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Topic: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps (Read 4617 times) |
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StephenKay
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MIDI-OX Rules!
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Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« on: Dec 11th, 2002, 4:51pm » |
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Just trying MIDI Ox for the first time - not sure if it's a bug or something else, but when attempting to send large SysEx dumps (i.e. > 70k), using the SysEx View Window, I cannot view or save them. In other words, I choose "Receive Manual Dump...", send the dump, it shows that it is receiving the SysEx and counting up the number of Bytes. The dump finishes, I press "OK", and the program locks up. I have to use the Task Manager to End it. I also tried this using the "Save Dump directly to file" option. In this case, it saves to the file with no problem. When I try to load it to view it, again it locks up and has to be Ended with the Task Manager.
Any ideas?
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Jamie OConnell
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #1 on: Dec 12th, 2002, 3:21am » |
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Are you sure the program is locking up? It takes a very long time for the RichEdit control to format large dumps. We should probably add an hourglass and/or progress meter here.
What OS are you using?
P.S. Are you the same Stephen Kay who did the Karma? If so, I met you when you visited Cakewalk a few years ago.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 12th, 2002, 3:43am by Jamie OConnell » |
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--Jamie
Music is its own reward.
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StephenKay
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #2 on: Dec 14th, 2002, 8:13pm » |
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Hi Jamie,
Yes, it's me  Are you still working for CakeWalk, or just working on this?
Anyway, I like your program - As you may remember, I'm mainly a Mac guy, so what I'm trying to do at the moment is use my PC (P4, 1.9gHz, Windows 2000 Pro) to receive some large SysEx dumps from my KARMA Mac Program so that I can analyze what is being sent out.
The problems I'm having all seem to be related to rather large dumps (> 70k or more).
Yes, you were correct, I wasn't waiting long enough. However, as you surmised, a progress thermometer is almost a necessity here, I would say. It actually takes about 8 minutes (!) for the SysEx window to yield control back to the program and display one of these large dumps. For all practical purposes, it seems that program has “locked up”.
BTW, If I click on the edge of the SysEx window with one of these large dumps showing and attempt to enlarge the window, it turns completely gray and then waits for 15 seconds or so before anything happens. Likely as not, it didn’t grow to the size I wanted, and I have to do it again, and wait again.
Let me give you an example of what’s happening. I select “Receive Manual Dump”, and dump a single item (let’s say it’s a Korg Karma program, or combi, or GE). For example, a single GE is 2452 Bytes. It receives this correctly, says 2452 Bytes Received, I click OK and it displays it nearly instantly. So far so good.
However, I then try to dump a Bank of Progrs, Combis, or other things – let’s use KARMA Templates for an example since I have the data in front of me. A Template Bank is 68038 Bytes. I set up to receive the Manual Dump, send the Bank, and it shows “21831424 Bytes Received” when it is completed. Click OK and it takes 8 minutes to display.
Furthermore, here’s something else weird: let’s say I don’t have the SysEx window open, just the Monitor Input Window, and I have it set to NOT display the contents of SysEx Messages. If I dump a Templates bank at this point, I see a single System Exclusive Start Message (256 Bytes) followed by a long string of Continue messages (256 Bytes) ending with a single SysEX End Message of less than (or equal to) 256 Bytes (as you would expect). If I dump the same bank of Templates with the SysEx Window open, in the Monitor Input Window I get a bunch of SysEx Start messages interspersed with the Continue messages (which of course is not correct).
After receiving one of these large dumps, the program is whackified. I clear the window, reset to “Receive Manual Dump”, send a short 2452 Byte message, and it tells me “839680 Bytes Received”. If I quit the program and relaunch, it works again (for relatively short messages).
Maybe MIDI-OX is not really intended for this sort of lengthy sysex receiving and analysis. If not, do you know of any other programs I could use for this?
Best regards,
Stephen
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| « Last Edit: Dec 14th, 2002, 8:16pm by StephenKay » |
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Jamie OConnell
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #3 on: Dec 16th, 2002, 1:04am » |
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Well yeah, I'm still at Cakewalk (doing SONAR). This thing is more of a hobby. Good to run into you again I've been pretty impressed with everything I have seen regarding the KARMA.
Anyway, it sounds like you are experiencing some rather unusual problems. I have actually already added a progress bar for that view, but it's not out yet. Still, it seems that something is wrong regarding your dumps.
