It’s not often that I get frustrated with Cantabile, which I think is a great piece of software, but I lost a pile of work earlier - possibly my ignorance in the way file saving works, but it sure didn’t work the way I expected it to.
I’m on build 3581, and have been tidying/restructuring my Welsh Floyd set list and adding in new features/songs.
As part of tidying/restructuring, I have been adding comments to the racks in songs as to what they do along with some notes. E.g. I am adding in a media player with the original song we have clicked against, as we have some new musicians joining the band who will probably benefit from hearing the originals as we practice against the backing tracks. I have bindings on PC key presses to unmute/mute the original, with a binding to ensure it is muted on song selection. So in the comments section I have noted the key presses to unmute/mute. Likewise on other facets that I trigger from my MIDI keyboards, I have added the trigger in the comments, as sometimes I forget and it saves having to go through the bindings to work it out.
So far so good, but after going though the entire set and commenting everything, I selected Save All and shut down Cantabile (before going out for the day), and it didn’t save any of my work on the comments. So I probably lost about an hour’s work today. Checking more carefully, I noted:
Entering comments does not mark the songs as edited - possibly my bad, I should have checked, but I would expect that modifying comments would count as an edit?
After entering a comment File/Save works as expected and saves the edit. But File/Save All does not.
So should changing comments count as marking the file as edited? I check the preference options, but couldn’t see if anything was controlling this?
A lot of the songs don’t have states in. I’ve just shut down for the night, so will need to check. But the behaviour is odd to me. I can rename a media player and the song is marked as edited. I can add/change a comment on the same media player and the song is not marked as edited?
I have, so many times, edited songs, saved, then realize all my edits disappear because my song states were locked. This is usually when I am speeding thru edits. I always have to go back and unlock states, edit, save song, lock states, save song again (to save locks). This may not relate to what you are describing, but thought I would mention it, because this is my major source of failed edit saves. Once again, my stupidity has been revealed.
With locked states, there is an easier way: simply use “update state” (CTRL-U normally) to “save” all edits to a state. This has become my de-facto “save” pattern: CTRL-U; CTRL-S.
I just need to make sure that the main Cantabile window has the focus - otherwise editor windows my capture my keypresses.
BTW: “update state” also marks the song as edited.
Thanks Torsten. I knew there was bound to be an easier way to do this. Just didn’t ever take the time to learn keystrokes in C3. Guess I’d better get started.
Same here. I can confirm, that “Save All” doesn’t save everything.
I don’t know if it’s related to linked racks only. But I have a rack with M1 inside and I absolutely need to press “Save Rack” to really overtake all changes. “Save All” doesn’t do the job.
I think this easily leads to confusion. “Save All” should really save everything… otherwise maybe it’s better to name this command different.
Yes, I guess that is my point, although I hadn’t quite expressed it as clearly as you have.
Save all was most definitely not saving my edits I made to comments on the racks so I lost them because it didn’t save all and neither did they get marked as edits, so when I shut down Cantabile I was not prompted to save my work. Net result: Thought I had done all of my work one day. Shut down, and started up the next day to find most of my work had gone, so I was not amused. First time I’ve ever felt this way about this otherwise excellent product. I give praise where it is due (Cantabile is simply awesome ) but criticism where needed, and I think this is one area that needs attention to ensure that work is not lost.
BTW it was a combination of linked racks and media players.
It’s open to discussion but as I recall this feature was first brought in to save any number of open Song files in the set list with a single command. The racks were always different in terms of saving because of their switchable behaviors, so as you correctly state, the racks must be saved separately when changed. There is no batch saving there I am aware of but would be glad if I’m wrong because there are times when that would speed things up and prevent missing a rack save. Currently we have a indicator to remind that the rack has been altered
maybe a command choice like ‘Save Songs and Racks’ which would save both the Song and any Rack edits, just a suggestion.
Well, it’s not a good idea to rely on this mark. If I edit the M1 to my needs, this mark will not show up unfortunately.
And yes: I’d welcome such option too.
Racks that have their Save option set to Never (File -> Rack Options -> Save Rack on Unloading -> Never)
Racks that have their Save option set to on of the Changed options (Significant Changes, Any change except via bindings, Any Change) and Cantabile hasn’t noticed any changes.
If you find cases where something isn’t saved, please let me know - that’s probably a bug.
To be clear my systems are set to save “Only on significant changes” on unloading and I do it manually to be sure before closing my rack. As to Christian not seeing an edited icon on his altered rack I am at a loss as to why unless he has that rack set to “Never” which does not create the edited icon. I don’t see any bug in my system. I was thinking of a universal overide of the already set rack options for saving that forced saving of all the racks and elements in a song and not all songs in a set list.
Had a quick check tonight. Here is a simple procedure to reproduce the issue (feature).
Create a song
Add a Media Player
Save the song so the edits to this point are saved
Enter a comment in the notes area of the Media Player. The song is not marked as edited
Rename the Media Player - the song is marked as edited
Interestingly if you enter a comment in the notes section of a linked rack in the song then the song IS marked as edited.
The Song Mark as Modified Options made no difference when I tried again with the option set to On Any Change
So the issue appears to be that entering comments in a Media player’s notes field does not count as an edit, and I think it should as I have changed something. I don’t see why renaming is an edit but entering a note is not?
Hopefully a trivial fix that will save me and others from losing edits in future
