Branching UNDO? WARNING: TEST IN OLD PROJECTS

[Shooshie]

Shooshie, when I choose "Show One Branch at a Time" which is the default option, then I have a little box with a downward arrow in the Branch column, which, if I click on it, ushers me into an alternate reality where everything I did after that didn't happen (well, it's whited out below that step, although still exists in what's now alternate reality.
Oops, I better get back, notes are sticking with me typing this :9

Yeah, there are two display options: one branch or all branches. I can set it either way, but it will do neither, as it will not show any branches whatsoever. I still have not called MOTU, but will get to it one of these days. For now, I'm just glad that I have unlimited UNDO, even without branches.

At this point, I want to find out why it doesn't work for one reason alone: to understand why my setup can be so different from everyone else's. The fact that others can do this perplexes me. There literally is something different about the way my copy of DP is set up. If THIS can work so differently, it may mean that other features may also work differently. Because I've gone over the manual and the UNDO History window very carefully and found no controls or variables that could lead to the dysfunction of branching undo, I assumed that it had to be non-functional for everyone, not just me. But finding that everyone else CAN see branches tells me there is something causing mine to be different.

Some day we'll know the answer. I'd just like to know if I'm the ONLY one who cannot see branches. Maybe it has to do with my liberal settings (10,000 entries before pruning), though I've had different settings over the years.

I think I may remember seeing branches back when the Undo History first became available. Maybe I've seen them since then and forgotten. But it's been at least 5 years, because I've tried to solve this dilemma for that long.

Shooshie

[bayswater]

I'd just like to know if I'm the ONLY one who cannot see branches. Maybe it has to do with my liberal settings (10,000 entries before pruning), though I've had different settings over the years.

You may be the only one. If I set to One Branch at a Time, I can see the little drop down arrows that show the branches. (I have no pruning at all.)

On the matter of disappearing sound files, yes, they disappear from the Finder when the step in which they are recorded are Undone. But, if you undo the undo, they reappear in the Finder. The manual points out that the Undo history takes as much space as is required to reproduce the sound file. So in effect, DP is keeping a backup of the audio.

Perhaps there is a way to use branching to go back in the Undo history, prior to the time the sound file was recorded, and still keep the file in the Finder, if not the Soundbites list. I haven't thought that through. In any case, a preference to leave recorded audio in the Finder while removed from the project via Undo, might be good.

More generally, like you, I wonder about the extent to which we have differences in the installed versions of DP, or at least see different behaviour, maybe depending on hardware, and system and driver versions. That should would clear up a lot of mysteries.

[tommymandel]

Shooshie, have you tried (and I'm sure you have, but just in case...) clicking where that little box with the down-pointing arrow should be? If that little graphic file is corrupted, would it not display anything there, or would a icon appear? I know from our previous days of modifying DP's UI, that there are a whole lot of little graphics that appear when you right-click and choose "Show Package Contents" and go inside the English Project folder/Images, etc. for example. I doubt that the number of updates that your DP app has gone through since this problem appeared would have left such a stone unturned. But it might start another path of thought to somewhere more constructive than it is in&of itself.

[Tritonemusic]

Have you ever had someone open one of your files on their computer? Wonder if there would be a difference.

[Shooshie]

If there were a branch present, the little icon would only appear if I'd selected "Show one branch at a time." Selecting "Show All Branches" would then display in an entirely different way, and would show more entries. Nada. There's no difference, no matter which one I select.

And yes, I've actually clicked there, just to see if it was a missing icon. I even changed themes a few times to see if that had anything to do with it. I used MOTU themes, just to make sure that the AmpGUI themes that I use weren't the problem. Nope. No difference.

Bayswater, you're right that clicking back down the Undo trail should have restored the sound files. But it couldn't, because I'd used it to test for branches. That is, I did some other work, expecting a branch to appear, which would have given me access to the sound files that just disappeared. Actually, I did not know that sound files were affected, though I should have known. But there's a line in the manual about separate Undo files for Sound Files and Polar, so I mistakenly believed that sound files would only be deleted from the Soundbites window, and that a separate Undo file would handle that.

When I did the other work, my restoration path disappeared. Not a problem, I thought, since all I had to do was close the file without saving. No branch had appeared, but closing without saving would assure the file was back to its original state. Except it didn't. The sound files were already gone.

Since that was a version from three months ago, all the sound we had recorded in the past month had disappeared. The record of incredible talent was in that moment... GONE! My heart sank and I thought I was going to cave in. Then I remembered Time Machine. When I found that Time Machine had a recent record of those files, it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted. I'd never come so close to losing someone's creative record, and for such carelessness!!!

Eventually I will call MOTU to see if anyone there can shed some light on the problem. Just not today. Probably not this week.

Shooshie

[bayswater]

Bayswater, you're right that clicking back down the Undo trail should have restored the sound files. But it couldn't, because I'd used it to test for branches.
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But there's a line in the manual about separate Undo files for Sound Files and Polar, so I mistakenly believed that sound files would only be deleted from the Soundbites window, and that a separate Undo file would handle that.

Yes I thought that too. Apparently, the Undo for sound files is just for changes to them, not their existence. But if Undo was working as expected on your setup, presumably you could have retrieved the files with redo.

One thought: Are you trying this on a new project? You might have said, but I missed it.

[Shooshie]

Bayswater, you're right that clicking back down the Undo trail should have restored the sound files. But it couldn't, because I'd used it to test for branches.
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But there's a line in the manual about separate Undo files for Sound Files and Polar, so I mistakenly believed that sound files would only be deleted from the Soundbites window, and that a separate Undo file would handle that.

Yes I thought that too. Apparently, the Undo for sound files is just for changes to them, not their existence. But if Undo was working as expected on your setup, presumably you could have retrieved the files with redo.

One thought: Are you trying this on a new project? You might have said, but I missed it.

I've tried it on every project I've worked on in the past several years. New, old, in-between. MIDI, Audio, and both. It's become a sort of side obsession. I really had concluded that somewhere since OSX came out, they broke the code and never fixed it, and I was knocked for a spin when you guys started saying "it works here."

Shoosh

[Julia123]

WARNING:

When trying other files to see if any of them produced branches after going back in the Undo History, I opened an old version of a current project. The version was from about three months ago, and I thought it would be ok to test the UNDO History in it.

Stupidly, I forgot that going back in UNDO means erasing audio files as if they were never there. When I then created new work in the file to see if a branch was created (and no branch was created), I lost my path back to the present. Now those audio files were gone.

The trouble is that those were the same audio files being accessed by the current version of the project. For a few moments, I thought I had just destroyed one of the best projects I've worked on in a long time, with some talented musicians who would not have forgiven my having lost over 200 sound files from sessions that happened over several months.

Fortunately, Time Machine saved the day. But there were some heart-pounding moments in which I tried to remember whether that project was on a Time Machine volume or a manual backup volume. I had not backed it up manually in a while, but I soon realized that I wasn't backing up manually because it's on Time Machine. I've never felt so off my game in my career. What a STUPID thing to do! I always have kept redundant backups. This time there was only Time Machine. Scared me half to death.

So, if you test UNDO History, create a new project or make a copy of an old project, sound files and all, completely independent from any current project. And BACK UP!

Shooshie

Whoa!! Thanks for the warning, never would have thought! I'm glad you got your files back.