Add more RAM?
Hey,
I'm working on a score with 15+ parts and for some reason MuseScore gets pretty laggy, to the point where it's very hard to work. Is there any way to reduce said lag/add more RAM to Musescore?
Thanks!
Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.
Comments
could you attach your score here?
And give some additional information as explained here:
http://musescore.org/en/handbook/how-ask-support-or-file-reports
For a comparison: http://musescore.org/en/node/24371
In reply to Welcome aurora14, by Shoichi
I feel like "how to add more RAM to Musescore" is a pretty solid questions regardless of what score it's attached to.
In reply to I feel like "how to add more by aurora14
MuseScore is software, RAM is hardware, how would you add hardware to software or vice versa?
Anyway: before adding more RAM to your computer, you should check whether it is lacking RAM first, e.g. by looking at the Windows task manager, but you didn't mention which OS you're on, not how much RAM it currently has.
MuseScore is known to become slow on large scores (but you didn't mention which version or MuseScore you are using), and I doubt is is due to not enough RAM, more likely due to eating CPU cycles, so a faster CPU might help
In reply to MuseScore is software, RAM is by Jojo-Schmitz
Perhaps adding RAM is the incorrect terminology. Allowing Musescore to utilize more RAM, would that be the better way to say it? I have 4GB of RAM on Windows 8, and the most current version of Musescore. I have looked at the Task Manager already and when I'm working on my score it takes about 100MB of RAM. I hope this helps more...
In reply to Perhaps adding RAM is the by aurora14
How much RAM is free? What is the 'most current version' you are using, 1.3? A nightly build? Windows 8 32bit or 64bit ( although I don't think it makes a difference, MuseScore is 32bit)
If still plenty RAM is free (and I'm pretty sure it is), this is not the problem. How many measures has your score, how many staves?
In reply to How much RAM is free? What is by Jojo-Schmitz
As a practice, I add too many measures than I know I will need, so I've got about 1000, and about 20 Staves. I could condense Horn 1-2 and 3-4, etc. for the other instruments, but then it's harder to actually compose.
In reply to As a practice, I add too many by aurora14
Reduce the number of measures to something reasonable. If need be split the score into movements. The problem most probably is the relayout of the score on every single change/add/delete, this becomes worse the larger the score gets and is more a CPU problem than a RAM one..
In reply to I feel like "how to add more by aurora14
As mentioned, "add more RAM to MuseScore" doesn't really make sense. If MuseScore is behaving unusually slowly with a particular score, it really does help if you post the score. That way we can see what aspect of that particular score might be responsible. As mentioned, having lots of unnecessary measures isn't helping, since MuseScore has to redraw the entire score on every operation. But there is probably more to it than that - something else about your score that is causing it to run even more slowly than it should. Drawing 1000 empty measures shouldn't slow things down *that* much.
Posting the score you are having trouble with is usually the best way to get really good and accurate help.
In summary of the above:
To attempt to answer WHY it is running slowly it helps to know as much detail about your computer as possible - CPU type, speed, operating system (*including whether it is 32 bit or 64 bit), graphics card, amount of RAM (and even, if you know the answer, whether it is in one stick or two, or more).
Basically, though, it's down to speed. MuseScore redraws all the elements of the score and shuffles everything around each time you make changes. It behaves a bit like a CAD program. It similarly uses a lot of resources, chiefly CPU cycles to move lots of small bits of data around memory. It doesn't seem to utilise a lot of RAM but it does seem to move stuff around a lot so speed rather than quantity seems crucial.
Posting the score would help by letting others with a similar-specification machine try it out and see if there is anything inherently wrong with the score.
As to HOW to make it run better the best advice is to split a large work into smaller sections. Also, please keep several backups of your work, preferably in different places.
*32 bit or 64 bit matters here mainly because there is no point in someone telling you to buy more physical RAM if you are running a 32-bit system.
In reply to In summary of the above: To by underquark
I am currently working on a symphonic score that utilizes over 50 staves. Some of these are 'hidden' parts that I have assigned to various differnt sound samples in order to create a more realistic effect on playback. For example, if a horn section does not sound suffuiciently 'alive' I will double it with another part, using an additional sound sample, that increases the tone at those points where the whole section is playing in unison. After all, a full horn section has a considerably different sound to a solo horn. Also, a full horn section at mezzo forte has a different colour to one at fortissimo. Similarly, some string sounds are convincing in legato, but not in spiccato or with short bow strokes, so I have managed to create these differences by blending samples together through copying and pasting parts (or bits of parts, where necessary) into hidden parts that play simultaneously with the basic samples, providing the necessaary attack or colouristic enhancement. Hence a 50+ stave score rather than a manageable 24 stave score. These extra parts may be hidden in the finished, printed score, but Musescore still has to draw them out and tthe computer still has to process them. Consequently, when I get to about page 14 of a section of my symphony (about 100 bars of 4/4), I get a lot of delays, 'program not responding', etc, and I have wondered whether the problem is CPU usage or RAM. Actually, 14 pages of a score this size is using only 500 MB of RAM, and my PC has 4GB, but a processor of only 2.2 GHz. I do, however, have another (older) PC which only has 1GB of RAM, but has a much faster processor (3 GHz) and I am currently trying to upgrade the RAM on it because I do not expereience the same performance problems at all. It has just enough RAM to handle the 14 pages, but not enough to let me finish the entire section, and splitting it up is not very practical at this juncture. But it happily handles all of those parts and does not hang every time I open the mixer console. Incidentally, both PC's are running Windows 7 64-bit. So,if your computer is not handling the density of information you're putting into it, the RAM is not necessarily the issue here. For the budget user (those of us who can't afford a Mac Pro or super-computer) Dell are currently marketing an Inspiron model with 4 GB of RAM and a 3.2GHz processor for about 500 Euros (I'd get one today if I had the spare cash) which would probably handle most requirements. The thing is that If I were to string all the sections of my own piece togeter (about 40 minutes worth) it would probably occupy abot 3.5 GB of RAM when opened, but whether or not it would be editable, playable and manipulatable would, I think, depend on the processor speed. After all, playing over 50 parts at once is going to test most machines, I'd have thought. By the way, apparently you can use a USB stick (if it's read-write speed is up to it) to add virtual RAM to your machine. Havn't done it yet, but it looks promising. Hope this was helpful.