Midi export slow cubase 12-14

Hi, I have an orchestral template of about 400 tracks running Vienna ensemble, for the moment a midi export of about 10 minutes of music with locators takes about 2h to export. I have test project with the equal number of tracks with some midi data on them, no midi input, that takes 3 seconds to export. I have the midi export set to between locators and markers only. What to do or look for?

This is a know issue since Cubase 12 but it hasn’t been solved.

What used to take seconds now takes minutes and hours. It’s extremely frustrating and Steinberg should put this as one of their priorities.

The only solution I found was to open the project with an older version of Cubase such as Cubase 11, but since Cubase 14 they can’t open with previous versions anymore…

If anyone found a solution to the Slow Midi export, please let us know

Unlike Tycheth I haven’t heard of such an issue before.
Can you try to rule out the connection to Vienna Ensemble’s involvement in this by unloading the plugin(s)?
If you are allowed to you can also send me the .cpr file via private message and I can try to export the midi file on my machine. Just to check how it goes.

Here are a couple of examples from the Steinberg forum, if you look around on the internet you’ll find some similar questions, no valid answers though…

What I found to be of a little help is to remove all the midi tracks you don’t use and leave the active midi only, that’ll save definitely some time.

Also, on the other forums or questions raising the buffer to the max seems to handle cpu a little better, even it that’s nothing to do with Midi…

And lastly, but way more difficult to handle correctly is to move the midi tracks to the closest bar possible at the beginning of the project…

I really hope Steinberg look into this,

For composers who rely on exporting on a daily basis for orchestrating, it’s really important

My last name is not Steinberg but if somebody sends me a project that gives them such a head-ache I am willing to counter-check how it goes on my system (and of course test around a bit if it doesn’t go well).

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Thank you Johnny,

That’s up to gcamp to decide, obviously.

On my side, I did confirm the issue repeated itself on different cubase platforms, on different computers, through my peers.

The issue is real, I’m afraid. And for us that deal with large templates, it seems like the issue is on how Cubase analyzes an empty midi track and still lags over it for almost like a minute per track…

With Cubase 11, it didn’t happen and midi exporting was done in. seconds, even with huge templates.

Sure, I have test version of the project, it´s to big to upload here, around 140 mb. How would you like it sent?

Thanks for quoting that question.

For the record, here is the solution we found:
We had “export inserts” checked. After unchecking it was lightning fast.

Only check: “Export Markers” & “Export Locator Range” and you should be fine.

Thx for your response, unfortunately I wrote i my top post I have only markers and locators checked. :slight_smile:

Thank you, I had seen the solution before too, but mine was also unchecked and it still lags over several minutes.

As I said, I think the issue is in the empty midi tracks, that Cubase seems to take forever to analyze and discard for the midi exporting.

But when you use a 200+ template, you can’t afford to delete one by one the unused tracks just for midi exporting.

This is exhausting, to say the least.

Deleting tracks is not an option, I have all the music for a job in single project, so some songs have midi data on others do not.

Deleting tracks is not an option, I have all the music for a job in single project, so some songs have midi data on tracks, others do not.

Can you use the file sharer https://www.file.io/ ?

Sry for late reply, I found a solution that works, not perfect though. I Have all my music in a master folder and by simply removing all data that I am not exporting, in this case all the other songs outside the locators, the export takes 5-10minutes which is acceptable but not perfect, So after exporting the midi file I just go back in the history to readd all the other songs/ midi data.

So basically, a huge amount of midi data, in this case 400+ tracks seems to affect the time of the midi export even though the data is outside the locators. It means that midi data outside the locators is still being handled by the export function instead of being ignored , it should be a solvable problem for Steinberg.

Hope this workaround can help others!

Thank you for your comment! Do you also erase the tracks? Or only the Midi info?

I also think it’s a solvable problem…but since Cubase 12 it’s been like this…I don’t know how often Steinberg actually looks at the forum but I certainly hope they’ll manage to realize this annoying bug is still happening…

I do not erase the tracks only the midi data, and it seems that the further ahead in time in the project, the longer it take to export. There is somethings strange happening behind the scenes, it feels like to export midi function is taking a lot unnecessary things into consideration.

Also I can see that the project window is jumping between a lot of different places in the project during the export, parts of the project outside the locators.