Difference between cpr and bak?

I’m importing my projects from Elements 7 to Elements 10 ( I just upgraded). As I open the projects I see a cpr file and a bak file. Which file do I use to import into Elements 10 to save and/or edit the project? One more question. What does “cpr” and “bak” mean? Thank you for your time and help.

.CPR files are the Cubase project file. .BAK files are auto backups of the Cubase project.

Not sure why you are importing anything into CB E 10. In CB E 10 just go to File>Open, navagate to the CB E 7 project .CPR file, click on it and it should open in 10

Regards. :sunglasses:

Hey Prock!
Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it. I want to put all of the projects into Elements 10 so that I can delete Elements 7. My reason for deleting Elements 7 is to free up space on my hard drive. I’m not at all sure if that’ll help it’s just what I’m thinking. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I am not very proficient with Cubase but I’m making an effort to learn. Thanks again for your help.

You can delete your CB E7 without issue by going into your computers programs area and delete it. Deleting it will not delete your projects and you should be able to open them in CB E10. You don’t have to “import” them into E10. Just use the file>open menu to locate the project .cpr file then open it. The only issue might be if you are using an older VSTs in projects that were included in E7 that are not included in E10. This may be pertinent if your older version was a 32 bit installation. Remember CB E10 is 64 bit only and it only uses 64 bit VSTs (although some workarounds may work).

The CB E7 program itself does not take up much computer space so you won’t save a whole lot. Many users keep their older versions just in case the older project won’t open in the new version. My recommendation would be to keep your CB E7 at least for a little bit until you are sure your projects are working good in CB E10. After you are confident your new version is working as you like… then delete your older version.

Regards. :sunglasses:

I’ve got another question. I hope you don’t mind. In my projects should I have just one .CPR and one .BAK file listed for that specific file? For example, this project file list consist of these items:
RNY.cpr
RNY01.cpr
RNY.02.bak
RNY02.cpr
RNY03.bak through RNY10.bak
Should I keep “RNY.cpr” and “RNY.02.bak” and delete the rest of the files in this project? Or do the “extra” cpr and bak files contribute to the overall project? Or are they just copies of themselves? Again,thanks for your time and help.

In your Preferences you set a value of how often an auto-backup should occur. So if it is set for every 5 minutes then after an hour you should have 12 .bak files (we’re ignoring that all sorts of things seem to inhibit individual backups from occurring). Those backup files will be sequentially numbered. You can also set how many backups you want to keep. If for example this was 10 then the 11th backup will cause the oldest existing backup to be deleted. Also I think (can’t verify now) that the backup numbers get reused.

So what should you do? Set the Preferences values for timing and the number to keep to whatever you like. And then totally IGNORE the existence of those files until the unfortunate time you need to restore one.

That’s a great piece of info to me. Thanks Raino! Do you mind recommending a timing and number to keep as a starting point? Thanks again! I really do appreciate all of the help.

In general the defaults should be OK - especially if you don’t have any specific reason to change them.

If Cubase starts crashing a bunch you might want to increase both the frequency of backups and the number you retain.

If you backup every 5 minutes the max work (in theory) you will loose is 5 minutes. At 20 minutes it’s 20 minutes.

As you increase the number of backups you keep, you increase the odds you’ll have a valid backup. It’s possible that your Project gets corrupted but keeps running for awhile including making backups. The most recent backups could then also be corrupt. More backups means you are more likely to have an older good one.

I believe you’re right about the defaults. I’m going to stick with them. Thanks Raino for taking the time in helping me out.