Dropbox doesn’t like Logic - iCloud for Logic sessions? what’s your experience?

[Blatboy]

Since the “new” overhaul of Dropbox it has stopped syncing my Logic files correctly.   I do need a cloud service for my use case... or at least it’s the most convenient way of doing it. (I run Logic at home or at my studio a couple miles away.)  I roll my own cloud service with Synology’s Drive, but in the past it’s been not great with Apple centric Logic files.  My recent experiments with it seemed to be successful, but annoying.  Too many notifications about every bit and byte changed.

I’m assuming iCloud will be the best for this, as it’s coming from Apple.  How have your experiences been with iCloud and Logic sessions?

Edited July 27, 2023 by Blatboy

[Mania]

If you’re trying to record to the cloud straight,  I would say never ever do it.

Always record locally on your computer or to an attached external drive and then later (after quitting Logic) as a back up you could copy things to any cloud service. All work, but do it manually. It’s pretty easy, you just drag it to your favourite cloud service. Takes 1 second. All these real time sync things don’t work well and probably shouldn’t work with logic or any professional software i say.  Maybe others will chime in but this syncing process is just asking for trouble. 

[rAC]

@Mania’s advice is good except I would stress that you should zip the Logic Project before uploading to a Cloud service. @des99 has written in many threads about the risk of corruption to Logic projects if they are uploaded to the Cloud without zipping first.

[David Nahmani]

I haven't been lucky with Dropbox (too many times, project files were broken into the package contents and required repairing...) so I gave up on it. 

I've used iCloud and Google drive successfully for sharing compressed .zip files of my project folders reliably for years. 

[Blatboy]

Oof.  I was afraid of that.  Of course I always was storing everything locally on all devices, but that doesn't matter. Yes @Mania it may just take 1 second, but it's an extra step I must remember to do. And then I should .zip it too? (Yes, this totally makes sense, btw) I literally go between working at home and the studio multiple times a day while working on multiple projects that already have too many files.

1st world problems boo hoo. haha.

I don't mean to come across as complaining to you though, I deeply appreciate the input.  I'm just trying to figure out what's the easiest way to deal.  This has been my way of working for well over a decade. 

Maybe I was lucky but I never had an issue with dropbox (outside of slowing down my system) until I stupidly agreed to upgrade to the new version on "file provider." (What ended up happening was the exact opposite of "file provider" hahah)

Now some files on one system are ok, and not on the other system.  I'm going to have to manually comb and figure where the stuff is.

I have multiple NAS servers... I also use a peer to peer network so that home is at 192.168.9.xxx and studio is 192.168.6.xxx (for a while I had my parent's place on the other side of the continent on that same network... ahhh technology) so there must be a simple way to do this.

If I must compress and drag files to a cloud provider every time, that may just be what I gotta do.  Seems so... messy.  (backups, versioning etc etc etc) 

I may just be reacting to change.

 

[Blatboy]

 

So I've been trying to .zip sessions/folders and put them in dropbox.  It's not working for me... my sessions are multiple GB in size, take a long time to .zip, and I switch between the two places so much it's easy to lose track of what files/sessions I had updated and where I hadn't.  So far I haven't made any major mistakes, but I know it would have been a matter of time. It took too much thinking/remembering to keep track of everything. (I'm often working on 4 or 5 episodes at a time... so many sessions per episode, too.) 

I found a solution.  It looks like it's going to work...It is so good I'm tempted to start a new thread, as I think it's a useful tip for someone in my situation.

I have been a long time user of ChronoSync ($40 from https://www.econtechnologies.com), a feature rich backup program that I've used to do daily backups of data from my Macs to my NAS drive. (It also can do bootable/clone backups yadda yadda yadda)

What I didn't know, is they have a little add-on for about $15 called ChronoAgent that allows you to easily and quickly sync files (including 2 way sync) directly between two Macs, locally or remotely.  I have it set to automatically sync a folder I've named "LogicSync" between my MBP at home and Mac Studio in my studio every morning.  However, if I've done work on a session at home, then later that same day want to work on it at the studio, before I split I just click a button and it will run the sync immediately.  No Dropbox/iCloud/SynologyDrive weirdness... much less chance for PEBCAK.

I hope someone finds this helpful.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Blatboy

[Mania]

Bravo. Elegant. The key is not syncing while working in Logic. 

[wonshu]

3 things I'd like to add:

1) I generally don't trust software with precious data, so I keep the data in several places. I may be an old fart in this regard, but I want to be in charge of knowing where my stuff is and where my backups are. 

2) I have had bad experiences with syncing files I'm actively working on. They get locked, some can't be copied but a stupid "place holder" is created. Some are changed but then take ages to change again to the current version. Had this happen with Dropbox, iCloud, Syncthing, psync. I do what you did earlier and manually .zip and upload and keep my colleagues synced that way. Every now and then we get a new young guy joining our team who wants to implement an automatic system and every time that happens we have errors and broken Logic projects and audio files. No thank you. We'll have to take care of it manually.

3) I've mentioned "Syncthing" in the paragraph before. It's a wonderful open source and free (!! albeit a bit geeky) true peer-to-peer syncing solution with no third party involved (except for peer discovery). The data is exclusively on your own computers. It works incredibly well and I started to blindly trust it with a lot of my data. But it too (like Dropbox and other sync software) created duplicates for locked files (which Logic projects are while working on them) and things like that which are highly annoying and of course with "Sync Conflict" and a date attached which in case of audio files which also means that Logic won't recognize those audio files. So I'm using it mostly as just a one way mirror for the whole project I'm working on to my NAS (which is just a MacMini with some drives).
The reason I'm writing about it is that it is indeed free and has no fee attached. People may be interested in these types of solutions that actually work.

I really understand the urge to automate this whole process, but so far, I still don't really trust the software.

[Blatboy]

@wonshu I basically agree with all that.  I have multiple backups of all my stuff in 2 different physical locations.  I don't keep personal and financial records on a cloud that isn't one I rolled myself (I use Synology Drive where the "cloud" is on my NAS drive).  I don't care as much about my music stuff, hence I didn't mind keeping it on Dropbox.  (Honestly their ability to bring back stuff you've deleted, while yes, it's a bit creepy... SERIOUSLY saved my bacon a couple times.)  If someone really wanted to steal the music I wrote for a guinea pig trudging through prehistoric mud, they can go right ahead.  I treat my more personal music projects with about as much preciousness as well haha.  The day I have to worry about someone really trying to get my music files, well... I figure I'd have to be pretty big time!

Fortunately with this new solution, there is no 3rd party involved.  It's like a modern day LapLink haha!

 

[wonshu]

My point was not so much about leaking data (which in my case with movie files is also a real concern) but about broken files, locked files or files that don't really sit on your drive anymore because the cloud service decided (and keeps deciding) that this file should be "online only" and thus has to be manually downloaded over and over again.

Stuff like that which actively gets in the way of working. Especially when other people in the team access the files on their machines at the same time.

I agree that the retention of deleted files on Dropbox has saved files for me as well and saved time because I didn't have to wait until the team on the other side of the ocean wakes up and can send it to me.

Edited August 31, 2023 by wonshu