Auto-Chart Issues

Common problems with the Auto-Chart pipeline and how to fix them.

"Failed to load basic-pitch SavedModel"

Symptom — the run fails during the pitched (guitar / bass / keys) stage with a TensorFlow / SavedModel load error.

Root cause: stale site-packages from a different Python version (typically a Python 3.10 install left over from an old build) is shadowing the bundled 3.11 runtime.

Fix in dev builds:

1. Delete the project-local .venv (if present) and let OCTAVE recreate it on next run, or
2. Set OCTAVE_STRUM_PYTHON to the absolute path of a clean Python 3.11 with basic-pitch installed.

Fix in packaged builds:

1. Delete the cached runtime: see Python Runtime Setup for paths.
2. Re-launch OCTAVE and run Auto-Chart — the runtime is re-downloaded fresh.

The diagnostic line [strum] basic_pitch failed to load: <details> appears in the log to make this easier to identify.

convert_to_ogg() got an unexpected keyword argument …

This was a known issue fixed in v0.0.101. Update to the latest release; the override now forwards *args, **kwargs so it tracks upstream.

Demucs runs out of memory

Demucs needs ~4 GB of free RAM for stem separation. If your machine doesn't have it:

• Tick Force CPU in Settings — uses less GPU memory but takes longer.
• Provide pre-split stems instead and let OCTAVE skip Demucs entirely.

YouTube URL fails

yt-dlp rejects the URL. Common causes:

• HTTP Error 403: Forbidden / unable to download video data — YouTube changed something on their end and the installed yt-dlp is out of date. OCTAVE upgrades yt-dlp inside its Python runtime automatically (a throttled check before every URL run, plus a forced refresh-and-retry when a download is rejected), so usually just running the job again is enough. If it still fails right after an update, upstream yt-dlp hasn't caught up with YouTube yet — wait a day and retry, or download the audio yourself and pass the file in. The auto-refresh can be disabled with the OCTAVE_YTDLP_AUTO_REFRESH=0 environment variable.
• Age-restricted or region-locked video — try downloading the audio yourself and passing the file in.
• yt-dlp cache out of date — delete <user-data>/python-runtime/yt-dlp-cache/.
• No internet (offline mode is on but you didn't pre-download the audio).

"All tracks were skipped"

You unchecked every instrument in the Advanced section. Check at least one and try again.

My drums chart is empty

If the Drums instrument is checked but no drum notes appear:

• Confirm the source audio actually has drums (a cappella tracks, instrumentals without a drum kit, etc. won't produce output).
• Check the log for [strum] drum onset count: 0.
• Try a song with louder, sharper transients to confirm the pipeline works on your machine.

Where to find logs

Platform	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\octave\logs\strum-*.log
macOS	~/Library/Logs/octave/strum-*.log
Linux	~/.config/octave/logs/strum-*.log

Attach the most recent log to any bug report.