Invalid File Data

[scaomompyer]

I spent several hours last night working on a fairly big project. This morning I tried to open the file but instead received an error message saying that the file could not be opened because it contained invalid file data. I tried several methods of opening it, including opening it on another computer, but the same message popped up and no music. Is there any way to fix this or recover the file? Please help!

[Surfwhammy]

I spent several hours last night working on a fairly big project. This morning I tried to open the file but instead received an error message saying that the file could not be opened because it contained invalid file data. I tried several methods of opening it, including opening it on another computer, but the same message popped up and no music. Is there any way to fix this or recover the file? Please help!

IMPORTANT: If you get a message about NOTION 3 being able to recover the file, do not let it do the recovery, because it will overwrite the big file, and then the original stuff is gone. So, make a few copies of the big file and put them in different folders. I am going from memory on this, so it might be Digital Performer that wants to do an auto-recovery, but if NOTION 3 wants to auto-recover the file, do not let it . . .

The most likely explanation is that the number of "heavy" VSTI virtual instruments or something (which could be VST effects plug-ins) pushed the upper limit of the 32-bit application workspace that NOTION 3 uses by virtue of its being a 32-bit application . . .

It took me a while and a good bit of frustration to discover this, but if your computer is a Mac, then if you keep trying to open the file, sooner or later it probably will open . . .

When a NOTION 3 score starts getting near the upper limit of a 32-bit application workspace, quite a few odd things start happening, which includes cut, copy, and paste not working, but I never lost any files, although there were a few times when it took quite a few attempts to get a file to open . . .

Doing a cold boot might help, but mostly what worked for me was to keep trying to open the file, where most of the time NOTION 3 would crash or freeze, and sometimes I had to do a Force Quit . . .

The basic rule is that on the Mac a NOTION 3 score can handle approximately 20 to 25 "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments, and it is best to avoid using any VST effects plug-ins . . .

The best strategy is to use NOTION 3 to generate the audio for the various VSTi virtual instruments, which you record as soundbites in your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application via ReWire, and when you need more than 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments, the strategy is to create a set of synchronized NOTION 3 scores, which begin by being clones of the original NOTION 3 score (done via "Save As . . . "), where you keep track of them by using a filename suffix in the style of {"PT-1", "PT-2", . . . "PT-n"}, so the original NOTION 3 score is "Song-PT-1.notion", and the first clone is "Song-PT-2.notion", and so forth and so on . . .

Done this way, you can have as many as 500 to 1,000 "heavy" VSTi virtual instruments in a song, although depending on the DAW application, you probably need to do something similar with combining and merging tracks to create layers, since there probably are no DAW applications that actually allow one to have 500 to 1,000 tracks on the mixing board . . .

[NOTE: The strategy I use here in the sound isolation studio includes doing all the VST effects plug-in work in the DAW application, which at present is Digital Performer 7.24 (MOTU), and as a general rule I set all the NOTION 3 Mixer volume sliders to 0dB, which maps to the best and strongest recording signals in Digital Performer 7.24, which is very important, since with layering in digital music production, background noise and hiss accumulate, although unlike layering with analog magnetic tape machines there is no generational frequency response loss. The only thing I set specifically in the NOTION 3 Mixer are the panning locations for the various instruments, and this is one of the excellent features of the NOTION 3 Mixer, since it has true stereo panning controls, as contrasted to stereo balance controls, which are not at all like true stereo panning controls. In other words, I generate and position instruments with NOTION 3, but I do the mixing, producing, and mastering in the DAW application, which for all practical purposes maps essentially to an unlimited and unrestricted overall system, where I can have 500 to 1,000 instruments for a song, which in theory could extend to hundreds of thousands of instruments, although doing a typical three minute DISCO or Pop song would take several years. And for reference, I like to determine upper bounds for stuff, and based on the experiments I have done over the past two or so years, the upper bounds for what you can do with NOTION 3 and Digital Performer 7.24 are virtually mind-boggling, where at least in theory it is possible to do a surround sound version of a song where there are five full orchestras and a lot of other instruments, with all the individual notes being in constant motion within the "Spherical Sonic Landscape™", where for reference the avatar I use in this FORUM is one of the three vector planes of the Spherical Sonic Landscape, and I suppose that it might be possible to do this in Hilbert Space, which as you might know has a large but finite number of orthogonal axes, each of which perhaps could map to a distinct vector plane, although I need to ponder that for a while, since I think that it requires at least two axes to define a vector plane or "vector space", and it probably requires more than two, but so what . . . ]

In some respects, having to clone NOTION 3 scores to workaround the 32-bit application workspace limit is vastly frustrating, but the reality is that nothing does what NOTION 3 does, so the best strategy is to work within the constraints of the hardware and software, where the primary constraint is that NOTION 3 is a 32-bit application, hence its application workspace has an upper limit of 4GB, which by the time you load a bunch of "heavy" VSTI virtual instruments and their sampled sounds becomes filled very quickly . . .

And for reference, every VSTi virtual instrument is "heavy" in one way or another, although there are things you can do to make them less "heavy", where the strategy I use is to avoid having a lot of articulations, which usually maps to one articulation per instrument per staff, since the smaller the footprint of the VSTI virtual instruments, the better . . .

It also is helpful not to have any other applications running when you try to open the file . . .

I think I tried a lot of different strategies, including cold boots, warm boots, and so forth . . .

Lots of FUN!

P. S. If you are using VSTi virtual instruments, there is another strategy that might work if you are on the Mac, and it is temporarily to rename the "Instruments" folder or whatever the folder name happens to be where the sampled sounds for the VSTI virtual instruments are stored on disk. What happens in this scenario is that when NOTION 3 launches the VSTi virtual instruments, the VSTi virtual instruments do not find their sampled sound libraries, and the result is that the VSTi virtual instruments report a problem, which causes NOTION 3 to display a message about the VSTi virtual instrument not being found, but the notes are on the staves, which is the important part, and this reduces the impact on the 32-bit application workspace, at which time you can do a "Save As . . . ", where the notes are there but they are not mapped to an actual VSTi virtual instrument . . .

Once that is done, you can copy the newly created file and then close and open it, where you should be able to do a bit of cutting and copying to split the instruments over a few NOTION 3 scores . . .

Whatever the VSTi virtual instruments need to do is loaded into the NOTION 3 32-bit application workspace, so when the VSTi virtual instruments do not load anything, because they cannot find it, then there is more space available for NOTION 3 to complete reading the large file . . .

I did this a few times, and it worked for me, but after a while I realized that the problem was due to NOTION 3 being a 32-bit application and the various VSTi virtual instruments loading a bunch of stuff into the 32-bit application workspace, which for some types of sampled sound libraries happens quickly, hence the rule to limit the number of VSTi virtual instruments to 20 to 25 . . .

I have a few NOTION 3 score that have 50 VSTi virtual instruments, but they are so sensitive to everything that simply adding one more note causes everything to stop working . . .

20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments per score works nicely for me, and as noted if I need more instruments, then I clone the score and use the clone for another 20 VSTi virtual instruments, but I always keep 5 VSTi instruments the same, and I use them as reference points for the beat, chords, melody, and whatever else is useful for cues so that I know where in the song new stuff needs to go, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!