Crash on MIDI Export

[cjayconrod]

I'm running Waveform Pro 13.3.13 on a M3 MacBookPro, and it poof crashes every time I try to export MIDI files out of a project. Is this a known bug, or am I doing something wrong? I didn't have this problem on previous versions of the program.

[Watchful]

I haven't had any issues on the Windows side. I'm going off memory here, but the way I handle this is as follows:

1. Ensure the MIDI track is enabled (and not muted); I do this for each track I want exported.
2. Select all the clips in each track and MERGE them into one track
3. Change the MIDI channel of the clip to a unique ID (1 through 16)
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 for each track you're exporting
5. Select the track(s) you want to export into a single MIDI file
6. Use the File... menu at the bottom of your Waveform screen
7. Select the Render submenu
8. Ensure your output is a MIDI file, and you have deselected "Pass Through Plugins"
9. Very important step: change the destination on your hard drive AND rename the file to something more useful to you
10. Render away!

If I miss any of these steps (and so I'm again sorry I'm going off memory), the process fails...especially step 9. I send everything to a dedicated MIDI export folder and I always rename the file away from Waveform's default. If I don't, I either get nothing rendered or the file is gibberish.

I'm sure you're doing something similar, so I apologize if the steps seems obvious to you. This isn't well documented though, so I'm hopeful it helps others.

But messing up one of these steps usually just aborts the process or renders a bad file--it doesn't cause a crash.

Following these steps on the other hand has been extremely reliable for me; Waveform doesn't make exporting tracks as MIDI particularly simple, but it's pretty solidly implemented.

[pough]

I'm using the same version of WF on a PC and i have exported MIDI recently without any problem. There is no bug that I am aware of. It might be helpful if you provided a lot more detail on the steps you're taking so we can try to do the same thing. There are a number of ways that MIDI export can be done and we might not be doing the same thing as you. We also don't know if you have tested multiple scenarios or just the one. The crash might be related to a plugin. It might be related to the place you're exporting to. It might be happening for a specific way of doing it but not others...

[cjayconrod]

I am a former PC user. Been working with Waveform since Tracktion 2. Never had a problem with MIDI exporting. I've since switched to Mac, as I said in my original post, and now it's crashing. I've have attempted to turn off "Render Automatically," so I can adjust settings, but it continues rendering. When I finally hit the "Render" button, it gives a "Export complete" message but freezes and eventually poof crashes, with no new MIDI files created in the "Exported" folder, which is the set destination. I have tried it on multiple projects, each using different VST plugins, so I don't believe a specific plugin is the problem.

[Watchful]

Out of curiosity, have you tried saving the export somewhere else, and NOT in the "Exported Items" folder? That would give me trouble as well, in the past. Try exporting the file to your desktop--that's the only thing I saw in your message that seemed different from what I do.

[cjayconrod]

Out of curiosity, have you tried saving the export somewhere else, and NOT in the "Exported Items" folder? That would give me trouble as well, in the past. Try exporting the file to your desktop--that's the only thing I saw in your message that seemed different from what I do.

Just tried that. It crashes before I can even select a new location.

[Watchful]

Yikes. This definitely sounds like a ticket to Tracktion's support folks.

[pough]

I've have attempted to turn off "Render Automatically," so I can adjust settings, but it continues rendering.

If you're not able to turn this setting off in the dialog, it can be changed in the settings file. I can't tell you where the settings are on a Mac*, but there is a file called Waveform.settings and it includes this line:

<VALUE name="autoRender" val="1"/>

Changing the val to "0" should turn it off. Make sure you edit it while Waveform is not running and make sure you save a backup just in case.

I think that if nothing else, making sure that it's not auto-rendering will allow you to do better tests.

* Go to Settings -> File Locations -> General and hit the "Show settings folder" button.