BiaB still has a 255 bar limit that for some unknown reason has continued since it's DOS / Atari days.

If a track plays at double-time, that 255 bar limit can be reached even is the song itself is less than 255 bars. At that point, the specific instrument simply stops playing.

An improvement would be to provide a warning that the track is truncated, and why.

(A better improvement would be to remove the 255 bar limit.)

Yes?

Absolutely.

The "better improvement" would be the way to go.

We have several limits of this kind in BIAB ; another one I remember is the max of 255 harmonies in a *.har file.

Nowadays in 2018 we have trouble to accept this situation because these limitations are of another age...

Yep, 2 to the 8th power. 0 through 255. Common on the early computers.

+1

See +++ this post +++.

Here is a summary of an issue a user encountered. The user creates a polka at 190 BPM. The RealTracks #541 bass that is in the style the user selected is hard coded to play at double time in the style so the bass Realtracks runs into the 255 bar limit at bar 127.

Don't you know it! This came as quite a surprise. I have only recently started composing extensively with different timebase settings on my RealTracks and RealDrums. Although I haven't seen this happen yet, I am alert now that, if we are correct, this restriction could be worse than before.

It's pretty obvious to me that an unsigned byte has been set aside to store the number of bars. This is probably done in many places. That was OK when systems had only a few M'bytes of memory. Surely that couldn't be so restrictive not to be able to be changed.

Maybe Blake could help?

Just bumped into this 255 bar limit as I tested an imported midi-track of Channel 1 - An Der Schönen Blauen Donau. It is not a life threatening issue, but I would like the limit to be more like 512 or 1024 as soon as possible!!

Welcome to the forum.

It would be ideal if there was be no upper limit. The song should be able to play for as long as there are resources available.

Thanks for your vote of support. Sorry you found a limitation so soon.

Oh dear... while some of us are carping for 64 bit (and rightly so), parts of BIAB are stuck in 8 Bit?

They’ve had How many years to fix this?

It is not really a bug, because it DOES Work.

This (255-bar limit) and 8.3 style file names. It is 2018, isn't it?

Somehow, RealTracks and RealDrums can have file names that are 50 characters long, but style file names are stuck in MS-DOS days (or Windows 95/98 at best).

When BIAB allowed for long SGU/MGU file names, they provided a utility to rename all the files in a folder with a long name based on the song title.

I don't know why they couldn't do something like create a cross reference table of old 8.3 to new long names (for their styles), have a utility to do the rename, but keep the table for backward compatibility. They could provide something similar for Bob Norton and other user styles.

These two things would go a long way towards shedding the "old ways of doing things".

Just sayin'.

Oh it works alright in that it gets in the way.

Did I say it's a bug? No. Are you trying to prove how witty and clever you are while contributing nothing to the discussion? Hmmmmm?

If I was on an Apple II, Atari, DOS or Commodore Amiga (scratch that, the Amiga was 16 bit), then 8 bit architecture is expected.

It's bad enough that BAIB is not yet 64 bit but it's a disgrace that there are 8 bit obstacles in the current release of any Mac or Windows app released in the 21st Century.

Actually, it's not the 255 bar restriction (which is an issue, but not a bug), but it really is a bug for this reason:
If a track plays at double-time, that 255 bar limit can be reached even is the song itself is less than 255 bars. At that point, the specific instrument simply stops playing. Other instruments keep playing. There is no warning, the track just stops unexpectedly. That's more of a bug than an issue.

I just wanted to say that regarding the 255 bars limitation , it is a native limitation due to the 8-bit design of BIAB.

In the other hand, it is true that, with new features, for ex. RT playing at double-time, this design is no longer suitable.

+1 for remove upper bar limit, or at least extend it to 1024.

Bump.

Another Bump
+1
Really needs updating.

Yes! Remove bars limit!

I encountered this a while back when creating a couple songs, including a dance rock song that had a great beat and groove that it couldn't be limited to 255 bars, and at just under 4 minutes! I was upset about that limit!

The song was too good and needed to continue for a much longer length to be used for dancing purposes. I had to make do with the shorter version on BIAB, saved it as a .wav file and edited the .wav file on Audacity to make it 7 minutes.
Would be great if I didn't have to do double the work
on one song in the future!

PG Music please Remove bars limit!

+1

I've already added my plus one, so I'll just say I'd rather this get fixed for 2020 than (say) another "202 New Real Tracks".

I suppose we'll never hit the RT saturation point, but I wish they would focus more on other issues.

LLOYD S

Thanks Lloyd,
Yes, this extreme limitation definitely needs attention.

Hello VideoTrack,

Thank you for your feedback and suggestions and thanks to all others for their +1s!
Your suggestion has been passed along to the developers.