Reason 12 F***** autosave

[avasopht]

Autosave would be much more noticeable (and disruptive) with a single project file (with compression). It's only seamless in other DAWs because the save file is small.

[selig]

I USED to be in the "say no to autosave" camp, that is until I used a DAW with autosave…
I have found absolutely no down side to this feature, at least not yet.

Jackjackdaw pointed out the files would be huge because of the way Reason saves audio, I can't see this not being a problem with auto save in Reason unless there is some option / solution to accommodate it?

Like I’ve said what must be a hundred times over the years now: VERSIONS.
LUNA saves files exactly the same way Reason does and doesn’t have a problem with this approach.
Did I mention versions?!?

[selig]

I think the way Reason saves everything in one huge file is a real point of vulnerability. One glitch on a disk write and the file is screwed and it doesn't matter how many saves you have made unless you have been obsessive enough to regularly save under different names.

Of course, it didn't matter so much back in the day when Reason was the most bulletproof and reliable thing in the software world. These days they seem to have caught up with the software mentality that you can ship it when it's mostly good enough rather than when it is rock solid.

Auto save and auto backups are options that can use up lots of disk space but disk space is cheap, and as long as it's a user option then everyone is happy. Even a simple option to keep the last X versions would help. So every time you save it renames the current file to "song.backup1" and similar for earlier versions - hence you always have a few previous versions available should you need them. I'll put it on their roadmap. At current rate of progress they'll get around to looking at it in about 2030.

When working in Pro Tools you have access to all your audio files. However, if you crash and loose everything, you would have to have an amazing memory to be able to take all the bits and pieces and remember exactly how they were arranged on the timeline including crossfades, clip gain, fade ins/outs, etc. So you get the audio files but not the playlist which IMO is hardly any real consolation!

But in Reason I often work more with MIDI files where a crash takes everything down no matter how the audio is stored!

Auto save/backups don’t use a ton of space unless they make redundant audio file backups - and I’m not aware of any DAW that does this that has auto save or auto backups.

I’m not necessarily lobbying for auto save/backup in Reason as I already have what I want in LUNA (where I’m more dealing with audio files over MIDI files anyway), as I agree we would see it in 2030 at the earliest!

[selig]

Autosave would be much more noticeable (and disruptive) with a single project file (with compression). It's only seamless in other DAWs because the save file is small.

Again (and again) you ONLY need to save the song file data, not the audio data. The answer IMO is and always has been some form of versions. Again, LUNA does this elegantly while saving the audio within the song file. It’s not noticable, it’s not disruptive, and it IS with a single project file.

Whatever the solution, I believe it’s unacceptable in this day and age to ever loose a users data, and it’s up to the host to handle this IMO (and to do so in a transparent and elegant way).

[avasopht]

Autosave would be much more noticeable (and disruptive) with a single project file (with compression). It's only seamless in other DAWs because the save file is small.

Again (and again) you ONLY need to save the song file data, not the audio data. The answer IMO is and always has been some form of versions. Again, LUNA does this elegantly while saving the audio within the song file. It’s not noticable, it’s not disruptive, and it IS with a single project file.

Oh right. You know what ... ... ... I didn't even think of saving the versions inside the same file (I'm assuming that's what you meant).

However, Luna's project files aren't exactly files. They're really "packages" (directories that appear as a file) - so you can right-click and then select "view package contents" on a Luna project file to view its stored files/subdirectories. The same method is used by Garage Band.

It would be great if Windows offered this functionality.

[Propellerhands]

Autosave would be much more noticeable (and disruptive) with a single project file (with compression). It's only seamless in other DAWs because the save file is small.

Explain how. There are multiple ways to implement it.

[Heigen5]

Autosave would be a good feature, but, it's more about, that how you'd do it for the audio. Audio should be self-contained to these files, because if we'd just rely on the scratch folders, all the recordings would be gone in the some cases. How about if we'd retain all the redo/undo lists and would also retain the self-contain audio?

[selig]

Again (and again) you ONLY need to save the song file data, not the audio data. The answer IMO is and always has been some form of versions. Again, LUNA does this elegantly while saving the audio within the song file. It’s not noticable, it’s not disruptive, and it IS with a single project file.

Oh right. You know what ... ... ... I didn't even think of saving the versions inside the same file (I'm assuming that's what you meant).

However, Luna's project files aren't exactly files. They're really "packages" (directories that appear as a file) - so you can right-click and then select "view package contents" on a Luna project file to view its stored files/subdirectories. The same method is used by Garage Band.

It would be great if Windows offered this functionality.

Packages are indeed better, but if everything is setup right you won't ever need to be digging around in the packages.
However, LUNA is lacking one thing right now (which is on their to-do list): audio file management. So FOR NOW, you need to dig around in packages to do certain things like deleting unused files.

