2.1 crashing when I try to change page layout, on long pages
MuseScore 2.1 is now crashing consistently when I try to alter the page layout (by selecting Page Settings from the Layout menu) on certain files. It seems to be the ones where I made the page longer than A4.
I'm in the habit of setting page sizes larger than yer average bit of paper. The reason is, I only use MuseScore on a landscape monitor, and I want to see as many notes on the screen as I can handle, then scroll for more, but not have to move to see the next page - which I'm unable to do while playing.
I'm sure there must be a better way, but that's the only way I've found so far. For a while I've been making pages wider - up to 360mm wide in Page Layout, but recently I started making them longer too, to get around the awkward page turning, ideally fitting each tune on one big long page.
I assumed since it wasn't real paper, there wouldn't be a problem - like adding more rows and columns to a spreadsheet, but MuseScore is now very slow to respond opening those files, and crashes when I try to go to the Layout menu to change them.
It may depend on the number of other files open, of course, so it might not be so easy reproduce the crash opening just one file. I can't upload all of the ones that are a problem, because the copyright holder wouldn't be happy. Here's one example that should hopefully be okay to use as an example.
walking in the air (F) piccalo 8va.mscz
I see it's been made into quite a large file too - not really what I'd expect to happen. An older version, with a different style applied, is a lot smaller.
I'm not really looking for a solution to my personal problem - I can think of ways to recover it - and I'm aware that MuseScore is anything but crash proof. I just think these things should be reported. Maybe one day, they'll even get fixed.
Comments
Maybe the page settings are really a bit exaggerated.
Using Continue View is not enough for you?
In reply to Maybe the page settings are by Shoichi
The point is, with the same files (mostly generated by the PDF importer, some by the MIDI import process), if the page length is about 300mm or less, it's fine. After applying one of a few different saved styles where I'd set it to 450mm, it isn't fine - it crashes. That's a bug.
I had to think where continuous view is again, in the menus. I see it's on the File Operations bit I normally have turned off - that makes no sense to me at all. It should be on the View menu, where I've looked for it before. It doesn't change the file, it changes the view of the file.
Am I missing something? It turns the music into one very long line that scrolls horizontally. I don't want that. I want music arranged as on a piece of paper, but a very long one, and with more notes horizontally than MuseScore appears to allow - like on a lot of actual sheet music.
Since I can't fit a whole page on the screen, I have to scroll it, but when I get to the bottom of the page, I then have to go through the awkward process of navigating to the top of the next page, which MuseScore places alongside it. If it was able to place it below, that would be fine, and I wouldn't need longer "paper".
Getting back to the point of my original post - it's not a real piece of paper. It shouldn't have to occupy any more memory than a smaller one.
I once met a programmer who was trying to write spreadsheet software, and I quickly noticed it got bogged down as I added more rows and columns, even though they were empty. In something like Excel, that doesn't happen. The main reason being that it doesn't allocate memory for each cell, as his program was doing, it apparently keeps a list of rows or columns and lists of the active cells in each row or column. MuseScore seems to be behaving like my former colleague's spreadsheet program.
I can take a file that works, change the page length to 450mm, and it immediately causes a problem - I can't get back in to change it again. There are files where I can, after a long pause, but many more where I can't. Bug.
In reply to The point is, with the same by AndyHornBlower
Regarding it not being in the View menu, this is something that has come up many times. The logic is that, the way the feature was originally designed, switching to Continuous View actually is a reformatting of the score, not simply a change to its display—you can verify this with the Undo command. As part of the ongoing overhaul for MuseScore 3, this has been re-implemented so that it really does only change the view, so I think it can finally be added to the View menu.
In reply to Regarding it not being in the by Isaac Weiss
Good to know. Thanks, Isaac.
I'm still not sure why I'd want that, but it's nice to know it will be where I looked, in future :)
What I'd like to see is a view that's like a continuous sheet or roll of paper, of a chosen width.
I've tried to mess with styles to squeeze more notes onto a line, but I didn't get very far with it. At the moment, making the imaginary paper wider is a much easier way, but making it longer is a source of problems. I can think of reasons why that would be, I just can't think of any good ones.
