AUTO-SAVE...

charlie

Logician
As an Avid Editor by profession in broadcast television, I guess I have been spoiled... One of the greatest advances in my field is one that no one thinks about. It's called Auto-Save on the Avid, and it is a user-definable parameter that periodically "saves" your entire project. Mine is set to every seven minutes.
It might sound over-anxious, but a lot can happen in seven minutes time when you are on deadline to make air. To lose those "revisions and changes" you just made can mean pissed off clients and worse, not having a spot to put on-air.
Avid also has something called the "Attic" which periodically takes a snapshot of your entire project and stores it elsewhere (not locally.) In the case of a complete system shut-down, A recent snapshot (within 20 minutes,) can be recalled at any time.
Redundancies like these have actually saved late night sessions for me more times than I can remember.

I was naive to believe that all creative applications had auto-save (or the attic idea,) built in.
It amazed me that in Logic, the best that Apple could do was have a spotty "crash save" snapshot when Logic crashes.
And, let's be serious, this "Crash/Save" fail-safe only works some of the time, depending on the type of crash in the first place.
So, unless you constantly "save" your project, you're flying without a net.
How many times have you lost some really great work because Logic crashed & lost all of your progress?

I'm curious how Pro-Tools handles this. Any PT users out there can tell me if that program is smarter at auto-saving than Logic?
I ask because PT & Avid are the same company. It is of course likely that the audio guys and the video guys never talk... :tongue:

Any opinions on this? I just can't believe that something so simple in concept has never been implemented to a so-called professional product.
 
Actually, to me it is very professional to leave the decision to the user as to when to save, as opposed to logic deciding, right in the middle of some experimentation, or live tracking or heaven only knows what other sets of circumstances, that it is time to save, ready or not.

Professional means to me trusting that the user knows what he/she is doing, and is well versed in knowing when to comm+s.

If Apple ever do implement an auto save for logic, I just hope that there will be a preference to switch it off 😉

I expect that won't go down with everyone, but you did ask for opinions ....

kind regards

Mark
 
It should be completely user definable, no question.
But being "Professional" has nothing to do with your system crashing and you losing inspiration and what you have worked on that day.
I maintain, an Auto-Save feature should help to preserve what you work hard for.

Isn't that the point?
 
Yeah, I tried one of those programs with Logic 7 but it never really worked.
See, I am used to having an auto-save interrupt me every so often (with the Avid,) as I mentioned before. It really isn't THAT big a deal.
And it can be programmed to be "smart" (especially when a company like Apple would design it. Perhaps it would wait for periods of in-activity or something.)

Either this OR a real working crash-snapshot. You know, one that worked 99% of the time. The crash-snapshot function Logic has now is at best 60/40% non-functional.

Touché right back atcha! :😉:
 
Actually, to me it is very professional to leave the decision to the user as to when to save, as opposed to logic deciding, right in the middle of some experimentation, or live tracking or heaven only knows what other sets of circumstances, that it is time to save, ready or not.

The auto-save feature in Pro Tools works when when the transport is not engaged, so it would never stop playing or recording. And it takes about 1 second. That's definitely worth some peace of mind, knowing that if everything crashes, I won't lose much.
 
Actually, to me it is very professional to leave the decision to the user as to when to save, as opposed to logic deciding, right in the middle of some experimentation, or live tracking or heaven only knows what other sets of circumstances, that it is time to save, ready or not.

The auto-save feature in Pro Tools works when when the transport is not engaged, so it would never stop playing or recording. And it takes about 1 second. That's definitely worth some peace of mind, knowing that if everything crashes, I won't lose much.

Yeah, the Avid's autosave is similar. It doesn't seem to be that big a deal to me to have something implemented. It could literally save your hard work without you even knowing it.
Seems like a no-brainer for a design team like Apple.
 
Well, I'm convinced now. If it auto-saves when play is not in use (or even after changes occur immediately when you play stop), that would be well worth implementing.
 
If such a proposed feature could be turned OFF then I couldn't possibly object to it but I would definitely never use it.

The COMMAND and S keys on my keyboards are always the most worn out.

I prefer to SAVE on my own terms. A typical workflow method might be that I SAVE, then I go down some possible path of project modification, then I REVERT TO SAVED if I don't like it rather than attempting to UNDO all steps, some of which isn't undoable.

I know about all the proposed autosave variations that could still allow it, but I'd still turn it OFF.
 
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