But all that aside, from the user perspective you're working the same way in LUNA as in Reason with regards to audio file management. But the advantage goes to LUNA with their data base approach and unlimited/persistent undo. That's the point I'm attempting to make - that the audio file management part is not directly connected to the ability to auto-save etc. Meaning, you can implement auto-save in a DAW and not have to re-save the audio files along with the rest of the data every time one thing changes!

[avasopht]

Autosave would be much more noticeable (and disruptive) with a single project file (with compression IIRC). It's only seamless in other DAWs because the save file is small.

Explain how. There are multiple ways to implement it.

Yes there are other ways, ... I was thinking of separate autosave files (which would mean a 500MB project would result in 500MB autosave files, and there'd be a noticeable save delay).

But if they allow multiple versions in a single project file, that problem goes away.

I was ignoring the option of having an autosave file that referenced the project file assets.

[joeyluck]

I like the way Logic does it, I'm sure other DAWs are the same. Reason projects take up way too much space on my hard drives because every version I save is a separate, self-contained, giant file.

[Propellerhands]

Yes there are other ways, ... I was thinking of separate autosave files (which would mean a 500MB project would result in 500MB autosave files, and there'd be a noticeable save delay).

But if they allow multiple versions in a single project file, that problem goes away.

I was ignoring the option of having an autosave file that referenced the project file assets.

How are you even getting 500MB projects???

[avasopht]

How are you even getting 500MB projects???

1. Mixing audio tracks
2. Bouncing instruments to audio tracks (I've been doing it a lot more lately).

[avasopht]

But the advantage goes to LUNA with their data base approach and unlimited/persistent undo. That's the point I'm attempting to make - that the audio file management part is not directly connected to the ability to auto-save etc. Meaning, you can implement auto-save in a DAW and not have to re-save the audio files along with the rest of the data every time one thing changes!

Yes agreed. And this seems like one of those easy wins.

I wouldn't be surprised if they go ahead and implement it as a v12 update or in v13. But I also wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a hint of it before 2030. Fingers crossed it comes sooner rather than later.

[stillifegaijin]

Yes there are other ways, ... I was thinking of separate autosave files (which would mean a 500MB project would result in 500MB autosave files, and there'd be a noticeable save delay).

But if they allow multiple versions in a single project file, that problem goes away.

I was ignoring the option of having an autosave file that referenced the project file assets.

How are you even getting 500MB projects???

I regularly have files that are 2 or 3GB!

[EnochLight]

How are you even getting 500MB projects???

Record multitrack audio at any “regular” song length? My projects average 2-3 gigs at least. Sometimes larger.

[fullforce]

Reason 12 without autosave lost my work progress because bla bla bla

CTRL-S

[earwig83]

IMO autosave is obsolete as computers shouldn't be crashing.

[avasopht]

IMO autosave is obsolete as computers shouldn't be crashing.

Save is also obsolete because we can always just never turn off our computers or close our projects

[fullforce]

IMO autosave is obsolete as computers shouldn't be crashing.

That's hilarious.

[selig]

IMO autosave is obsolete as computers shouldn't be crashing.

That's hilarious.

Air bags are obsolete as cars shouldn’t be crashing – get it, ‘air bags’ = ‘AUTO save’…

[earwig83]

That's hilarious.

Air bags are obsolete as cars shouldn’t be crashing – get it, ‘air bags’ = ‘AUTO save’…

he he I am happy to say Reason has crashed 2 times in my 20 years of using it. One of the few times I will fully compliment them on something. As far as my comment about it being obsolete goes, I consider autosave to be a unwanted feature because I often open old songs, experment with the knobs and then close without saving, if I am experimenting, I don't want to autosave. So maybe a toggle under save in the file menu would be ok.

[selig]

Air bags are obsolete as cars shouldn’t be crashing – get it, ‘air bags’ = ‘AUTO save’…

he he I am happy to say Reason has crashed 2 times in my 20 years of using it. One of the few times I will fully compliment them on something. As far as my comment about it being obsolete goes, I consider autosave to be a unwanted feature because I often open old songs, experment with the knobs and then close without saving, if I am experimenting, I don't want to autosave. So maybe a toggle under save in the file menu would be ok.

Even with autosave you have a few options to work this way. Since I have such a strong "MUST SAVE OFTEN" reflex, I've done what you described above only to realize I reflexively hit save at some point in the experiment! NOW what do you do?

Using LUNA as the only example of autosave I've experienced, I have a few options. Brute force: just copy the file on the drive and work off the copy. More elegant: save a 'version', do my experiments, then go back to the previous version (at ANY point, even after closing the file and opening it later).
BONUS: using either of the above methods you can go back to the experimental version at any point if you need to - with your approach you loose this possibility (which may or may not be important to you).

[fullforce]

That's hilarious.

Air bags are obsolete as cars shouldn’t be crashing – get it, ‘air bags’ = ‘AUTO save’…

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!!!