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dj 11-16-2017 02:29 PM

PDF export weird error message
 
1 Attachment(s)
Hi, Reinhold, Sherry:

A few times now (and I can't give you a replicable instance), I've seen the attached error box after a PDF export.

This has happened with both the previous and current betas.

I'm not sure how PDF export would affect the loading of sound fonts, so I suspect it is a spurious handle somewhere that occasionally sends Composer to that error box, rather than to the "PDF successfully exported" box.

In all cases the PDF file was saved correctly and, as far as I can remember, playback after the error message is normal, but it is a worrisome thing if you suddenly encounter it.

David

Reinhold H. 11-16-2017 05:58 PM

Re: PDF export weird error message
 
David,

Thanks for the report. The reason is "memory" or more accurately "address space". The available address space is not given by the memory of the PC but by the address space of the software. Composer is a Win32 application for very good reasons where the maximum addressing space is 4GByte. Windows requires 2GB and leaves 2GB for the application. These 2GB are the maximum address space available for Composer. In fact 2GB is a lot for one single application.

However, when using large or very large soundfont these 2GB address space may not be enough in certain situation like a PDF export when this is big, too. Therefore we have implemented in the software that before the PDF export starts the Notation Software Synth is terminated and the soundfont are unloaded which frees up memory for the PDF export. After the PDF export is finished, the Notation Software Synth is started again with loading the actual used soundfont into the memory. That all happens in the background and is part of the PDF export activity.

The situation which you see here is that the Timbres of Heaven soundfonts cannot be re-loaded again. In fact Timbres of Heaven are also huge and require next to 400MB. Windows may have not completely freed up the address space used by the PDF export while Composer already tries to load the soundfont. This message appears when Composer gracefully handles a temporary shortage of address space when loading soundfonts. I thought such a situation will never happen but here we go. I am glad to have this graceful reaction implemented.

In the beta there is no difference compared to Composer 3.0.6. I will investigate again the address limits to fully understand the situation and in particular that there is nothing broken in the beta.

Again thanks for the notification.

Reinhold

Reinhold H. 11-22-2017 08:26 AM

Re: PDF export weird error message
 
Here is a short summary of the memory analysis which I did with David off-line. In addition to Notation Software Synth the configuration is that the VirtualMIDISynth from Coolsoft is used. Both software synths use very large soundfonts.

The design of CoolSoft has been that CoolSoft hooks into Windows. When starting Composer Windows adds all CoolSoft libraries and soundfonts to the load of Composer into the memory. Composer as a Windows app gets huge because of this architecture.

Because of this issue CoolSoft has redesigned their architecture and released a new version 2.1.0 on Oct. 31st, 2017. With this new version the VirtualMIDISynth from CoolsSoft is a separate application. Composer communicates to this software synth similar to the MicroSoft GS WaveTable Synth. Composer's memory allocation is normal now and no issue happens anymore for a PDF export.

In a nutshell: those who still want to use CoolSoft in addition to Notation Software Synth, please upgrade CoolSoft to the latetst version 2.1.0 or higher.

When using CoolSoft, please be aware that CoolSoft requires a significant amount of PC performance. On our test PC, Notation Software Synth required 3% where CoolSoft uses 13% PC performance in idle state.

We therefore recommend to only use CoolSoft if you really need this additional synthesizer.

Reinhold

dj 11-22-2017 12:08 PM

Re: PDF export weird error message
 
Thanks for your work on this, Reinhold.

I've upgraded. ;)

David


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