[nato]

Hi, I've been using my iBook with Garageband to record teaching sessions at my church. The average track was about 1 hr. long. I was originally using the version of GB that came with my computer (iLife '04). Well, I recently had a little computer problem and had to have the whole computer overhauled. In the process, the service center upgraded me to Tiger OS and iLife '05. Today I tried to go in and mixdown some old sessions that were 1hr. long and the new GB 2 only lets me mixdown about 33min. of any track. In fact I tried recording and the sorftware stops at about 33min. everytime. Is there anyway to lengthen the time allowed on a track? I've tried everything in the help manual and no luck. I've got about two months worth of lectures that'll be shot if I can't fix this.

[corporatedemon]

Have you extended the out point on the timeline to give you more song length to work with? It's a little purple arrow that looks like this:

[nato]

Yeah tried that already. It's at max. The max time is a little less than half of the old garage band. I ran into time problems with the old GB but not this short. Any other thoughts?

[Randman]

Either record it in 2 segments and join together later on, or revert to an older version of GB. Also, send Apple a request/bug form about it so maybe it can be changed back in future releases.

[corporatedemon]

Also, since you've been recording so much, are you sure you aren't just low on memory?

[nato]

Low on memory or storage? I've got 1.25gig. memory and about 10 free gigs of HD space.
I tried reverting to the older viersion of GB. It still kept comiing up GB2. Thanks for the ideas.

[analogika]

The problem is that GarageBand (like its bigger sibling Logic) is, at heart, a sequencer, not an audio recording program. This means that it's measure-based, rather than time based.

Result: Maximum recording time is determined by number of MEASURES, not by anything else.

Create a new song, and set tempo to 40 bpm instead of the default 129 bpm. You will now be able to record 33 min x 3 = 100 minutes. If you set the time signature to 6/4 time, you get an extra two beats per measure, meaning your maximum time increases by half again to almost three hours.

Note: You must do this when you CREATE the NEW song. Changing this info on an existing song will apparently not work, for whatever reason.

[DarwinX]

Originally Posted by analogika

analogika

Very interesting tip. I can't wait to try it out! Thanks!

[nato]

Thanks for that suggestion! Good news. I was able to go into the old recordings and change the BPM down to 40 and now I'm able to access the full tracks! Thank you so much.

[dbratspis@comcast.net]

Very interesting information indeed. I will make those BPM changes and see what happens
I am a audio tech providing audio support for corporate meetings. I have been using GarageBand ver 1.1 with varying success rates to record the live meetings for later use(only spoken word). Yesterday the meeting lasted all day. It was broken up into 9 parts the longest and the first part of the day lasting over 1 hour and 16 minutes. Well the program got sluggish, then meters started reacting slow then after 1 hour and 11 minutes it happened. Dead stop. It really wasn't a problem because we were doing a DAT back up. I also noticed through out the day my timeline curser would move from the center of the record window to the far right end after 6 minutes and 30 seconds every time. So today I did the search to see what I could do to fix the problem and found your post. I am using a G4 PowerBook with 1.25 of Ram and recording to a separate fire wire hard drive which runs at 5400 spin speed. After the first session in which it totally stopped running and before the second started I turned monitor off and hoped for an improvement. None was noticed. Then after the fourth session I got rid of the M Audio Transit USB audio interface and went directly to line in to my notebook. There was a nominal improvement but still not at a comfortable level. I at least got rid of the occasional red cursor but it still was not a comfortable feeling. I have done all the things in the help section of GB to get the best performance from the program but still no success. My BPM was at 120 so I will implement your suggestion and lower it. Any other thoughts of how to get to the point of comfort with the program?

[analogika]

dbratspis,

Which version of OS X are you using? Versions prior to 10.3 Panther were flaky with regard to audio.

Also, on your hard drive, do you have at least the free space for the recording (5 MB per minute mono) PLUS at least one gigabyte free?

[dbratspis@comcast.net]

I am using Ver. 10.3.9 My external hard drive holds 80 gigs in which 65 gigs is available. After I do a project and hand it over to the client I wait a few months before deleting the files. . Since I am comfortable with the GB interface I did a little research to see if GB 2 would work any better. From what I read it also is a processor hog.
I might have to switch programs (Pro tools LE) so I can achieve a comfort level when doing these projects. That would be costly indeed. ProTools LE which comes with M audios various audio interfaces now requires 10.4 and an external hard drive that spins at 7200. I would have to pony up around $1000 bucks for everything. I have not done any further research to see if people using that set up into a laptop have any problems
I also have dabbled with Audacity but primarily use that as a MP3 or WAV conversion program. I don't like the recording interface and I don't think it records the high quality audio files like aiff. Four times a year I record a large community band in which I do a little editing and turn the performance into CDs for them to have. So I want to use the highest quality record I can. That's how using my laptop and GB got me started. Since then I have used GB for a few corporate clients to record meetings. Not a lot but if it continues I want to find a solution to my problem so I can have peace of mind when dealing with paying clients. If I cant stop the program from hanging up I will be forced to spend a grand. It might recoup itself in two years. I would rather get GB to work for me. Thanks