Quote:However, I then try to dump a Bank of Progrs, Combis, or other things – let’s use KARMA Templates for an example since I have the data in front of me. A Template Bank is 68038 Bytes. I set up to receive the Manual Dump, send the Bank, and it shows “21831424 Bytes Received” when it is completed. Click OK and it takes 8 minutes to display.
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21 MB?! I have never seen anything remotely like this. I regularly dump 200K+ banks and it always reports it correctly. Well, now that I have a reliable MIDI interface it does anyway. I am running on Windows XP and using an Edirol UM-880 8 port device. So far it has been very solid -- good timing, good drivers and handles SysEx correctly. I had a lot of trouble with some other (particularly USB) MIDI devices, particularly with SysEx handling. What are you using for a MIDI interface? If your program is sending data fairly quickly, you might want to increase the number and/or size of the buffers to ensure that no data gets dropped: SysEx view SysEx | Configure... I set mine to 64 buffers of 256 bytes (both input and output). If your messages are larger than that typically, you could try increasing the buffer size to contain a full message. Another thing you can do to shorten processing is to turn off [ ] Show F0-F7 in colored text
Quote:| Furthermore, here’s something else weird: let’s say I don’t have the SysEx window open, just the Monitor Input Window, and I have it set to NOT display the contents of SysEx Messages. If I dump a Templates bank at this point, I see a single System Exclusive Start Message (256 Bytes) followed by a long string of Continue messages (256 Bytes) ending with a single SysEX End Message of less than (or equal to) 256 Bytes (as you would expect). If I dump the same bank of Templates with the SysEx Window open, in the Monitor Input Window I get a bunch of SysEx Start messages interspersed with the Continue messages (which of course is not correct). |
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That does sound strange. I haven't seen it, but I'll try to reproduce. The code just looks at the first and last bytes of the buffer to determine if it's a Full (has both F0 ... F7), Start (Just F0...), Continue (Neither F0 or F7), or End (just F7) SysEx message. So it sounds like it is seeing a lot of buffers that Start with F0, but don't end with F7 (unless there's another bug).
Quote:| BTW, If I click on the edge of the SysEx window with one of these large dumps showing and attempt to enlarge the window, it turns completely gray and then waits for 15 seconds or so before anything happens. Likely as not, it didn’t grow to the size I wanted, and I have to do it again, and wait again. |
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I certainly don't experience any sort of delay like that with large dumps -- resizing the view only takes a second or less. I'm assuming your dumps are actually 68K not 21MB. The RichEdit control we used for those 2 window panes is very flexible, but it seems to have trouble with huge amounts of data. Still, that seems like too long.
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| « Last Edit: Dec 16th, 2002, 1:06am by Jamie OConnell » |
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--Jamie
Music is its own reward.
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machina
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #4 on: Oct 27th, 2004, 7:44pm » |
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Hi there,
I'm having nearly identical problems to this dumping large sysex files from an Elektron Machinedrum. Was this ever resolved or the source of the problem found? It works fine for smaller dumps (like individual kits/patterns in the machinedrum) - but it appears to die with the full dumps... and i've left it going for more than 10-15 mins trying to see if anything would appear, but it doesn't and i've always assumed that it had crashed until reading this bug report.
I've noticed that if you monitor the processes in the task manager in windows (2000), the midi-ox process (can't remember exactly what it's called) is using heaps and heaps of memory and keeps growing very rapidly - i have 1gig ram and it sometimes gets pretty close to hitting this (900 meg used by this process) - this seems wrong. Perhaps there is a memory leak somewhere?
any help/advice would be much appreciated... if you need more info from me, please leyt me know...
thanks
Johann
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StephenKay
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #5 on: Oct 27th, 2004, 7:58pm » |
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Actually, I was doing this again recently and discovered that it worked a lot better after I increased the size of the buffers (Options > Configure Buffers) to something like 400 512Byte buffers. Sorry I can't be more exact, I use it infrequently and that was several weeks ago. Good luck!
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Jamie OConnell
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Re: Problems w/ Large SysEx Dumps
« Reply #6 on: Oct 29th, 2004, 6:33pm » |
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Part of the problem is due to the MS implementation of the RichEdit control that is used to display the data. You can also choose to write the dump directly to a file.
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--Jamie
Music is its own reward.
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