Score editor - displays all tracks

[dterry]

I am setting up my scoring template in PT11HD, and whenever I attempt to open the score editor, PT tries to load every single midi track (even with no midi data in the project) - it shows a big mess of 300 midi tracks overlayed (basically just a blob), and locks up attempting to process that many tracks.

This worked at one time. I can't find a preference that would seem to force PT to open all tracks instead of the one I have selected. Any ideas?

This works fine in smaller projects - focus even works as expected - but I can't get it to work again in my template. Thanks.

[musicman691]

Try this: select just one track in the Edit screen, right click and open in Score Editor. You should only get the track you want. Or do the standard thing for selecting a range of tracks or non-contiguous tracks, right click without losing the selection and select open in score editor.

[dterry]

Unfortunately that doesn't work (nor does hiding all but one midi track).

I think I figured out that this is a bug in how PT initiates the score display, and it isn't visible or apparent until you have a lot of midi tracks - somewhere around 100+.

When opening the Score Editor for the first time in a project, PT generates an update for all midi tracks, key signature, and the notation display. However, it does this for all tracks. With only a few tracks, you never see the display update and only the selected track appears after the update. But the more tracks you add, the slower this process becomes to where it is visible with around 100-150 tracks. With 200-300+, it never recovers.

In a project with 150 tracks, I can open the score editor, and it will display all 150 tracks the first time, but the score display isn't overloaded, so I can simply deselect all but one track in the track list for the Score Editor, and it will be fine after that.

But in a project with 200-300 midi tracks, the Score Editor never recovers. PT becomes unresponsive and I have to kill it in task manager.

This makes the Score Editor completely useless for scoring (just a reference as Sibelius is the final destination for score notation here).

The only workaround is to open the score editor from time to time while building a large template. That lets PT rebuild the display a piece at a time. But once the session is closed, PT dumps it's build, and when reopening the session, it has to start all over again - so that doesn't help. Once a template is built with a lot of midi tracks, the score editor is completely unusable. This is a SERIOUS bug.

I am coming back to PT after a long haiatus, but I remember asking an Avid/Digi rep about this back in the PT8 days. It's still there, and has never been fixed. I'm not sure anything in the midi world has been updated since PT8. Sigh.

[dterry]

How do I go about submitting a bug report on this?

I am considering upgrading my 10HD license to 12HDm, but would like to know Avid is at least aware of this and investigating. It's a major problem. Obviously the workaround is to avoid the Score Editor completely since Sibelius is the ultimate destination for notation, but where is the fun in that?

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by dterry

Unfortunately that doesn't work (nor does hiding all but one midi track).

My method DOES work or I wouldn't have posted it. I'm running PT11.3.1 on OSX 10.9.5 and it works just fine. Click on the contents of a track to highlight it then right click and select 'open in score editor' and voila - you have the one track in the score editor. Ditto for selecting contiguous and non-contiguous tracks - click on the contents of one track, hold down the shift key and select any other tracks you want and then right click on the initial track you selected and select 'open in score editor'.

[dterry]

I'm on Windows 8.1. That is likely the difference.

I've tested this 100 different ways (key command, menu, right click, track selected/not selected, from a clip selection, selection follows track enabled/disabled etc), and most of the time doing exactly what you suggested, and can't find a workaround. PT always has to "prebuild" every single track the first time the score editor is opened after first opening a session.

Have you tested this with 300 midi tracks in a project? That would help confirm whether this is unique to Windows.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by dterry

I'm on Windows 8.1. That is likely the difference.

I've tested this 100 different ways (key command, menu, right click, track selected/not selected, from a clip selection, selection follows track enabled/disabled etc), and most of the time doing exactly what you suggested, and can't find a workaround. PT always has to "prebuild" every single track the first time the score editor is opened after first opening a session.

Have you tested this with 300 midi tracks in a project? That would help confirm whether this is unique to Windows.

