Autosave bug (FIXED)

[bFooz]

Problem - autosave does not save every set time interval.



Expected behaviour: To see one rpp-bak for each minute.
(I have set it to one minute for testing purposes.)

I have recently started a post about this but did not get any definitive answer. http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=187970

[bFooz]

It looks to me like the timer is reset every time the user manually saves the project.

[strachupl]

Originally Posted by bFooz

It looks to me like the timer is reset every time the user manually saves the project.

Yes, I also expected to have each backup no matter if I saved or no.

[James HE]

I think the clock runs in edit time, not continuously. This may be what you are seeing.

[bFooz]

Bumping this.

Autosave does indeed watch the overall "last save" time and not "last autosave" time. You can easily watch this behaviour at a timer in the status panel below TCP.

This means that when you hit ctrl+s faster than what a set time for autosave is, you get no rpp-baks at all! Which is a huge problem, work-wise and design-wise.

[clepsydrae]

Personally I prefer it the way it is. What's the use case explanation for wanting it on a hard schedule instead?

Edit: oh, maybe I get it: you're using the backup files as a way to time travel through your project, rather than just insurance against loss?

[bFooz]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

Personally I prefer it the way it is. What's the use case explanation for wanting it on a hard schedule instead?

Edit: oh, maybe I get it: you're using the backup files as a way to time travel through your project, rather than just insurance against loss?

This bad scenario can happen now:

I have autosave set to 10 minutes to a separate rpp-bak file. Working on a project, saving it manually as I am used to. I hit "save" manually every 2-3 minutes. After several days of work, something goes wrong and the file PROJECT.RPP which I am working on gets corrupted. In a good faith that autobackup did its job, I would just attempt to open the last rpp-bak file there is. BUT - there is no rpp-bak file at all, nowhere.

This kind of thing really happened to me and to at least one other user here on the forum.


And yes, "timetravelling" is also the case. Scenario - I unintentionally delete a track I've worked on but do not notice it right away. I only notice that after some time when I play that part of the song where that track should play. As I was hitting "save" manually every 3 minutes, there is no other project file on the disk, only the one I have with the track deleted.

This happened to me as well. Since in Reaper bad things can happen by unintentional misuse of too many action, options, by scrips and so on. Not only by a user error but also by a bug in the API, which was silently destroying my tracks and was fixed when I realized it is a bug, found it and reported.

[clepsydrae]

Ah ok. You've convinced me. +1 for reliable autosaving.

I've never had an RPP get corrupt (hopefully you posted about that, because it'd be a serious bug), but I have changed something accidentally and not noticed for a while.

Mostly I use autobackups for the "in case reaper crashes" scenario, which doesn't need hard scheduling of backups, but I do see your points.

[Justin]

Fixing, thanks! Also fixing autosave when undo is completely disabled (as it is now if undo is disabled it will often miss the autosave because it thinks nothing had changed).

Saving the undo history to a file (with multiple redo paths) is my preferred way to time-travel..

[bFooz]

Originally Posted by clepsydrae

I've never had an RPP get corrupt (hopefully you posted about that, because it'd be a serious bug)

This was not Reaper related, more of a filesystem or bad hardware thing.

[bFooz]

Originally Posted by Justin

Saving the undo history to a file (with multiple redo paths) is my preferred way to time-travel..

Will check out that, thanks.