Slomo.
InfinitoarUsually if something happens in Podium Free, I would normally get absolutely pissed off, come here, vent off at Zynewave.
But this time is way different.
My brain child, all of my hard work is “corrupt”. No matter how many times I click the .pod file it says it’s corrupted.
Now I have to start all over again with most of my solo material, from the ground up. All the EQing and mastering, etc, all over again. So-
I won’t get pissed off, and I will not bad mouth Zynewave, instead I will quietly start all over again, bottle in my rage, and hope it extinguishes itself.
To Zynewave, Frits, however you wish to be called. Here’s what I have to say to you if your reading this, and please take my words very seriously[if you can]
LMMS=has a backup save, is open source, and does not get any income whatsoever. Yet it has a backup save.
If a horrible open source DAW can have a backup save[which God knows it needs it, it crashes a lot]….
Why can’t Podium[both versions] have it also?
But instead, you are going to focus on meaningless features[to me they are meaningless], like time stretching and tablet development.[and other things]
And another idea for it also, when we save the .pod file make it a way where we can save it in multiple file paths, even the “backup save” features can be routed multiply. For example: to my PC AND to my external 1TB HDD[but that’s not going to ever happen is it Zynewave? *sigh*]
I see where my money for a DAW needs to go. And sadly it not towards Zynewave Podium, because not having that feature that I believe is far more important than any other is what is holding me back from purchasing the DAW. Pressing the “Save All Changes” command keys are a nice thing to do, but that doesn’t save you from file corruption.
Oh, and I had a “brownout” which normally doesn’t corrupt anything, but I guess this time it did. Still would have been nice to have a backup save feature. But that isn’t coming until, I guess when you are ready Zynewave. And that’s fine, but I cannot wait for “you”.
I actually had hope in you Zynewave, but my hope in you is dying. Very quickly. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to redo nearly everything in all my material. This is another day added to “the worst days of my life”.[and what’s worse is, I’m actually tempted to go and used cracked software, but I’m too honest for that. Yay me, right?]
The TelenatorI feel for ya, infinitoar. I really didn’t hop on the forum tonight to post, but I had a job canceled, giving me some unexpected free time. Seeing your thread, I feel the need to chime in here and offer a few things that can prevent most of the damage next time this happens — and if you intend to keep up your current heavy workload with any DAW, it will happen again.
First off and the most important thing I can offer: You CAN save multiple copies, external drives and anywhere you want. Just click Save As again and choose another location. Your PC should ‘see’ your external Terabyte MonsterDrive and offer it among the dropdown options. Internally, if you choose another location and click it again, it creates a true separate copy, not some mere virtual or mirror file. That will cover your pod file; for the WAV tracks, I glue all my edits together at a good save point and copy them each to another location as well. I only do the things I’m saying here today for serious projects — other people’s projects and my own that I might want to release publicly at some point. Too much work otherwise!
Second, the thing I do even more often, once I’ve got past setup and have started adding hot tracks is that I save in the normal location a true copy by hitting Save As and merely adding a number like 2 or II or whatever. I only re-save that renamed copy from my original version at later times when I add something truly significant, such as new music or major editing. It saves time and effort, and if the original gets messed you can always fix little changes on your copies.
Frits wants to add a bak file function. He brought this up himself. It was connected with talks about features and I believe his desire to update the way some of the filing works in Podium. I’m kinda guessing now that this backup addition is going to happen sooner than later!
Finally and most important: You can run but you cannot hide. I mean by this that every DAW eats users’ files. My Cubase used to do it a lot and then freeze my computer to rub it in. Be glad it doesn’t happen often with Podium; be glad you don’t have to do an abnormal shutdown of your PC and then reboot too just to get free. Again, they ALL do it for several different reasons. And if any have this backup function (and I know many that do), you can still loose a load of work anyway in between in the cycle of backups. A few have a fixed cycle, some have limited settings. Some can interfere with work you may be doing, etc., etc.
You should still have all your WAV files. I’ve done it before and it is a pain, but you ought to be able to drag them all back to a new project. I am always 100% aware of where all my WAV files are being kept, whether I’ve put them in the project folder or anywhere else. Then I can grab them super quick. I learned to never get screwed again when it happened to me. I’ve seen so many problems with so many PCs over the years (MACs mess up too — don’t believe that myth), not just my own, that I don’t trust any of them to behave, no matter how expensive the machine is, and same with the best software. They are just like genius 2-year-olds — always ready to have a tantrum. I don’t care which DAW you use, always watch your back. I sure do.
