Why does my workflow completely break Reaper?

[Arnar]

I am running into some weird memory problems when working with midi.
I do these large pre-production sessions when I am working on music.

I am so used to doing this with mainly audio , using up to 10.000 files in one project. But when using this method with midi it breaks Reaper and it uses up to 12-15 gig in memory for a small project.

Here is my session overview.

7 minute session.

2 Midi tracks.

Midi track 1 plays the bassline and is one continuous "glued" midi file.
Midi track 2 is the main midi I am working on and also a "glued" continuous file.

So initially , 2 x 7 minute midi files.

Now I start editing .

When I edit I create variations of Midi track 2 and render as new take.
I do this until I have 36 variations of the original in total.

This brings me to a total of 37 x 7 minute midi files.

Midi track 1 , still contains 1 x midi file.
Midi track 2 now contains 36 files imploded into one item.

I keep the edited midi file in one imploded item so I can make a cut where I feel it needs a variation and switch to another take - or another "variation.

Now, as soon as I start to cut , move, edit in any way the midi files it starts to eat massive memory until it just chokes out.

Even a simple cut takes forever and this one editing operation seem to add a large amount of more memory consumed.

I realize that 36- 7 minute files creates a large number of midi items but it just seems weird that reaper cant handle that as It seems trivial compared to my huge audio projects?

It does not feel right that I cant run 2 midi channels,even with 36 tracks. ?
How do people do large orchestral midi arrangements if this is not a bug ?

I cant envision a large midi project working , I have done mostly audio until now , I am trying to use more midi in my project but its not working as it stands.

Is there a way to make this easier on reaper?

I am using Reaper native midi rather then importing as a MIDI file, dont know if that causes such a problem , I havent done extensive testing using MIDI files but i seem to recollect i ran into the same issue with non native midi files.

Personally I feel like this must be a bug , cant believe a few midi files kill reaper ?

---

After a bit of testing , it seems that if I use the MIDI file format , this is not a problem.

Any thoughts ?

[Arnar]

So I decided to set Reaper to MIDI file format and opened the project.

I now want to convert the native midi to .mid format.

I get rid of all the splits and make it one 7 min file.

Ram is now back to 4gb
.
I take one 7 minute item and glue to make it write a .mid file.
It then crashes trying to glue the file.

So I tried exporting project midi , but a 7 min file becomes 1.8mb midi file and just crashes on import ?

Why does the midi file get so large ?

At this point i am stuck , cant get these midi files out , thye shoudl be a few kb not 1.8 mb ?

[Arnar]

Its also confusing that when reaper is set to .mid format , and I export an item , it will be much larger then when I import this item and glue it ?

I have also found that some files will export as 1.8 mb and some as 30 kb ? Not sure what could account for that difference ?