Hang for extremely long time when opening certain file

Discuss Finale PrintMusic here.

Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker

Post Reply
SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:12 am

For some reason that I can't explain, there is a specific .mus file that takes "forever" to open. The status bar tells me it's at 96% for a whole minute or two before FINALLY opening the file. I am attaching the file, in case anyone knows how to diagnose and help me resolve this....
well, hmm. I tried to upload the file and got the RIDICULOUS error message "The extension mus is not allowed" Huh? this is a forum for Finale users! What types of files would be expected?


User avatar
miker
Posts: 5993
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 4:28 pm
Finale Version: Finale 27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by miker » Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:39 am

You need to compress, or zip, the file before uploading. You're right, it should say so, somewhere...

Try making a few copies of the file. Delete half of it. See if that half loads slowly. If it does, divide it in half and try again. If it doesn't, go to the other half and divide it. By elimination, you will get to a measure that is probably causing the problem. Usually, this is caused by some wayward articulation, expression, or MIDI signal.
Finale 27 | SmartScorePro 64
Mac OS 13.2.1 Ventura
Copyist for Barbershop Harmony Society

SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:46 am

I have added the Zipped file. I hope someone will have some insight into how to examine the file and tell me what's wrong. I really don't want to go to the extreme pain of the binary search that has been suggested.
Attachments
Somewhere.zip
Compressed version of file
(77.01 KiB) Downloaded 293 times

User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6603
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:22 am

My copy of Finale 2011 opened your attached document in 4 seconds.

Since I did not experience that your document takes "forever" to open, I suspect that the culprit is not something in the document, but rather something in your computer system (hardware, operating system, third party system utility).

Do your other Finale 2011 .mus documents open slowly?
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

bvstudios
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:27 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by bvstudios » Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:43 am

Hmm- well on my three year old Sony, it took more than a minute, while some of my larger (up to eighteen staves for 16-17 pages) pieces open in about five or six seconds. I suspect that there is something amiss, but I have no idea what.

Is it possible that there is something similar to a midi file missing an midi-off message somewhere in the file? I've has this hang midi files on my sequencers in much this manner.

Oh- the Sony is running vista 32-bit, with 2GB RAM , dual core pentium, using PM2011-R2. How does that compare with your machine?
K M Frye
BVStudios
Victoria
Finale 26, 2014.5, 2012 Print Music 2011b, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2000,1997
GPO4, JABB3, World Instruments.
S-I drums

User avatar
Peter Thomsen
Posts: 6603
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:47 pm
Finale Version: Finale v27.4
Operating System: Mac

Post by Peter Thomsen » Wed Mar 28, 2012 11:43 am

bvstudios wrote:…the Sony is running vista 32-bit, with 2GB RAM , dual core pentium, using PM2011-R2. How does that compare with your machine?
The iMac is running Mac OS X 10.6.8, with 16 GB RAM, 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7, ATI Radeon HD 5750, 1024 MB VRAM.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

bvstudios
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:27 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by bvstudios » Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:40 am

Okay, Peter's i-Mac beats my Sony for horsepower, so that makes me think that something in the formatting is causing my slower desktop to take a lot of time digesting it. To the OP- is your machine closer to my middle-aged laptop or to Peter's skookum i-Mac?

At any rate- I have a copy, an idea, and some time on my hands. I will try an experiment and post it back in here a day or so for you to see if my idea will help you.
K M Frye
BVStudios
Victoria
Finale 26, 2014.5, 2012 Print Music 2011b, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2000,1997
GPO4, JABB3, World Instruments.
S-I drums

SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:18 pm

I have Windows 7 on a four-year-old PC that is closer to bvstudio's setup. To answer the other question from Peter, this is the ONLY file that gives me this problem. I have perhaps 40 other .mus files and no delay opening them. Very clearly something different about this file. And based on your observations, there must be something different about the hardware that is also required to make this one file become very slow to open.

I have PM 2011a.r1. I wasn't aware there's an R2, so I'll get that. But I guess it won't help this situation, since bvstudio still sees it open slowly in that version.