I don't ever have sessions that would even come near to 100 MIDI tracks, let alone 300. The number of tracks shouldn't cripple the ability to select only the tracks you want to see in the score editor. 300 - that's an insane number and may be above the number of MIDI tracks PT can handle.

[dterry]

Originally Posted by musicman691

I don't ever have sessions that would even come near to 100 MIDI tracks, let alone 300. The number of tracks shouldn't cripple the ability to select only the tracks you want to see in the score editor. 300 - that's an insane number and may be above the number of MIDI tracks PT can handle.

This is a typical film scoring template (one articulation per track - easier than keyswitching). I know some guys have 500-1000 in Cubase, Logic and DP scoring templates.

For loading reference, I have two PC slave systems and VEPro hosting 30G of samples on the host system all running back into PT with outboard reverb (32 physical ins, 30 or so VEPro audio streams returning to PT on the host system). PT handles it just fine. PT reports around 9-10% total cpu load, with video playback.

The Midi Editor works perfectly. The only problem is the Score Editor, and I can recreate the problem at will in any blank project. The more tracks you add, the longer it takes for PT to preconfigure track displays - eventually it becomes visible:

1 - With only a few tracks (less than 100), the Score Editor opens normally, displaying only the selected track or tracks, but as you add more tracks, it does slow down. I never have a problem in small projects - 10-20 midi tracks.

2 - At some point (100-150 tracks?) PT will no longer be able to return to the single track to be displayed and you get an overlap of all tracks. But, you can still deselect the unnecessary tracks and return to a normal Score Editor view.

3 - 200-300 tracks, PT becomes overloaded and the GUI will no longer respond.

The numbers are just rough estimates - it simply gets worse the more tracks you add, but it would take to long to go through 1, 5 or even 10 tracks at a time to quantify the Score Editor's response (and it would likely be somewhat system dependent - cpu/gpu, etc).


Would you be willing to test this (or anyone on either Mac or PC)?

In an empty project, just add 100 midi tracks, and then another 100 (gets slow adding 200 tracks, and 100 might be the limit for the "add new track" dialog). The goal is to have 200 midi tracks.

Select one track, and open the Score Editor.

Let me know what you see.

If it opens quickly with just one track, then this is a PT/Windows problem. You won't see this with only a few midi tracks. It takes at least 150 or so.

[musicman691]

Here's what I did:
378 MIDI tracks each having data (why that number? because I had a handy session with a number of MIDI tracks and I duplicated those 20 times)

After all the tracks were duplicated (took about 30 secs) I then selected one track, right clicked on the track, selected 'open in score editor' and it took about 4 minutes of SSBD (spinning beachball of death) before the score editor came up and when it did I had just the one track I had selected. Keep in mind my iMac specs - quad core i7 at 3.4 GHz, 7200 rpm system drive, 32 gig ram. I have no doubt that with a more powerful machine things would go faster.

[dterry]

Originally Posted by musicman691

After all the tracks were duplicated (took about 30 secs) I then selected one track, right clicked on the track, selected 'open in score editor' and it took about 4 minutes of SSBD (spinning beachball of death) before the score editor came up and when it did I had just the one track I had selected.

Thank you for testing - I appreciate it.

4 minutes. That's the problem right there. An i7 is plenty fast enough to open the score editor instantaneously with the selected track - on any other DAW. I have run the same template and track count in Nuendo and DP and both of their score editors open with no delay whatsoever. It never reverts to the single track view here, but that could vary between systems. It is the excessively long time to build the score editor page that is a major problem.

I am guessing Digi/Avid used part of the Sibelius code to create the score editor in PT, and are sending midi tracks to it to be "imported" internally, and then dumping the setups when closing the session (meaning it has to be repeated every single time the session is opened). Regardless, it is incredibly inefficient, and useless for film scoring.

It is a very serious problem, though given how long it has been since any work was done on midi and the score editor (PT8), it isn't likely it will ever be fixed. Now I'll have to reconsider my HD upgrade, which could mean no support plan under which to report the bug that might prevent me from paying Avid $$ for the upgrade.