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Backup your Previews


PhilMassey

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I am posting this because I see a couple of members have lost their Previews for reasons unknown. Whether due to a software issue, Windows, or something else, I can't say, but whatever the reason, you can protect yourself, (possibly from yourself), from losing your hard work with a few simple precautions.

1)       In the Preview slideout window. Use the copy button to make a copy of your "good" Preview and give it a new name. 

I always make changes to the copy first to avoid making a mess of the original preview. If you apply the Preview copy to  a copy of the sequence  and it messes up you can go back to square one and start over.

2)       Export the whole Preview to a dated filename using the Import/Export button. This creates a file in the  ImportExport folder which you can backup elsewhere.

3)      This one is only for those who are comfortable mucking around in folders and changing filenames. Caution.

       Go to the \commondata  folder and make a copy of LORPreviews.xml and change the name of the copy  to include the date, and a comment if you like.

 

If something does happen to  corrupt or remove your Preview you can now recover it from one of these backups.

 

Also you may be able to get your Preview back by opening the last Sequence you worked on and letting it create a Preview from the sequence. Often this works fine and creates a Preview with “Imported from” (name of Sequence). If this Sequence and Preview are correct you can use that Preview for the rest of your sequences.

I still maintain that all your sequences should match the same Preview and Grid View on the keep it simple principle, with a few exceptions.

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Phil this happened to me.  I changed the Master Preview, then opened a sequence.  A box came up with all the information that had changed since the previous opening.  I clicked the revert back to previous version #.  Obviously that choice was wrong.  It changed all sequences back to the older preview version and messed with my grid view.  I didn't select save and was able to do it again with the current preview version which just happened to be .172   I found files in L: with all the compressed versions and cleaned them up BTW.  Thanks for the back up tip!

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When saving the entire LOR files to an SD card, the preview files go Along with it also.

I copied you whole LOR file to a 64gb SD card. Then transferred to my desktop and played a sequence. Looks like everything worked.

i have not ran a show from the desktop though. 

 

 

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Phil has helped me a lot in the past few weeks. 

I was the one in a state of panic when my preview just simply disappeared. I had sequenced that morning, went outside to set up Halloween stuff and about 11 pm came back in to sequence a bit. Wanted to play back what I had sequenced that morning to refresh my memory and received an error that I had received a couple weeks ago pertaining to one of my networks. Thought it strange since I have not had that message since Phil helped (actually cleaned up and rebuilt) my preview and grid views.

Looked at the Preview Window and my preview was gone and sequencer assigned a generic or another version of one of my previews. With the error playback would not play.

Figured it would be an easy fix and went to import the preview, it appeared to be gone. Did a file search and it was there exactly where it is sup to be my docs/ lor/ import/ export

Went back to Preview Window and once again tried to import, not seen. Verified again it was in fact there and it was.

Opened the last sequence I completed and it worked so I just exported the preview and gave it an entirely new name. I also moved the "ghost" preview to a preview backup file I made. I did not want to risk it interfering with the new preview.

ITS HALLOWEEN FOLKS

It was to late to contact Phil and the only way I recovered was to open the last sequence I created and exported the preview that was gone. It was not gone from my computer, just that S5 would not see it in the import preview window. I could see it in file explorer.

Phil did not hesitate to call me yesterday and we went over everything and all is working again.

A huge thank you to Phil once again for going out of his way to assist me with this. 

JR

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4 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

3)      This one is only for those who are comfortable mucking around in folders and changing filenames. Caution.

       Go to the \commondata  folder and make a copy of LORPreviews.xml and change the name of the copy  to include the date, and a comment if you like.

Something else to keep in mind. If you have your LOR Data folder (sequences/audio,etc) in a Dropbox folder, then you can log into drop-box and restore a previous version of the file. While running a show out of an online folder isn't really encouraged, if you do have your files there, this would be one more way to recover a broken/changed/damaged/whatever Preview.

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