Until the state of the art takes some weird huge step into the Star Trek future, this and a couple of other chronic issues will follow all of us who are insane enough to manipulate audio on computers.
All the Best! Cheers!
InfinitoarThanks for the post Telenator, it’s always good to read your posts. However this is what I meant to be more clear:
If I press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S it only saves it in one specific directory being used. However I want it like “this”:
[Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S]Saving .pod file to:
Documents and Settings/Infinitoar/My Documents/Zynewave Podium/Projects
+[icon]
My Computer/Expansion Drive[E:]/Infinitoar’s PC Backup/Zynewave Podium/Projects
[note: this can be changed within the “Preferences” option. Which I believe wouldn’t be hard to code into Podium “AND” Podium Free]
But there “isn’t” a + icon or a way to save to other “additional” drives or locations. I would have to manually save to each drive or drag and drop a lot. It’s a small time consuming workaround, but I’d rather not do it. It’s enough my fingers are now accustomed to hitting “Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S”. 😀
My .wav files are still there but all my important MIDI files within each project are gone. This saddens me a lot because I use Camel Audio’s Alchemy Player[personally it’s the single greatest freeware synth I have ever used, and I continually look for .sfz sample libraries for it. The best one is Sonatica Symphony Library….very beautiful library], and I had a lot of symphonies MIDI’d out. 🙁 Only good thing is, I still remember how it sounded, so it’s not all bad.
I read posts here and I am aware of Frits mentioning upcoming development for a backup save feature, but he won’t give us a time frame. I know he can’t because he could break his “promise”, but still. That is the ONLY feature keeping me from buying a full version of Podium. And if he wants to wait it out, then he can. I can’t.
I am aware that some DAW’s plague your storage space with .BAK files because when I had Magix Music Maker it did the same to me, but I had changed the directory in one folder and by default I had Magix save every 2 minutes, and have 2 .BAK files overwritting the oldest one.
I’m a Windows guy so I won’t even dive into my reasons for using Windows. The only iOS technology I have is my iPod Touch 4th generation. That’s all. And I use that for on the go ideas for my music.[among other things] I want to eventually use Linux but, Linux is beyond me for now. Maybe later…
Anyway if that one idea for multi-path saving is implemented I suppose it will be a baby step to the backup save feature. But even if Zynewave implements that feature I won’t have it for a couple months even if it’s beta tested and finalized after any bugs have been fixed. Yet again this slows down my album and workflow, because like him I’m one guy working on my own material, but, I don’t like being hung up or slowed down by an update coming for the free version “months later”. Especially if it’s been already tested, fixed, and finalized.
But it’s Frits direction, and he does what he wishes to do with Podium. I have no say so in what he does, and I will have no objection to it.
But as I said-
I cannot wait for him. Wait breaks the wagon.[it’s an old saying or those who understand it]
The TelenatorSorry — I can’t help at all with anything RE: shortcuts, as I’ve been too busy to do more than print out the list of them. I was referring to saving files the old-fashion way from the dropdown menu. THERE you can save to other locations from the dialog box that opens for Save As. Can save alt. project names via that way too.
The fix for the lost MIDI files (and thanks so much for making me think about this possible loss ’cause I’m really digging MIDI lately!). I would use Podium option to Export each MIDI track as a separate file. Those would take all controller data too. I’m gonna just start saving those someplace since that would be a huge hit to lose them. Sorry!
Hope that helps.
Tele
adimatis@Infinitoar wrote:
But instead, you are going to focus on meaningless features[to me they are meaningless], like time stretching …[and other things]
I wish you were right.
That meaningless feature is very important for me. But it isn;t there, unless I missed something in the last two days.
I feel with you, I really am. And I agree completely about the back-up sistem. I think Frits is working at something, but it does come slow.
InfinitoarThey are meaningless “to me” because I see the bigger picture beyond such such implementations of features.
Let’s say you get your “time stretching”.
-Now let’s say you .pod project file is corrupted.
-Everything you did is now gone
Now you see how useful the feature is at it’s point of implementation?
Now again, you somehow recover your loss data.
-And you heavily use time stretching and get more into you project you lost a lot of time on.
-Now somehow again in the future…your .pod gets corrupted.
