes.
Bob
I would like to suggest an option to disable the frozen soloist when saving the song.
I can also reproduce the problem.
/peter
I recently found out that RealTracks is a Background Service.
Try this:
*Change Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services'
Control Panel ->System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> and set Processor Scheduling to "Background Services".
Might help, I don't know as I can't seem to duplicate this problem here at this end, but my Background Services have been set to use them as priority for a long time already. It will also help with ASIO drivers, which are a background service as well.
--Mac
I have indeed had problems with freezing/unfreezing tracks as documented. I am using MME.
Thanks, Mac, for the suggestion. I will try the setting. Hmm...I wonder if this is why I have been having problems with ASIO stutter regardless of buffer setting?
Silvertones/Mac
It's interesting that you can't reproduce it. I had the same experience too.
After two days of turning the computer on and off numerous times, I could reproduce the error at will, 100% of the time. That's when I documented the above lengthy article. Then, when I learned that Silvertones could not reproduce the error, I tried again and, blow me down, I couldn't get the error either. Strange. There were two things that I remember doing: (a) changing the VSTi; (b) having Realband open.
Here's some more food for thought.
This morning, again I loaded the problem file and all was well. Then, I did the following
- Opened BIAB as the first and only program after startup (other than my antivirus software which has always been on)
- Turned off VSTi
- Restarted BIAB
- Regenerated the Soloist
- Unchecked the "Soloist" under the by right-clicking on the "Freeze" icon. Saved the file using "Save+" I was annoyed that the problem file worked, today, I repeated this procedure of unchecking and saving numerous times!
- Then when exiting BIAB, I had four access errors; one after the other popping up in my screen.
- I restarted BIAB, opened the file again, and it played! Now I'm really puzzled.
Somehow the shortcut "Freeze" (icon) option seems to be involved in all this but I haven't yet worked it out. The problems occurs for me on MME. I rarely use ASIO.
Regards,
Noel
I'll just add that I have had occasional random Access Violations with 2010, but have never used the Soloist feature.
What, you expected reproducibility?
That costs extra.
You should have purchased the Reproducibility Pak option (grin).
--Mac
Mac:
Thanks for the suggestion, but that did not help. I also tried MME instead of ASIO and had the same results. It should be noted that 2009.5 loads and plays the file just fine, so the change to 2010 definitely affected it. And, I have 2gig of ram.
Thank you.
Did you try *rebooting the computer* yet?
A change like Background Services, that might be a good idea even though Windows doesn't prompt about it.
--Mac
Quote:
What, you expected reproducibility?
Obviously sells out real quick, too. Can't see any listed. I'd better get my order in to 2010.25 now.
Sells like hotcakes, bro! <G>
Quote:
*Change Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services'
Control Panel ->System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> and set Processor Scheduling to "Background Services".
I did and I can't believe how quick the Realtracks processed! I blinked and they were done (less than 3 secs for a style with two RTs). Thanks Mac.
Quote:
I recently found out that RealTracks is a Background Service.
How do you determine whether s.th. is a Background Service?
The reason I ask -> on the German Forum the problem of some jerky playback of midi data via the Mediaplayer popped up. Now, this could be caused by a variety of reasons, such as slow processor, scarce disk space and whatnot. Yet if Playback via the Mediaplayer happens to be a 'Background Service', your suggested approach might help a lot.
I recall Peter Gannon describing what the new version does to increase Real Track generation speed.
Several posters here mentioned they are using Windows XP. The tip about optimizing for background services has been around since at least Windows XP. For anyone using Windows 7, I'm not certain it applies now to Windows 7. The chief technical officer at Cakewalk, which makes SONAR, said a few months back that we SONAR users should NOT do this tweak. As a result, I haven't even looked to see if you can do it in Windows 7.
Matt
The option is still there in Windows 7, same place it has been since XP. I tried this the other day but it did not seem to make a huge difference to me as I have a Core2Quad 2.66Ghz and the generation of tracks is quick enough anyway.
Kevin
I now checked on the option with Windows 7 on a 3 years old pentium 1.86GHz notebook -> with virtually zero effect.
Some good comes from bad. I had forgotten abt the "background services" tweak. The speed is scary.Abt 2 sec. or less for 4 RT & 1 RD
John, what's the improvement on your system 'with tweak' compared to 'no tweak' in terms of percentages?
Quote:
John, what's the improvement on your system 'with tweak' compared to 'no tweak' in terms of percentages?
same song same style 4 RT & 1 RD
Tweaked=3 sec.
Untweaked=6 sec.
Done with a stop watch. % wise that's a lot. Actual time no big deal either way.
>>> *Change Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services'
Control Panel ->System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> and set Processor Scheduling to "Background Services".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's a good tip. But I would only recommend trying that if you are having a problem. My old XP laptop doesn't need that setting. That setting could make things better or worse, so use it with caution, and only if you are having a playback stutter problem, and have a slow machine to begin with.
ASIO Soundcard drivers are a background service, so it might benefit ASIO users.
This is discussed here...
http://ssl-wiki.help.bootlegs.de/Optimizing_PC_for_SSL
Regarding the Frozen track- w/ generated Soloist causing an Access Error in certain cases.... thanks for reporting that Noel, and we will make a patch for that situation within a week or so.
Quote:
same song same style 4 RT & 1 RD
Tweaked=3 sec.
Untweaked=6 sec.
That's interesting. I now double checked on a Core Duo T8300 2.4 GHz Vista system here and obtained ca. 8 sec either way -> with AND without the tweak. Wonder what would make the tweak working (if needed) ...
Different processor types is my guess, Martin. Math coprocessing, L2 cache, memory handling, and I probably have forgotten something...
Anyway, the tweak likely works best on some of the older single core cpus and you probably don't need it on yours, as Peter has indicated.
I follow the old pilot's method, get some altitude and throw the stinkin' switch. if it don't do nuthin', throw it back the other way real quicklike and hope your backseater didn't notice...
--Mac
A reboot would be a good idea to enable the background services tweak, one way or the other.
Hi Noel,
Thanks for the report. That issue (some access violcations on songs with Frozen Soloist track) is fixed for the next build - coming soon - ikely within a week. Workaround for now would be to un-freeze the Soloist track.
Will the buyers be informed of the fix by email ? Thx
As far as I know the fix is posted in the support section. It would be prudent to check your version (under help like every windows program and note the version and the build. If in the support section there is a newer build, you just download the latest, even if you missed some in between, and apply that after closing Band in a Box. Then re-start and check that the build is recognized.
Quote:
Will the buyers be informed of the fix by email ? Thx
Hi,
The answer to that question is, "No, not at this time." Although people have asked for such a service on the Wishlist.
You will have to bookmark the PGMusic Support Page for BiaB 2010 and make a point of visiting there every so often to check for the latest Updates, download and install them.
--Mac