Scot

bvstudios
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:27 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by bvstudios » Fri Mar 30, 2012 3:22 am

Scot- try this version. Opening from within PM, it opens in about 1.5 seconds by my stopwatch. From a cold double-click in Explorer it takes about 4 sec to open PM, then another 2 to open the file.

Note- this isn't your file, it's a new one. I basically played copyist and made a new copy of yours leaving out only some of the text items that I would need to create (Don't know whether you have assigned commands to any or all of them). I also kept as much as possible in a single layer for testing reasons.

If this copy works okay on your machine, then I will start poking around in yours to see if I can find what is causing you (and I) the grief.

Let me know how it works out?
Attachments
Somewhere tst.zip
(61.79 KiB) Downloaded 255 times
K M Frye
BVStudios
Victoria
Finale 26, 2014.5, 2012 Print Music 2011b, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2000,1997
GPO4, JABB3, World Instruments.
S-I drums

SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:56 am

Yes, that one opens almost instantly, just like all my other .mus files. That means that something you changed was causing the problem. Do you recall all the things you changed? I observed that the instruments used to play it were also different. I had considered doing an export to MusicXML to see if that revealed anything. Is that a worthwhile experiment?

SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:12 am

Yes, that was an interesting experiment! I exported to MusicXML, and then immediately imported that back to .mus, and the new file doesn't have the problem! I'll have to clean up the formatting, of course, but it seems to have preserved most, if not all, of my original.
Are there any known gotchas with doing this kind of round trip? Any thing that will typically get lost when doing this?
I'm guessing that whatever was wrong with it before was something that couldn't be translated into XML, and thus got lost. Of course, in this case, it was something we wanted to lose.

bvstudios
Posts: 93
Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:27 pm
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by bvstudios » Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:58 am

Well, at least we proved that it was a 'bug' of some sort in the piece and not a problem with your computer or with your copy of Print Music. I haven't yet tried to pull your original apart, so I really don't know what was amiss. The version I posted back to you is "100% new to you", copied in from a pdf file I made from your original, although I used different voices (actually, my softsynth picked the voices- I just left them that way).

One thing I did notice was that your original piece seemed to use multiple "layers" for entire bars where there didn't appear to be any changes between layers. Were you aware of this? Was it done for a reason? I can see using layers when you have differing timing between voices in a single bar, but when an entire passage is not-for-note the same, I wonder if the extra power needed to keep the multiple layering seperate is maybe a small part of the issue with your original....

I stress that I'm specualting here, but if I get a chance tonight, that's where I am going to begin...

If I find out what caused the isue, I'll let you know.
K M Frye
BVStudios
Victoria
Finale 26, 2014.5, 2012 Print Music 2011b, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2000,1997
GPO4, JABB3, World Instruments.
S-I drums

SBrennecke
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:06 am
Finale Version: Finale 2014.5.6359
Operating System: Windows

Post by SBrennecke » Tue Apr 03, 2012 5:25 am

bvstudios wrote:One thing I did notice was that your original piece seemed to use multiple "layers" for entire bars where there didn't appear to be any changes between layers. Were you aware of this? Was it done for a reason? I can see using layers when you have differing timing between voices in a single bar, but when an entire passage is note-for-note the same, I wonder if the extra power needed to keep the multiple layering seperate is maybe a small part of the issue with your original....
Are you referring to passages in this piece where several voices (instruments) are playing in unison? If so, this is definitely deliberate. This is a vocal piece intended for a cappella singing, and even when the notes are in unison, there are still people of different voice parts singing them. One of the things I do is make separate learning tracks by adjusting volume and pan position for each voice part. I do this with ALL of the .mus files I make, so this is not unique to this piece, and certainly not contributing to the problem.

I really do appreciate the time you've spent so far, and any time you're willing to spend since your last post to help identify this. Fortunately, it seems there was a workaround (to/from XML), ugly as it was.

Post Reply