V6.3 Crash

Hi John,

sorry to hear about the crash. The recovery file with whatever it was able to save would have loaded right after the next startup.

What are you doing when the crash occurred? Effects? Editing masters? etc?

Could you please go to the browser and save the logfiles to a usb stick and email to congo (at) etcconnect (dot) com.

Thanks!

Chuffer - we have all been there - I know the moral of this tale is that we all need to save more often. However unless its just me we are all human and do idiotic things and usually its on the simple shows when our guard is down

If we are opening a new play should it not come straight up with a pop-up asking you to name the the new show and offering the saving options of " on record" or not. I do wish there was a timed auto save option aswell sometimes

I like to choose when to save back ups but i often wish there had been a " You havent saved for 20mins (or whatever time you want to set) " pop-up or flashing icon somewhere.

These sort of things do help on the very mad days and on the over-easy casual ones where you just plain forget to do the basics

just a thought anyhow

Hi Andy,

Personally I think that the desk should default to being in back-up mode - ie fail safe, and, if your brave enough the user can select to turn it off. In my life fail safe is good, anything else,like Morris Dancing, is dangerous!

We can't win, can we?

The "Auto-save on Record" option used to be turned on by default (v4.2 IIRC), but many users complained that it made their console slow to Record once the file got large so the default setting was changed.

The option is still there ([Setup], "System" tab), so you can always turn it on if you want that particular safety net.

We've avoided an 'autosave every x minutes' or a popup reminder concept because it would of course always do the save/show the popup at the most annoying moment. (Rather like the MS Office Clippy, everyone who knew how would turn it off, and those who didn't would find out!)

Personally, I find a sticky note saying "[C] & [UPDATE]" stuck to the edge of the screen works pretty well - that's the shortcut for "Save!"

Richard said:

We can't win, can we?

Yes you can and do Richard ! Apologies if it came across as negative. The fact that you run forums on the products which develop, and listen patiently even when you feel like banging programmers heads against a brick wall is proof of that.

The points you make about the record delays and pop-ups everywhere are very true. I was thinking out aloud about the particular instance when you start with a new play and what people thought to immediately setting those recording options and naming the show etc.

The " you havent saved for 'X' minutes " thought was based on liking the highlight / capture / grand master level 'buttons' that show up discreetly but visibly onscreen.

Regards,

Andy

Hi guys -

We will work on making it more evident how close to the edge you're walking in v6.1. The trick is to make it evident, but not as annoying as most "You haven't saved for a while" reminder programs which tend to just cause one a lot of anger while programming. I have found that one simply has to get into the habit of saving often and the C/ALT & UPDATE shortcut makes it really quick to do so. You usually know when you've just done something you don't want to lose (like patching, or crafting that perfect effect), and that's an excellent time to hit ALT & UPDATE.

The problem with auto-saves in general is that if they are on a timer they will inevitably go off at just the wrong moment, in the middle of a record command, or right when that critical effect needs to be playing. Auto-save on record was never on by default (sorry Richard) because it can really slow the system down as the show file gets bigger. It's great for those moments where you're making infrequent last-minute adjustments and you really want to make sure you have saved.

Thanks -

Sarah

Andy F said:

We can't win, can we?

Yes you can and do Richard ![/quote]

Sorry - that bit was intended as a joke. I really need a 'British Humour' tag or something...

There is a notification that you have unsaved data, the file name is yellow. It also states when you last saved.