This article will help explain the various Save options of Studio One. Saving is a basic concept, however Studio One offers extra options that can help with song management.
Below is the Studio One "File" menu where the save options are located.
Rename
Choosing [Rename] allows for a quick and safe renaming of a song. This option renames the current active open song and this song's folder.
Save New Version
When choosing [Save New Version], the Song is saved inside the Song > Songname > History Folder. The new version will sit alongside the song's "AutoSave" files (If Autosave is enabled).
However, when "Save New Version" is used, the song file will not be overwritten like Autosaved songs do. Press the checkbox for "Incremental version" to make the song save with a incremental version number.
Below in this screenshot is an example. Fill in a description to make the new version easy to locate.
Restore Version
Choosing [Restore Version] allows you to choose a previously saved version of your song. The Restore Version window shows all the available versions of the song. Choose the version that should be restored.
- Title: Name of Song
- Description: Defines if the song is an Autosave, a song "Saved as New Version", or it will be blank if "Save As" was used.
- Age: Defines the age of the version being restored.
- Date: Defines the date when the particular version was created.
Save
Choosing [Save] is the simplest way to save a song. This will overwrite the song that is currently open.
Save As....
Choosing [Save As..] allows you to save your song in different formats, and is a good way to backup your song. Be sure to rename the file something different when you choose "Save As.." or the current song will be overwritten. This option defaults to the same folder as the song that is currently open.
Convert To
Convert To allows you to quickly save your currently-opened Studio One Document (Song, Show, or Project) to another file format.
Options include:
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AAF File - Advanced Authoring Format. More details here.
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Capture Session - A proprietary PreSonus format for use with PreSonus Capture.
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MIDI File - a .MID file. More details here.
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OpenTL - Tascam’s Open Tracklist format.
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Zip File - Compresses your entire document and all of its related media into a single Zip file for easy sharing and backup. Unused files are excluded from the Zip, as are alternate Song Versions. More info on Zip Export here.
Save to New Folder
This function saves the necessary parts of a song to a new folder, effectively minimizing the size of that new song folder.
There are cases where you may or may not want to do this. You may want to do this if sharing a song folder with another user. If you use Save to New Folder the new folder size is minimized, only including the files actually being used by the song. This would be perhaps instead of copying the song folder which may include many gigabytes of audio files that you perhaps do want to personally keep but are not currently being referenced by the song, and that might be prohibitive and/or unnecessary to include in a shared song folder.
In the case of cloud sharing, you would optionally use Save to New Folder to save it directly to a new folder on Dropbox or other cloud service.
This can be much the same for local archives. If you worked on a song for months and are certain that everything that the final mix version of the song is referencing, and playing, is everything you'll ever need for it, you can Save to New Folder to minimize it and delete the other song folder.
Note: To fully minimize the size of a song folder, you should also expand and delete all media on inactive track layers in the copy, unless you want to keep those as well. If a user for example performs multiple takes of audio recordings, there could easily be many gigabytes of unnecessary audio files on inactive track layers and if they're on the timeline, playing or not, they are "used files". It could make the difference between a 2-3GB song folder or a 12-15GB song folder.
Save as Template
Choosing [Save as Template] is great for creating your own pre-configured tracking environment for your song. Please view the Studio One Reference manual for more information on using Templates.
Revert
Choosing [Revert] will revert the open song back to the last save, erasing all changes.