I have a few songs that when I opened them at some point, I was told a backup version was newer than the file I was trying to open. So I opened the latest file. Cubase renames it “Song 01”. I’ve renamed the backups to “Song” using “Save as”. When I go to look for a song not in the recent list, I see all kinds of numbered file folders and files for any given song. I don’t understand why there are so many numbered projects or which one contains the latest saved file without comparing all the dates. (I’m old school, started using computers while Bill Gates studying geometry. So, I look in the project folder and see a multitude of files and file folders, numbered, un-numbered, with subdirectories. Ahhh)
I’m sure there is a “best practices” to minimize what I’m experiencing. How do you start a project, maintain it, and keep from mixing songs under the same project folder?
what you are describing is because auto back up have saved a version of your project after you saved your project, then it will add a number to the file name so you don’t overwrite your current project.
there are also a lot of files with your project name from 02 - 10 or more. but they should be “bak” files which means back up files - should you ever have problem opening up a project file you could go back the one of the back up projects.
how often and how many back up files you want to have is set in the preference section
You can avoid this by using file versions. If you choose file → save new version whenever you are about to make a significant change, the highest version number will be the latest file.
Long ago I turned off auto-save. I got tired of intermittent hangs while adjusting parameters and developed a habit of manually saving every time I finished an adjustment I didn’t want to lose. I save as Song-#-adjustment (ie Song-37-KickEq). That way I am never uncertain what stage a version is in if I want to go back (as opposed to simply incremental numbers). The project folder reads like an undo history and there are no cryptic .bak files. It may seem tedious to do this, but it’s actually rather satisfying. Once it is a habit, it is much less annoying than having your workflow interrupted by auto-saves, and your project folder full of cryptic generic files which may contain adjustments you tried and discarded.
Removing .bak files should have no effect on any .cpr file. If you want to clean out unused audio use Save Backup to a new folder. Be aware that it will only save (copy) audio used in the song version you are saving from.
Me too I do not use autosave. I made it a habit to hit Command-alt-s every few minutes which saves the project with an incrementing number at the end. Whenever I make a major change in a project I might save it with Command-shift-s and modify the name.