What’s everyone’s protocol for storing scenes on the dLive? I’m using a CTi1500 and a FOH person saved scenes but didn’t realise they also then had to save the Show file afterward, so their scenes didn’t get saved (or at least that’s what we think happened).
Is it best practice to save to the USB stick every time you save a scene?
If you were doing FOH or monitors for a touring act, how often would you be expecting to save a scene and then store it to the USB drive?
When would you overwrite vs store a new show/scene?
Thanks in advance, I’ve learned so much from these forums and I’m so grateful!
As soon as I store or overwrite a scene, I automatically go and overwrite my show on the console as well. Then, maybe once a week (depending on how busy we have been) I will back the show up to my USB drive, and then also transfer that to my PC when I get home.
From my perspective, of course, it all depends very much on how you use scenes.
In a theater, there might be 100 scenes in a show, while your touring act might only have one scene, or one per song, or maybe five per song.
When multiple people are working on a project, the handling of scenes must of course be precisely defined.
Personally, I avoid overwriting scenes and shows, especially during the creation process, and prefer to store one too many, but this always gives me the option to go back to an earlier point in time.
In any case, it’s important to name or/and describe the scenes clearly.
And once everything is finalized, you practically have final versions and can delete anything unnecessary.
During a performance, however, where you use the created scenes and only refine things, you can of course overwrite scenes from time to time.
You still have the old scene as a backup in an earlier version of the show.
And always: Better one backup too many than too few.
So, as already mentioned, save everything additional on your PC, which is also backed up regularly.
In my venue I have only three normal scenes - one for each main recurring event . (Special events may get there own scene for a time).
I periodically backup each of these three scenes - adding a date prefix to the original scene name. Example, if the main scene is XXX I will save it as 20250905 XXX.
Then I save the show a couple of times a month. (They don’t change a lot during a month). And once a month I save the show to USB.
For me it depends on how important the event is, and how complicated the show file is. A lot of my events could limp along on some manual changes to a standard show file and in those cases I don’t save specific versions for one-off events.
If I think there is a remote chance I or someone else could load another show file before I am finished with the show, then I store the show file to internal scene memory. Usually I overwrite any earlier version of the show file.
If a show is complicated enough that losing the show file would be disastrous, then after saving to internal surface memory I also copy to external USB. If the show already exists there, there will be a dialog asking if I want to replace or make a new copy. I choose to make a new copy. I then have every intermediate version of the show I have saved in the event that surface failure or user error causes the show file to be lost.
I really should also back up the USB drive in case it fails simultaneously with the loss of a file from internal surface storage, but I am not usually that paranoid.