Yet again, your MIDI files are gone, the position of your .wav files[if they were only saved to your core .pod file that became corrupted], everything is gone.
-Frits implements tablet version of Podium.
Podium[on PC] can still crash, and the .pod file can be corrupted.
-Frits implements features for MIDI and everything “else” everyone wants.
Doesn’t matter…if backup save isn’t there before all of these “extra” features, then when your projects crash “and” become corrupted, guess who’s going to want to go postal because all of their hard work is gone? Guess I’m the only one.[Which I doubt]
Not to put the Telenator on the spotlight but he “just” learned due to file corruption, your MIDI files cease to exist. Period. There is no way to “recover” a corrupted .pod file.[or any corrupted file for that matter] So what then? Ignore the fact that no matter how many “new features” are put into Podium and without the implementation of “saving in multiple file paths” or a backup save, everyone is screwed if the file becomes corrupted? Maybe you favor those odds but I do not.
Now look at the other way around.
-Backup save is implemented.
-Then your implementation of what you and everyone else wants.
-your .pod becomes somehow corrupted.
You have both:
Another .pod file saved on another location, saved a second or 2 later than the 1st[so somehow a chain “corruption” doesn’t happen].
And a backup file you can drag and drop or double click and open in Podium[just in case if Podium doesn’t tell you your project crashed and if you want it to open you backup save].
Yes of course, I know people are skeptical about this, but either way to me[and “for me”]both features are “insurance” so you don’t have your hard work erased, taken from you, forever gone.
I meant no harm to you in just mentioning time stretching Adimatis, but it’s one of the many features I remember was asked many times before. I don’t have a personal grudge to you or any of the users here, but, I really think not for the sake of just “me”, but for everyone, backup save is a KEY feature that needs to be in Podium. And if people don’t trust that, at the very “least” a way to copy the .pod file to multiple locations. And for this feature it can be checked to be enabled, and you can add more than “2” pathways.[Example: Saving the .pod to a USB Stick, My External, and my PC’s HDD]
And I know it comes slow, but when either is implemented, the free users still have to wait for it to be beta tested, and bugs worked out and then finalized, “then” wait a few “months” for it to be released in the free version. That’s way too long.
Anyway…gotta get back to fixing all my projects. *sigh*
adimatisAll true you said!
Zynewave@Infinitoar wrote:
My brain child, all of my hard work is “corrupt”. No matter how many times I click the .pod file it says it’s corrupted.
If you email me your corrupt project file, I can try to see what went wrong, and perhaps salvage it. If you suffered a crash or PC-shutdown during a project save command, then there should be a file with the extension “Temp001” in your project folder. This is the project file that is being saved, and it only replaces the real project file once the save is complete.
If you read this recent post by me, you’ll see that I do have plans to improve project backup:
http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=21863&highlight=#21863
InfinitoarAs far as the project file that was corrupt, I overwritten it with a “month ago” .pod that I saved on my external 1TB HDD. So the corrupt file is gone. However if this happens again I know what to do Zynewave, thanks. 🙂
As in “Temp001” when I looked in the folder there was no file with such a name. So I don’t know where it went. Sorry.
If you do have plans to improve project backup, I highly suggest the “Multiple Pathways Save” feature. So I can save the .pod file in different locations instead of just one, so when I do hit “ctrl-alt-shift-s” it saves it to all the directories I added within the preferences menu.[and of course a + icon to add more directories.] This would be somewhat of a hotfix and almost just as good as a backup file feature. Also have a increments “slider” to adjust the time it save each pod file, with a maximum of 5 secs. So from “instantly” to 5 seconds.
Thanks again Zynvewave, and I have no evil thoughts towards your development directions, but I really believe the more security we have in recovering our lost data when it becomes a situation where it becomes lost the better my experience will get.
Also I don’t know if you believe this is right, but I think also the time between updating the Free version should be shortened. Not updated instantly but if everything is test and running well, instead of months later of the free version being updated, the Free version should be updated between 3 weeks to a month after everything has been tested, fixed and finalized. Just a thought Zynewave.
I still have hope in you Zynewave. Please, don’t make me lose it in you. This is still the single greatest DAW I’ve used ever. And I really, REALLY do not want to be pushed/forced to get another one. I’d rather give my money[and future donations] to you. 😀
SlomoThe reason I use a portable File Sync software on a thumb drive, and set it to make a backup of my project and save it to the thumb drive once in a while, zipped and with a date.