"Open project..." in startup menu

[minotaur]

Hi there!

I've been using Reaper for 2 years now (both on PC and OSX), customized it endlessly and grew to LOVE it, and I have a couple of very small feature ideas that I think would make sense, I'll post my ideas in different threads.
Please let me know if one of these were requested, or if the rest of you find an idea useless/nonsense/impossible to make happen for any reason etc - I'm interested to see what others think about these.

This one's self-explanatory - at the startup "REAPER Choose Projects" window I'd like to have the option "Open..." that opens the same Open project dialog we get from the file menu.
The reason is simple: I use a couple of VSTs that are a bit unstable, so whenever they freeze Reaper/make it quit and I click "reopen", and I want to go back to a backup on OSX, I have to open a new project, deselect "open in a new tab" (which is something I'd love to leave checked), open the new project, and save the backup. Meanwhile, because I opened a backup project, Reaper automatically saves me a backup project of the backup project, which is unnecessary for me.

I'd like to be able to just select "Open file..." to circumvent this.

[Sound asleep]

What I do is a have a shortcut to my reaper folder in windows explorer. I find the right backup, and open it from there. Then I save it as a new version.

If I were you though, I'd find more stable plugins to use. I can't imagine they would be that, top of the line amazing, if they are so unstable. So, I would imagine that you should be able to find suitable replacements that would give you more reliability.

[minotaur]

Originally Posted by Sound asleep

What I do is a have a shortcut to my reaper folder in windows explorer. I find the right backup, and open it from there. Then I save it as a new version.

I know on Windows it's a different approach. I can't have the same thing, as each project I'm working on is in a different folder, and in a project's root folder Reaper mixes the backups and the project file itself, I sometimes end up with 200 files in a folder.
OSX, as opposed to Win, after having frozen and quit an app, proposes to reopen it with one click, which is way more comfortable and faster than the Windows counterpart. If I had the "Open file" dialog as an option when Reason opens, I wouldn't have to go through a lot of seemingly unnecessary steps, either in Finder, or by creating an empty project that then I close, because that's not what I wanted in the first place.

Actually, even an "Open last backup file' row would make a lot of sense to me.

Originally Posted by Sound asleep

If I were you though, I'd find more stable plugins to use. I can't imagine they would be that, top of the line amazing, if they are so unstable. So, I would imagine that you should be able to find suitable replacements that would give you more reliability.

It's not that they are SO unstable, but particularly my iZotope Nectar plugin did this to me today when treating vocals - you know how it is. Shit happens. Systems get overloaded, a process may quit, so many things can happen. I work with a lot of tracks, sometimes a lot of plugins, lot of routing, and while I get creative I ask more from the system than what it could handle. I don't think the possibility to have an extra row saying "Open project file..." is that weird of a request when Reaper opens up... The rest is of course on me

Thanks for your reply!

[Sound asleep]

Originally Posted by minotaur

I know on Windows it's a different approach. I can't have the same thing, as each project I'm working on is in a different folder, and in a project's root folder Reaper mixes the backups and the project file itself, I sometimes end up with 200 files in a folder.

There is an option in reaper to put the backups in a separate folder. All my projects are in separate folders also. I have a general "reaper projects" folder that I have a quick shortcut for, and then I find the project, go into the backups, sort as latest created, and then run the last backup like that.

It's not as easy as a dialog that asks you if you want to open your latest backup, which I agree would be very cool, but it's also not the end of the world, since hopefully crashing isn't a common occurrence.

It's not that they are SO unstable, but particularly my iZotope Nectar plugin did this to me today when treating vocals - you know how it is. Shit happens. Systems get overloaded, a process may quit, so many things can happen. I work with a lot of tracks, sometimes a lot of plugins, lot of routing, and while I get creative I ask more from the system than what it could handle. I don't think the possibility to have an extra row saying "Open project file..." is that weird of a request when Reaper opens up... The rest is of course on me

Thanks for your reply!

Ya, reaper crashes for me sometimes too, I get it. I have big heavy projects also, and lots of powerful plugins. One thing you should make sure of also, is that you are running 64bit reaper. That would help for crashing due to memory issues.

You're lucky, because for me, when my reaper crashes, my audio interface driver calls it quits and won't re-initialize unless I restart my PC, and then I go into the project folder to find the backup.

I'm not saying your request is stupid or anything like that. I'm letting you know what I do, in case you find it useful in the future, until the small team at cockos spends the time and effort to give you your dialog, if they ever do.