Corrupt project

[yul]

Hello! I was auditioning a project which has abruptly crashed while I was using another software at the same time (non music related). I suspect my PC just ran out of memory and crashed Mulab.

FIrst error was UVI Workstation (one of my channels) cannot function or something like that then, the project crashed. UVI being sample based probably ran out of memory.

I was then unable to re-open the project, I tried the backup version which also didn't work. The error was "cannot open project" and closed.

I was very alarmed then tried to open a new project and then re-opening my crashed project. This time it came thrghou (the tracks and midi only). I could not activate any channels and the audio output was not there. I went to modular view and no ins/outs whatsoever.

I salvaged it in the end by opening a new project at the same time and copy/pasting everything in the new project (which had everything working).

This seems like a very extreme case but still worries me as the backup project was also dead.

Thanks

[heks]

I feel your pain, I have had similar problems myself. I now change the title of the work slightly, when I save I just add something like V2, V3 and so on seems to work. Generally Mulab seems quite resilient compared to my other DAW's, so I've found it a small price to pay for all the positives Mulab has.

[mutools]

If a crash occurs while saving the project file, it will most probably be corrupt. When you try to open such project and a "Cannot open project" error appears then first of all make sure to make a proper backup of the both the original project file and its backup file before trying to open the backup file!

Ok, now on your case: You say that both the original project file as well as the backup file cause "Cannot open project" error. That's very odd. Did you re-save after trying to recover the project and thereby overwrite the healthy backup version? Another possibility is that there is unsufficient memory because of many open apps and lots of audio. To check that restart your computer, open MuLab and open the project, so you have a fresh system to open the project in.
Stability is a top priority, but beyond that it certainly is a good idea to regularly save your big projects to a new file name variation like heks also suggested.

[yul]

Been using Mulab with great results for many years without issues so this is a very exceptional situation obviously.

When I finally got to open the corrupt files (both main and backup) they both were non-functionnal but the midi and plugins were there. Yes I tried saving it to a new file and it was the same and didn't work. Luckily I copied everything manually in a new project.

What happened here? Pretty sure I wasn't saving anything when that happened.

Maybe we will never know and it's certainly related to memory being maxed out by my other application.

Is the .backup autosave in the background or is it saved only when I save manually my project?

Thanks,

[mutools]

Is the .backup autosave in the background or is it saved only when I save manually my project?

The ".Backup" project file simply is the previous version of your project file. So upon saving a project MuLab does this:

1) Deletes existing .Backup.MuProject file
2) Renames current MuProject file to .Backup.MuProject
3) Saves current project in MuProject file

Apart from that there also is the "Auto Save" feature which regulalrly saves the current project into the User/MuProject/AutoSaved library folder. Maybe you can recover something from there?

[yul]

Thanks I will have a look