In reply to The point is, with the same by AndyHornBlower
If I understand correctly, you can get what you want by setting Edit / Preferences / Canvas / Scroll Pages to Vertically.
You mention a bug in one of your files when you set the the page length to 450mm. If you'd like us to investigate that, please post the specific score and steps to reproduce the problem.
In reply to If I understand correctly, by Marc Sabatella
Good tip. Thanks, Marc. I didn't know there was an option for that. Yes, that works fine.
Sorry, I thought the file I posted earlier was a good illustration of the bug because it was crashing when I tried to select Page Settings from the Layout menu. It turns out it won't do it if it's the only file loaded, and it's only set to 300mm long.
Here's one that does it for me, after starting MuseScore 2.1 with no other files loaded. Steps are:
Open the file in MuseScore 2.1 then click on the Layout menu, followed by Page settings. Then just enjoy the crash.
I'm cheating a bit uploading this - it's from some online lessons I once paid for. I hope this constitutes fair use:
Imagine (D,Bm) - Tenor Saxophone - long page.mscz
I believe it is related to file bloat caused by the growing styles problem, which I wasn't previously aware of. No doubt it wouldn't happen without all the unnecessary junk that's been added to the file by loading the style, plus the slightly dodgy nature of using the PDF importer to make it. Presumably, the same thing could happen with a long score though.
Here's the error message:
It's not going to solve the crash, but did you try the continuous view feature?
Regarding the size of the file, it's definitely buggy. The style, in particular the ChordList to customize chord symbols display is huge. See attached file.
In reply to Regarding the size of the by [DELETED] 5
Thanks. That file was originally 4KB - and that was for a duet version :)
How do you view or edit the ChordList?
In reply to Thanks. That file was by AndyHornBlower
I see my stlyles (.mss) files have been getting bigger and bigger. I've never looked at them before.
I typically apply a style, makes some changes in the style menu, then save it as a new style if I think I'll use it again. I have about a dozen I use regularly, which have evolved from earlier styles in stages, but the most recently edited one is now 330MB! The smallest is 200KB.
I assumed they were just a copy of the menu settings, maybe in a small xml file.
This probably deserves its own bug report.
I guess I'll have to write down the things I actually wanted them to do and start again from scratch.
In reply to I see my stlyles (.mss) files by AndyHornBlower
It would be very interesting to know how you managed to grow your style file so big. If a MuseScore file is over 1MB, a couple of pages, and doesn't contain an image, you can be sure bad things will happen.
In reply to It would be very interesting by [DELETED] 5
Well, I simply stood it on a window sill, watered it, and played music to it.
Isn't that the usual way? :)
No, really, I started by adjusting a few settings for the score style and page layouts, and saved a style. When I edited another document, I loaded in that style, then made some more changes and saved a new style. This process repeated at intervals, so each style got a chance to grow with each edit.
I always assumed I was just saving a small file of settings, covering what I'd seen while making my changes, and a few more I hadn't seen. I never thought to check the sizes of the style files.
A big part of my habit is using the MIDI import function, and the PDF converter on the MuseScore site. Presumably, some of the bloat was picked up from doing one of those two things, and it steadily accumulated with each edit.
I'm afraid I overwrote the 330MB one (I do mean megabytes, yes), with a more useful style based on the edited version of the file in my first post you've provided - that file is about 22K. Thanks for that. I also generated most of the styles I normally keep, based on that, being careful to only start from that style, make the changes needed, then saving the new one.
That's worked so far - they're all that size. I also went through my recent large file size scores, applying the smaller styles, which reduced those files to a much more reasonable size. I now don't get the long delays I was getting with various parts of the process - loading, saving, certain menu selections etc.
I did keep two of the large styles though, in case I was asked to post them. Ones about 60MB, the other's about 67MB. They don't cause this bug on their own, if I just apply that style, though I think it probably still happens if I have a few scores open in MuseScore with one of those styles applied - that's another part of my habit; I typically have half a dozen to a dozen files open, and the way I mostly exit MuseScore is by it crashing, rather than me deliberately shutting it down.
