Author Topic: Outdated autosave system  (Read 3877 times)

Pikachu

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Outdated autosave system
on: May 15, 2022, 09:27:25 PM
I think the current autosave implementation is pretty outdated. Artstudio only autosaves after every certain period of time, minimum of one minute.
1. If working on a large file, autosave can take an annoyingly long time to finish. It pauses everything and you have to wait until it's done.

2. Artstudio delays autosave if you're painting, only saving when you aren't doing anything. This sort of makes sense because if it interrupted you every single minute it would be incredibly obtrusive. However this can be annoying because say I work 10 minutes nonstop and the app crashes, throughout those 10 minutes it doesn't autosave a single time, so I'm back 10 minutes.

So my question is why doesn't artstudio autosave seamlessly after every step? I hope it has the capability of implementing this as it would solve every single problem, and I think this is what every software out there does except Artstudio.

icezimy

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #1 on: May 15, 2022, 11:06:19 PM
Yes! I have lost up to an hour of work, more than once before, because auto-save didn't work. Made it a habit of saving manually every few minutes and it really takes a lot of time to save larger files.

It would be great if this is something that could be improved ! :)

Lucky Clan

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #2 on: May 16, 2022, 09:15:08 AM
We are now working on faster autosave!

I have just tested one large document, and we went down from 10s to 1.5s when autosaving after painting one layer. It will be available in new beta.

LCArt

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #3 on: May 16, 2022, 12:55:59 PM
We are now working on faster autosave!

I have just tested one large document, and we went down from 10s to 1.5s when autosaving after painting one layer. It will be available in new beta.
is it corruption proof? like... what if the app crashes in those 1.5s?

Lucky Clan

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #4 on: May 17, 2022, 02:29:43 AM
Crash is crash, it doesn't matter if it crashes in 1.5s or 10s...
We just always try to find ways to optimize things.

icezimy

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #5 on: May 17, 2022, 09:12:48 AM
We are now working on faster autosave!

I have just tested one large document, and we went down from 10s to 1.5s when autosaving after painting one layer. It will be available in new beta.

That's awesome looking forward for the update! :D

But I also noticed that sometimes even if it says "autosaving", but then the app crashes soon after,  or I manually close and reopen the app, it didn't actually autosave it for quite some time. (Sometimes lost work up to an hour like this, sometimes just a few min, even though autosave is set to just 1min)

One way i go around this, is by periodically going to the document browser after it autosaved and then back to the canvas, or by saving it manually before closing it and just in between. Usually it only then, actually saved it to the current version when reopening the app manually or after a crash, or sometimes even after just switching between apps.

Not sure why that is,  but I notice it mostly on bigger files.
Last Edit: May 17, 2022, 09:42:41 AM by icezimy

LCArt

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #6 on: May 19, 2022, 04:34:17 AM
Crash is crash, it doesn't matter if it crashes in 1.5s or 10s...
We just always try to find ways to optimize things.
sigh, i guess ill report the bug if i lose a file due to this new saving method. I'm just EXTREMELLY paranoid about apps corrupting files, infinite painter did and still does corrupt files due to its poorly implemented saving function... dunno whats that developer even doing, file corruption has been in his app since release and happens quite often...

barel

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #7 on: May 19, 2022, 11:58:15 AM
sigh, i guess ill report the bug if i lose a file due to this new saving method. I'm just EXTREMELLY paranoid about apps corrupting files, infinite painter did and still does corrupt files due to its poorly implemented saving function... dunno whats that developer even doing, file corruption has been in his app since release and happens quite often...
as someone who did ask for the procreate saving system, artstudio’s system is better because of the version history feature, which I’m told isn’t possible the way procreate does things
I never had a corrupted file with artstudio, but even if I did, I could just reload the previous version

Lucky Clan

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #8 on: May 20, 2022, 05:25:00 PM
Yes. You should just know than new version is created after document is fully uploaded to iCloud.

sigh, i guess ill report the bug if i lose a file due to this new saving method. I'm just EXTREMELLY paranoid about apps corrupting files, infinite painter did and still does corrupt files due to its poorly implemented saving function... dunno whats that developer even doing, file corruption has been in his app since release and happens quite often...
as someone who did ask for the procreate saving system, artstudio’s system is better because of the version history feature, which I’m told isn’t possible the way procreate does things
I never had a corrupted file with artstudio, but even if I did, I could just reload the previous version

Pikachu

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #9 on: May 22, 2022, 05:10:47 AM
faster autosave sounds really nice! I have to wonder though, if that means there's no possibility for a constant autosave after every step? Even if autosave is faster, people will still lose progress on crashes because it doesn't trigger unless you stop working. This was my main problem, if I'm in the middle of working and I've been doing it constantly for the past 30 minutes and it crashes then I lose all the time I spent working since the last autosave. It is extremely frustrating but I guess I will just have to get in the habit of saving manually.

Lucky Clan

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #10 on: May 26, 2022, 07:05:56 AM
We decreased a bit time to trigger Autosave. Now, in the latest beta, you have to stop painting for at least 2-3 seconds.

The problem with faster autosave is that we always have to update preview and thumbnail images inside the document, which takes a lot of time when document is large.

icezimy

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #11 on: May 26, 2022, 09:39:56 AM
We decreased a bit time to trigger Autosave. Now, in the latest beta, you have to stop painting for at least 2-3 seconds.

The problem with faster autosave is that we always have to update preview and thumbnail images inside the document, which takes a lot of time when document is large.

Maybe the thumbnail/preview images could only be updated when actually switching to the document browser, or when clicking on/opening the “open documents” view?

So that while you’re just on the canvas and painting, it doesn’t need to do those thumbnail updates every time, and can just save continually. So it would only take longer when actually going to document browser.

Lucky Clan

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Re: Outdated autosave system
Reply #12 on: May 31, 2022, 08:13:37 AM
In this case thumbnail/preview will be not up-to-date. For example when you close document just after autosave. Autosave/save is partly managed by system. Besides after last fix in beta version Autosave is quite fast i think...

We decreased a bit time to trigger Autosave. Now, in the latest beta, you have to stop painting for at least 2-3 seconds.

The problem with faster autosave is that we always have to update preview and thumbnail images inside the document, which takes a lot of time when document is large.

Maybe the thumbnail/preview images could only be updated when actually switching to the document browser, or when clicking on/opening the “open documents” view?

So that while you’re just on the canvas and painting, it doesn’t need to do those thumbnail updates every time, and can just save continually. So it would only take longer when actually going to document browser.