Modartt user forum » Pianoteq user forum » Pianoteq standalone : where are located "recently played" Midi files ?
Hello,
I just discovered this great feature of Pianoteq standalone.
Thus I was able to recover improvisations that I played two months ago, and that I had thought lost forever...
The user manual being rather brief at this regard, I would like to know :
1°) Where are located "Recently played on the keyboard" files on my computer (Vista pro) ?
2°) How many files can be stored this way ?
Thanks !
On my system (Win XP) they are kept in a single file named "recent.mid" located in the top-level folder, the one you specify in the General Tab of the Options popup, in the Folders field. There are 19 visible entries being kept, consisting of more or less consecutive playing. The file is updated only when you exit Pianoteq (to my knowledge) older entries being thrown away.
Hope this helps...
On my system (Win XP) they are kept in a single file named "recent.mid" located in the top-level folder, the one you specify in the General Tab of the Options popup, in the Folders field.
Yes, for me it's C:\Users\myname\AppData\Roaming\Modartt\Pianoteq\recent.mid
There are 19 visible entries being kept, consisting of more or less consecutive playing. The file is updated only when you exit Pianoteq (to my knowledge) older entries being thrown away.
It seems to be more than 19 for me (24).
I opened the file with Reaper: more than one hour, with all my pieces separated by a burst of PC = 0 and All notes off for 16 MIDI channels.
I've just to split this big file if I want to retrieve and edit one of my little pieces. Great !
Hope this helps...
Bien sûr que ça m'a aidé, merci Gilles !
I am an improviser and this feature is very useful. HOWEVER. I definitely have a feature request! I have myself, prior to using pianoteq written a piece of software which saves everything I play in a time/dated MIDI format 0 file.
I would love a way to save everything I play. Is there any possibility of adding something similar to pianoteq? It would be wonderful if there were check box to save these pieces non destructively, and even in separate files. As a programmer myself, I know this is a relatively easy task. Having written something similar myself. However what I wrote cannot yet be used with pianoteq for two reasons:
1. It will not run properly on windows 7 : (
2. Although it does have echoing, it was not designed as a system level pass-through device (my fault there!) and therefore introduces some detectable latency)
I thought of writing a powershell script to back up the recent.mid file, and even thought I could write a piece of software that analyses this file and breaks it up into individual pieces. The problem with this, is that it seems that pianoteq only saves the most recent files, as it appears, to me right now. Although from the entries I've seen here, It seems ambiguous just how many are saved.
I haven't been using my copy quite enough to tell... although I'm really enjoying it and I'm only a few days away at most from making it my #1 piano sound generator. I have a Yamaha CLP 880 with a heavily modified keyboard, and although Yamaha's sampled piano is not too bad, Pianoteq is much much better--wonderful. On my toshiba laptop with a quad core p4, and running 64 bit win7, I have no problem whatsoever running pianoteq and maxing out all of the resolution settings! The sound with everything "turned up to eleven," as per Spinal Tap, is AMAZING!
Can't wait to upgrade to the pro version. My sweet wife bought me this wonderful program--the Stage version--for my birthday, because she knew I have been lusting after it for a while. Probably since it was at version 2.0
Anyway, I'm not sure If something like this might be an added feature, but as I already give pianoteq 10 out of 10 stars, if such a feature were to be added, I'd have to turn my stars up to 11 as well!!
My older program (which was called "MidiArchiver" and which I think is still available in a WinME 32 bit and WinNT/XP unicode version, on tucows, although its been a long time since I checked) ... in any case, it makes files like YY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.mid and saves a new file when you stop playing for a settable number of seconds. It was wonderful to use for the last 8 years, alas, it just doesn't work properly on win7, or else, I was thinking of using some kind of MIDI port splitter, and just sending a duplicate stream out somehow.
I suppose I could still do that, If I wanted to use any XP machine I have around and some kind of MIDI over LAN type solution.
I'd really prefer and think it grand if I Modart would add this very simple feature though.
Not that this would sway anyone over there, but I'd buy the pro version straight away if that feature was added--and probably in addition to the stage version I have instead of upgrading (because that would give me six units I could install--some just for listening, which my wife would quite love)
Also, I have not investigated the addons interface as of yet, but is this a public API? Is it possible for me to add this functionality to pianoteq myself?
On the other hand, I have never written a system level wdm MIDI driver, so perhaps this is an opportunity to stretch my programming ability, by writing a low latency pass through with its own ports perhaps, that saves time/date stamped midi files.
Last time, it was quite a lot of work getting everything just right, so I'm not really looking forward to it, considering all the other projects I have on my plate at the moment!
It would be interesting to have Pianoteq have to possibility of capturing all midi to files. Linux users can use "jack-smf-recorder" to capture a midi stream (simply route your keyboard to this application using Jack, easily automated with a script when you start Jack).
Other midi functionality which would be nice to have with Pianoteq:
- Playlists for midi file playback
- Output of midi from Pianoteq. On linux this could be a jack midi port.
It would be interesting to have Pianoteq have to possibility of capturing all midi to files.
interesting about Linux. Long ago I asked Guillaume if he was considering releasing the Linux version that I was quite certain they at modart were certainly nerdy enough to have already. Funny thing he explained the support issues regarding all the sound systems that can be running silultaneously on Linux. By that I took him to mean it was unlikely that they would release a Linux version. But a few months later they did! Makes me feel like I put the idea in his head (but probably they were already planning it!)
Regarding the played buffer. It's what one would expect from such a program. In Logic, I hear such a buffer exists, so it does not surprise me that they sort of copied that format.
As per my post, I know how easy it is to implement this solution. I even wrote my original archiver to buffer on the fly, using a temporary file, in case of a crash (because midi files as per the standard don't support appending--although, a format zero file CAN be appended even though it is an unofficial solution, because format 0 files only have one track. However I didn't bother doing this, when it was simple to use my own data file and the convert at the last minute after all playing had stopped.
I had the file part of my program working almost right away, but spent a month or two polishing up the very simple interface, building a help file, and other such things, so It would be accepted on tucows. I'm not sure anyone ever downloaded it, I've never even checked.
It wouldbe a wonderful feature, though, but I can run my existing archiver on an XP machine and use some kind of midi port splitter, which I'm sure exists, although I haven't looked yet, and some kind of midi over lan solution. But still..... I think everyone would appreciate that feature. It's the kind of thing that you end up loving when it saves your bacon a few times.
Still, if I pay attention to what I'm doing, the buffer is good enough, but I really did like the piece of mind that i had so if I sit down at the keyboard spontaneously at 3am, it just saves what I play. I have a backed up archive now of every thing I have ever played since 2004.