[Steinway]

Single page mode here, and not a setlist.
And one more difference from Ketil's settings: always show title bar is off in my case.

[Zubersoft]

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to reproduce this in my controlled environment. I just went through around 500 songs, and have not seen this problem. It sounds like it's pretty intermittent though. Ketil - how long were you using the app typically before a black page occurred? Am I going to have to turn through pages for hours before seeing one most likely? If you guys can come up with any semi-reliable way to reproduce the problem, please let me know.

Steinway - I've been looking everywhere for the file you sent me to test with before, and I can't locate it. Can you send me another file you know has exhibited this problem? I think I'll have more luck if I do that, as I believe you are using larger PDFs with more pages, whereas a lot of the PDFs I'm testing with are only a few pages (although when I'm actually using the app to play piano, I'm often loading songs with 30+ pages).

Thanks,
Mike

[Steinway]

I'll send you another file today. But I don't believe my problematic files are necessarily very large - the one which had a black page yesterday were 14 pages long, and 1.6 MB. I'm also using MSP quite a lot right now, maybe 3-4 hours every day, but I usually don't need to wait that long before getting a black page (in the rare cases that I do get one). I have several times got a black page almost immediately after starting up MSP, maybe on the 4th or 5th page I have viewed.

[Ketil]

Mike,

also Single Page Display and individual files.

For me this has started a good month ago.

Since this happens seldom, and never together with a pedal,
it's certainly no show-stopper.

[Steinway]

While trying to write some annotations today, the screen started zooming in and out as soon as I got near with the S-pen. I was a bit confused about this, until I discovered the screen reacted to my wedding ring as if it were my finger tip. That is, touching the screen with the S-pen and (accidentally) my wedding ring at the same time, the tablet thought I was using two fingers. Thinking about the black screen problem, and the fact that it only seems to occur when touching the screen to turn (not when using pedals), I wondered if this could maybe have anything to do with it? Maybe if I touch the screen to turn a page, and my wedding ring is too close to the screen, MSP starts pinch zooming at the same time as turning the page, which somehow results in a black screen?
Could this be a plausible explanation somehow?

[Zubersoft]

It's certainly possible something like that happened. I'm curious if Ketil also has a ring that could have caused a similar effect. I'm still unable to reproduce this problem though, so I haven't been able to make any progress yet on fixing it.

Mike

[Ketil]

Aha!

The program hates married Norwegian men with Samsung Note-Pros and Lollipop! 

As a matter of fact I do have a ring, and use the right hand to turn pages.
Maybe we should try to take the ring of and see if that helps?

[Steinway]

Exit ring theory..? I opened a song, and this time the first page was black. That is, before I had a chance to turn a single page, either with fingers or pedals.. So I guess this can't have anything to do with actually turning the pages after all? My best guess now is that my pdf files are to blame (they are all scanned and optimized with the same settings), so I'll send you another file for testing right away (I forgot to send you the file the other day).

[Steinway]

I'm now on 1.4.7, and just got my second black page in 5 minutes.. I've only used the pedals, and haven't touched the screen (apart from actually touching the song name to open the song from the library screen).
I just wondered: I have the black page in front of me right now, and it will stay that way until I force refresh it (by turning 5 pages back, or switching to night mode etc). Is there anything I can do now that I have the black page up, that could help you decipher anything about this problem? Like reading the tablet's current memory status or anything? (how would I do that, if it's at all possible / helpful?) Do you have any ideas? I will cease practicing for a while now, so I can keep the tablet with the black page up until you get a chance to reply. I really hope we will find a solution to this soon (but I know you are working really hard on the issue, and I really appreciate your work on this!!)

[Zubersoft]

I just don't understand how, with the same exact tablet I'm using, you can get that problem to occur so regularly and I've never seen it even once. There really isn't a whole lot I think you can do on your side to help me with the problem besides maybe looking at the RAM usage on the tablet. I know how we could do that using a tool like adb, but I don't think that would be easy for you to set up unless you already installed Kies on your computer. There may be a program on the app store that could report that information, but switching between apps may cause the page to be re-rendered and fixed. Ultimately, I just need a way of reliably reproducing this problem in order to have a shot at fixing it.

Thanks,
Mike

[Skip]

Mike, are you using the 4.4 or 5.02 OS?

[Zubersoft]

5.0.2

[BRX]

I don't know if it's related to the problems mentioned in this thread.

Yesterday I had a black page during a concert for no apparent reason, too. It wasn't the pitch black one with the loading circle, though.
For me there was an error message that the first page (of a multipage chart) couldn't be loaded. Turning pages had no effect.

After reloading the setlist, I was working from, the page displayed correctly again. I'm on Marshmallow on a Sony Z4 tablet and had an Airturn Duo connected (but not used).

I think (with absolute no technical authority and knowledge :-) ) that all the problems somehow relate to memory/RAM of the Android OS and conflicts with other apps and their remnants. So to be on the cautious side I'll reboot my tablet before important gigs and will only load MSP.

It might be interesting if those black pages still occur if other users do this as well.

[Steinway]

I don't know if this information will be useful, but anyway:

Just experienced a black screen (first time since my last post). Minimized MSP, installed and started a small app called "Memory Usage" (checking back to MSP first, to verify that the black screen hadn't been rerendered correctly in the meantime). With the black screen present, the memory app reports the following: Total memory: 2775 MB. Available: 516 MB. Inact: 702 MB. Act: 629 MB. Thres: 96 MB. Low: No.

The most memory consuming active apps are listed as following: Google Play Store: 273 MB, MSP: 233 MB, TouchWiz Home: 211 MB. System UI: 198 MB. Sikkerhetslagring (ie. Backup storage) / Android-system / Storage settings / ANT HAL Service: 160 MB, System UI: 125 MB, Chrome: 110 MB. The rest of the listed apps all use less than 100 MB each.

I've made a habit of restarting the tablet at least every 2 or 3 days, and always before performances. Last restart was 2 days ago, I believe. MSP had been in use for maybe 2 hours straight when the black page appeared.


By the way, I've now installed Kies on my computer, in case I can use it to run any tests the next time I get a black page. (I believe you mentioned so in an earlied post). Just tell me what to do, if there is anything I can do on my part...

[sciurius]

Wouldn't it be great if there was a possibility to switch an Android tablet to some sort of single-app mode, where every program that is not required to support a particular app is stopped and removed from memory?