In reply to Well, I simply stood it on a by AndyHornBlower
The way the code works for importing of styles has changed a few times over the past few years, and the way chord symbols in particular are handled is probably not as well tested at this point - much has changed since the original work I did on this. If some of your work was done with nightly or beta builds of 2.0 before the official release, that probably accounts for at least some of the issues you are seeing. But I guess I wouldn't be too surprised to find there is some sequence of operations that will lead to this problem even just using current versions.
If you can find a set of steps to reproduce a problem like this, do let us know. But even without a specific bug, I may wish to revisit how chord symbols are handled in style files before the release of 3.0.
In reply to The way the code works for by Marc Sabatella
I've only ever used official releases of MuseScore, Marc.
As explained, this has built up over a period of time without me being aware of the process, but I don't know how long, so it would be difficult to give a simple set of steps to reproduce it. I can attach those two large .mss style files if it helps though, or put them on dropbox and give you a link, if you prefer.
They ought to differ by just one or two settings, for the page layout (paper) sizes and maybe small changes to the sizes in Style->General->Page, but more likely just the page width, and maybe length - one ought to just be an edit of the other, or both ought to be just edits of a common ancestor file. However, there's about 8MB difference in the file sizes.
In reply to I've only ever used official by AndyHornBlower
I suspect it has as much to do with your specific score as with the style file, and with the specific changes you make before resaving the style file. Simply seeing the file itself probably won't be all that helpful, but sure, can't hurt.
In reply to I suspect it has as much to by Marc Sabatella
Okay. It seems if I zip them separately, they squash down to below the 2MB upload limit:
wider screen less gap.zip
wider screen more gap.zip
I think the changes I've made to settings are all under Layout -> Page Settings -> Page size, and Style->General - almost all relating to fitting more notes onto a line and adjusting the space between staves, so pretty much limited to Score, Page, Bar and maybe System.
Any other settings in those two styles that aren't standard / defaults, will almost certainly have been put there automatically - maybe by the PDF importer, not by me.
In reply to Okay. It seems if I zip them by AndyHornBlower
Usually mss files are some 20 kB in size, not nearly as huge as yours. yours contain chord symbol descriptions, not really needed, and thousands of fonts, very strange
In reply to Usually mss files are some 20 by Jojo-Schmitz
Yep. They definitely weren't added by me, because I don't know how.
My money is on the PDF converter, but the MIDI import process seems like a bit of an after thought too - I get the impression of a bolt on that just happens to be provided as part of MuseScore rather than as a separate application, like the PDF importer is.
Even so, MuseScore appears to be responsible for letting the garbage data grow, when editing a file that contains it and saving a new style.
In reply to Yep. They definitely weren't by AndyHornBlower
Can you share the PDF and the XML from the converter?
And how can parts come from PDF import and others from MIDI?
In reply to Can you share the PDF and the by Jojo-Schmitz
For copyright reasons, I definitely shouldn't publicly share the PDFs. If there's a way to send them to one of you privately, I guess that would be okay.
What I meant was, I have two main sources of the MuseScore files I make for myself, and both are things that maybe a lot of people don't use, and are outside the main scheme of things.
I get a lot of free MIDI scores, lately mostly from the same website, but also from other sources, and I use the MIDI import process built into MuseScore to turn those into an editable MuseScore file. That often produces slightly corrupt files, which gives me the hint that it's still quite experimental.
I also have quite a few PDFs from an online saxophone playing course I paid for for a couple of years, and from a flute teacher. Since I paid for those, I feel I have the right to convert them to MuseScore format so I can lay them out how I want, and transpose them for different instruments - I play mostly woodwind and brass, so there's a lot of transposition. Obviously, I don't have the right to share the original files with other people, and arguably not the files I've made for myself based on them either, though the copyright of the original songs is not the same as the copyright of the documents I started from, so it gets a little complicated.
The second example score I've given, which reliably crashes MuseScore for me (when trying to get to the Page Settings menu), even if it's just been opened with no other files open, is from one of the PDFs. I see no harm in providing the original PDF to the developers, if it helps, but I shouldn't do that publicly in the forum because I'd be giving away the teacher's work (as arranger, and copyright holder of that document), which wouldn't be legal or fair.