Really slow Auto-save

As in the header: I’m experiencing long waiting times for Dorico’ to autosave my project. This may take >30 secs…

I’m all on SSD, so that shouldn’t be the problem. I’m running Dorico 3 with VE Pro 7 as sample host with only six instances in a 10 minute long composition, which is mostly filled with longer note values and no crazy engraving stuff.

I’m on Windows 10, 64 GB of RAM, all latest updates and drivers and all software and samples are on SSD.

How big are the project files? If you’re saving huge amounts of plug-in state data for VE Pro, that will be the limiting factor on the speed of the save. Have you considered running VE Pro in its uncoupled/unlinked mode (I forget the exact terminology it uses, I’m sorry) so that it doesn’t save out its entire state to the host every time the project is saved?

Hi Daniel,

Do you mean how big the project files are in terms of MB, or instruments used?
I have only six instances in ve pro, with each only a few instruments in them; it’s for chamber orchestra, so not a big template for a huge film soundtrack or something.
If I run VE pro in decoupled mode, then I don’t get any sound, do I, or is this something else?

Yes, how big is the project file on disk? You can certainly use VE Pro in decoupled mode, and that will both make your Dorico projects smaller on disk and make saving (and auto-saving) considerably faster.

From the VE manual:
“Decouple takes your preserved Vienna Ensemble Pro instance one essential step further than Preserve: Now your
sequencer does NOT save the information contained in your Vienna Ensemble Pro project anymore, which allows faster
saving and loading times with some 3rd party plug-ins, especially with heavy RAM usage.”

So disable the instances after everything is started, now Dorico will not save VE PRO data anymore (during autosave).
Don’t forget: Before you close and do a final save, deactivate decouple again so all VE PRO data will be saved with the project.

Hi guys,

Thanks for your input, I will change my settings for VE pro. I always thought VE pro needs to be coupled with either Cubase or Dorico, but I was wrong. Never too old to learn.

I also have very slow auto-save here. It goes up to about one minute.

Loading and saving is faster when the song is just loaded. So saving, closing Dorico, open Dorico and loading the song again shortens the saving time to a normal amount of a few seconds. But it gets slower the longer I work and after a few hours I’m back to the long saving time again. If Dorico is running playback and the saving process starts I can just wait until the song plays half through. The spinning wheel on Mac shows up and all input from the computer keyboard and mouse is blocked while saving.

I use external VST instruments but the songs I’m working on are combo arrangements (10 tracks) and the song length is about three minutes. So not really big projects and very CPU easy VSTs. The Dorico file size is below one MB. Saving a song with exactly the same instruments in Logic takes less than a half second.

I remember the slow loading times in Dorico2. As far as I remember it was going better after the Dorico3 update. Now it’s back. But I can’t say exactly when.

I’m on a High Sierra 8 core MacPro (2013) with 96GB Ram and SSDs. I can run the same songs on my 2011 MacBook Pro i7 16GB Ram Mojave without problems.
I don’t have the long saving times on the MacBook! On the MacPro I use a dongle, on the MacBook the software licenser (I have two Dorico licenses).

Can you please do Help > Create Diagnostic Report and attach the zip file that is created on your desktop to a reply here?

And also make a note of exactly the time when a slow auto-save happened.

Can’t upload the diagnostics file (File to large - error message) It’s 2.4 MB.
Anyway, I sent you (Daniel and Paul) a PM with the file. Thanks!

How long should auto-save take if things are running smoothly? I am running VEPRO 6 with 4 ports each having just two channels–one for short articulations and one for legato (Spitifre Sacconi Quartet). I find that every couple of minutes I get stopped for probably 15 seconds. It may not sound like much, but it is very distruptive. I tried running VEPRO in decoupled mode, but no change in performance. I am running a Windows 10 with 24GB RAM, samples on SSD drive. No glitches, just this periodic (but frequent) lockout. Can I change the frequency of autosave? Or even disable it?

Auto save should take about the same time as a manual save (since it basically does the same thing).

If you are getting interrupted “every couple of minutes”, what is the interval between autosaves in Preferences? Autosaving every 2 minutes seems a bit pointless. Working on large projects I usually have it set to 30 minutes or sometimes I switch if off completely. Dorico doesn’t crash “randomly” very often. If you want frequent autosaves because you are having a lot of crashes, then try to find the reason for the crashes!

Mkiz, you may not want VE Pro to save its entire state in the Dorico project each time, particularly if you’re using a standard template that you would also use for other projects. In that case you can specify that VE Pro should be decoupled or unlinked (I forget the exact terminology) in which case it won’t save its state into the Dorico project, and that will make saving and auto-saving much faster.