Couldn’t find a previous post on this so please excuse if I missed it.
I’m confused as to what the Media Player accesses to play a MIDI file (working in Cantabile 3). I take it that it’s not accessing Windows Media Player, but there seem to be some quirky issues that I could probably work with if I had a better understanding of how Media Player works. Is there any documentation about it?
Example quirky issue: I keep about 20 songs in a playlist, and pick and choose a MID file to play along with. At times after a couple of songs, the drum track (MIDI Ch 10) will no longer play. Any other song I then switch to also has no drum track. All other instruments play fine, but no drums. I minimize Cantabile 3 and switch to Sonar, access the same song(s) and drum track plays fine.
I have several other oddities with Media Player that I could note in future posts, but would like to troubleshoot this one, which is annoying.
ALSO… does a playlist make a copy of a MID file, or does it always “get” the file from the file folder location each time?
Cantabile’s media player plays the MIDI file directly with it’s own internal MIDI sequencer - it’s not using Windows Media Player or any other external things.
Not sure why the drum track would stop, but it probably depends what you’re routing the media player to and perhaps something in one of the previous songs includes a MIDI message that either sends program change on ch 10, or some other event (volume cc7 perhaps) that’s shutting down that channel. Basically I’d need more information on your setup and perhaps copies of the files so I can try to reproduce it to know for sure.
Cantabile doesn’t take a copy of the MIDI file - it reloads it from the original location everytime.
Your comment “…perhaps something in one of the previous songs includes a MIDI message that either sends program change on ch 10, or some other event (volume cc7 perhaps) that’s shutting down that channel.”, I think is liklely what is happening. The problem is how best to reset all MIDI channels from within Cantabile 3, if that is even possible. I could access an external MIDI “reset” utility after a problem occurs, but was hoping there might be a Media Player option to reset all MIDI channel parameters (e.g. program, volume, pan, etc.) before playing the next song, which essentially is how Sonar can be setup to reset all MIDI parameters before stating to play a MIDI file. Any thoughts?
Just to clarify… does it do the reloads at startup or when a playlist song is accessed?
Reason I ask is that I started playing a MIDI file in Media Player, didn’t like a track so minimized Cantabile 3 and opened the MIDI file in Sonar, made a change and saved it. Then went back into Cantabile and selected the playlist MIDI file again, but it wouldn’t play. I then deleted the playlist entry and added it back into the playlist to get it to work again. Not sure if that’s how it’s designed to work or if I’m doing something else wrong.