Projects — Alternatives, Copies, Packages, Folders

Rambling notes about use of packages vs. folders and alternatives vs. copies.

Ongoing.

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Copy, Delete, Rename. Alternatives are great ways to make variations of a project that are independent and recallable. There is debate about using “Save a copy as” vs. alternatives. I find it much easier to refer to an alternative than to have to work with a completely different project.

This leads directly to options for projects — package or folder. I started with package for ease of keeping things together. I am now using folders simply for easy access to the audio files from a project. Digging in to the audio folder in a package is difficult, and actually impossible from most applications.

Save projects — Logic Pro X

When you save a project in Logic Pro, your recordings and all the changes you make are saved with the project.

Logic Pro autosaves your work so that you don’t lose important changes if the app quits unexpectedly. Logic Pro shows a dialog when you reopen the project, asking if you want to use the autosaved version. If you choose not to, Logic Pro opens the last manually saved version of the project.

Use project alternatives and backups — Logic Pro X

When Show Advanced Tools is selected in the Advanced preferences pane, you can create alternative versions of a project, each with a unique name and different settings. Project alternatives let you save “snapshots” of a project in different states, including different cuts or mixes. They’re saved as part of the project and share the same assets. Alternatives for the current project appear in the File > Project Alternatives submenu.

Backups let you go back to earlier saved versions of a project. Each time you save a project using the File > Save menu item (or pressing Command-S), a version of the current project alternative is saved (up to ten backups per alternative). In the Project > Revert to submenu, backups for the current alternative are listed in descending order from newest to oldest.