I have autosave set to one minute and a maximum of five backups.
When I open a session I will see an expected 5 backup copies, the last one is rarely the most recent so I have to check the date modified. When I open the most recent it is indeed not always the most recent. Sometimes it can take quite a while to open large sessions so this is a massive headache, can anyone shed any light on this?
Some other questions:
Is it possible to have the backups name themselves the next number in the series indefinitely so perhaps the 5 in the block of autosaves is 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41 that way I never have to see which of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are the newest?
This isn’t really related to the OP but I have been wondering, when I open Cubase and the window prompts me to open templates or recent files why do the recent files have absolutely nothing to do with my literal most recent files?
Right now my experience of Cubase is that my recent files on the prompt are inaccurate, that the number associated with a backup is incorrect and that I cannot even trust that the latest modified backup according to Windows is correct. It’s driving me insane.
I’m not at my PC right now to confirm but, I’m pretty sure that my latest auto save file (.bak) is always the lowest numbered (if not, then it’s always the highest numbered). I too have it set to (5) max auto saves so there is never more than xxx-05.bak files shown.
There is no way to get Cubase to name them higher than the number you have set in the auto save preferences.
As far as files showing in the recent list (this could be related to your auto save issue too)…
Sound like you may be saving projects and their associated audio pools to a common file location. That is going to mess things up.
Make sure that you always save each project to it’s own folder location. This is easy when creating a new project by making sure you have the “prompt for project location” box checked in the Steinberg Hub.
Correcting existing projects to be saved in their own folder is a bit more complicated and will necessitate using the “backup project” function for as many times as you have intermixed projects. Then, if you want, going into the project pools to clean out the audio files that are not associated with that project.
FYI… Auto save and backup project are two different things. Auto saved files create the .bak files you see in the project folder. This is a auto saved project file similar to the .CPR file.
A backup project let’s you rename the project and save it to a different folder. It will be saved with a audio pool that is not associated to the original project
99.99% of the time the .bak files are used for session recovery from a Cubase (or entire system) crash.
If you are using them for any other purpose I’d strongly recommend you rethink your Project & File management workflow - .bak files shouldn’t be something you regularly open.
Indeed, though they can be used for it if you remember a bunch of caveats, .bak files are not intended to replace saving by the user. Cubase autosave isn’t really implemented that way, and there are other commands for the purpose. Raino has his math wrong too. It’s 100%.
File>Save New Version is what is recommended to use for the project file
File>Backup Project is what is recommended to use for backing up the project file along with all media, including media outside the project folder.
Your own file backup regime should of course should be in place too.
The reason auto-save is configurable (which possibly gives the wrong impression that it’s a convenience feature) is that in certain circumstances saving takes a long time, during which the UI stops responding. so it’s important to be able to lower the frequency of saves.
I have had times when Cubase says I have a backup newer than the current session even though I save all the time, perhaps the computer sat idle for a while and Cubase continued saving backups, anyways, I have in the past naively said yes to open the backup and continued working but Cubase will then proceed to save that as an entirely new session, and eventually it may happen again each with 5 bak files. Then it becomes a nightmare.
I’m new to Cubase, would you be willing to elaborate on this?
I’m messing around and it appears that I will need to, in whatever directly I’m saving my sessions, to manually create my own folder for the session and then to, under File, “back up Project”. I suppose I could do this for all sessions I want such done to, then delete whatever folders that remain (I have for whatever reason many untitled folders there).
Is there a way to automatically create the folder for sessions to be saved within or rather it appears you must manually type it from the hub under create folder before clicking on create session?
Well… I guess you are saying that you do have several projects stored in one folder. If that is correct, then that means you have a project folder that contains several differently named .cpr files and subfolders named “Audio” & “Images”. These subfolders contain files that are (in some sense) associated with all of the project .cpr files.
To correct this mess this is how I would “fix” things and get them all into their own project folder. You will need to do this for each project .cpr:
1 - Using the computers “file explorer”, I would create a “Master” folder location in which all separate project folders will reside.
2 - Still using file explorer, I would create subfolders in the master folder named for each project (you could do this in Cubase during step 4 but I prefer this method so that the folders are already there).
3 - Now, in Cubase, open a project by clicking on the .cpr.
4 - Once the project is open I would do a File>Backup Project and save it to the already created folder (or, like I previously mentioned, you could create the folder during this step).
The result of this will be a project .cpr in its own folder and “Audio” & “Images” subfolders that will contain all of the files from the intermixed folders. But, the files in these subfolders will no longer be associated with any of the intermixed projects.
Now it is your choice to clean up these subfolders or leave them be. My opinion is to clean up the “Audio” subfolder so that it will only contain the audio files pertaining to that project. I would do this as follows:
5 - Open the pool by pressing ctrl+p.
6 - Right click on the “Audio” folder and choose “Remove unused media” and send it to “Trash”.
7 - Make sure the project is working properly.
8 - If it does work properly, then I would go back to the pool and right click on the “Trash” folder and choose “Empty Trash”. Beware that these files will not be sent to the recycle bin for recovery. They will be trashed forever.
Unfortunately you will have to do this for each project you want to separate from the intermixed folder.
BTW… for future projects you would save them in the “Master” folder created in step 1. Put that location into the Steinberg Hub field to the right of the “Use Default Location”. Then make sure to have the “Prompt for Folder Location” box checked. You will have to create the new project subfolder but, at least Cubase should start you at the “Master” folder location.
Yeah… I told you it gets confusing but, once you clean it up it is a piece of cake to maintain and your recent lists should work properly.
One more thing… if you are using a template when creating new projects, you need to be sure that the template itself was not created from a project with a shared pool. Take a look at this thread for more info.
It is exactly what you describe. You saved the project but didn’t close it right away and sometime between you saving and closing the project an auto-save occurred.
If you know your saved Project is OK you can just tell it to use that, continue as normal and ignore the .bak. It will offer to delete the .bak file and I always tell it not to delete just in case I get into the Project and discover all is not like I thought.
