I recorded my piano playing as a midi file in Cubase 12. When I wanted to save the file, a new file, Cubase froze. Only one DMP file remains. It was about 15 minutes of improvisation and it’s really annoying that I couldn’t save it. Since I did not create a file, neither a temporary file not a backup was created. Only the DMP file remains. Is it possible to extract the played midi data somehow?
No, unfortunately.
It was a terribly sad experience. I’m sure I’m very disappointed in Cubase, I’ll never play again with only Cubase recording the music. In all cases, I record with a microphone in another way, because Cubase is not reliable.
but then what’s the point of creating a 12-megabit DMP file?
I worked a lot with Cubase, but this was my last midi recording, I will never trust the program again. I’m sorry
Is there a temporary file somewhere where Cubase saved the midi data?
It is used to troubleshoot the problem. Can you share a link to the file here? If it’s 12 megabytes, please use a file sharing site and link to it. 4 megabytes is the upload limit here I think.
I know how horrible it feels to lose a performance – it has happened to me, and it taught me the hard way to save the project file with a name before I begin working.
While the file contains contents of the computer memory, it’s not in a form that can be retrieved.
Note though: When autosave is turned on, even if the user has not saved a cpr, auto-save will try, within its limitations, to save a .bak file. These are stored in the project folder.
Have you had a look in /Documents/Cubase Projects/ for any .bak files from today (I mean the day this happened)?
Autosave was set to default, which is 15 minutes. It had been a few seconds since he had saved it. He didn’t save anything. Now I set it to 1 minute and a file is created every minute. This is a huge error in Cubase, so that if something happens in 15 minutes, everything is lost without a trace. Untitled1.bak file has just been created. I found another dmp file, which is 531 kb, I will send it first. I hope that the midi data can be found in it somehow, since this is the imprint of the computer’s memory and the midi data must be in it somewhere.
Cubase 12.0.0.205 64bit 2023.4.17 19.13.27.468.dmp (519.2 KB)
This one is the 12.8 mb DMP file in
Cubase12.exe.9400.zip (1.4 MB)
ZIP.
I was thinking if Cubase writes a temporary file somewhere during work that can be found on the hard drive and can be found there unsealed maybe.
You have not updated Cubase since the first version (12.0.0. ) came out. The current version of Cubase is 12.0.60
It’s quite likely the crash was due to a bug that was fixed in one of the six updates released since then.
Sorry for the loss of your creative output!
Do update the software.
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Thank you for your help and understanding and for following up.
But I definitely won’t record anything with Cubase for a few years, this terrible experience fills me with fear, I don’t dare to record like that with Cubase. Maybe in a few years. Until then, I have to use another program.
thanks for sharing this with others, hopefully, they won’t make the mistake of:
- the default save must be set from 15 minutes to 1 minute and the number of automatic saves must be set to 20 files (it is safety)
- before starting a record work, an empty file with a new file name must be created
I didn’t know these things and 14 minutes of frantic improvisation was lost because I tried to save before 15 minutes and the program froze.
It’s never happened before not to save anything for 15 minutes, but now it happened and froze.
I’m slowly getting over it, I’ll have to try to play the performance again and better from memory in a few days, but definitely with a different program.
Thank you for everything!
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I understand where you’re coming from. But for me the take-away from this experience would be to be better about IT “hygiene”.
I know this isn’t the type of thing you want to hear right now, but that is the lesson. I think almost everyone has faced this kind of disaster at some point.
Once, I was leading a recording date with my group, paying by the hour. We had done a bunch of takes on this one tune, and were frustrated and nearing the point of exhaustion.
Then we did a great take. Band members looked at each other with an I-hope-that’s-it look which might only ever be seen near the end of a long session. We waited for the engineer to say, like, “sounded good, wanna hear it?” But there was just this yawning pause, and then – “Sorry about this guys, computer crashed” (they were running Protools). My head literally exploded, figuratively speaking.
Anyway, just wanted to commiserate with you, and to say, If you keep the daw up-to-date you reduce your risk for this kind of thing – it can happen with any kind of software.
I do not put my trust in auto-save. either. I use it, but my left hand hits ctrl-s frequently without me even knowing about it, the habit is so ingrained.
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Cubase will create so called auto-saves only when you are not recording/playing back. So even with these settings it would not have made a difference if Cubase crashed during your recording. Auto-save happens when you press Stop.
If you pressed stop and Cubase froze some time afterwards it might have saved a file with the same name as your project and the suffix “.bak”, possibly a number is insterted, too, like projectname-02.bak.
Search for Untitled1.bak or Untitled1-02.bak
Ultimately the data inside the file is created by Windows. It contains things like CPU register content, stack of last function calls within the computer memory and so on. Programmers stuff.
Same here.
I pressed the stop space button 1 or 2 times in 15 mins records. But I started empty, and I only project directory setup I don’t write any project name. The auto-save interval was 15 mins, and I finished the record at maybe 14:30 and I try to save. This point is frozen and has not created any .bak file.
Aahh, that is double tough luck. 
Just as a background info: As long as you haven’t saved the current project at all it is called Untitled1 and the auto-saves will be placed in the folder you selected on creating the fresh project in the way mentioned above.
Yes, after I just changed the autosave to 1 minute, a certain Untitled1.bak file was created, which I have never seen or experienced before.
I no longer dare to sit in front of the piano and record with Cubase. I know what’s wrong, but it was such a terribly unfortunate thing and a terrible experience that it will be difficult for me to recover.
That’s me. I hope others learn from it.
Thank you very much for everything, maybe there is still some hope to check the hard drive to see if it wrote some temporary file during Cubase recording.
But probably during the evening relaxation, I have to recall the entire 15-minute improvisation from memory and perform and record it in a few days, but with a different program.
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