Dealing with Large Backups

For many musicians, OnSong lets them to more with less equipment. They have backing tracks assigned to each song and perhaps even motion background videos for a more dynamic show. If you are using higher-quality audio and video files, the size of your OnSong library can grow quickly, causing issues with backing up those gigabytes of files.

Of course a backup file is only useful if it's stored off of the device. This allows you to restore your OnSong library quickly in the event that the device is lost, stolen, or damaged. The best way to ensure your library is safe is to have it automatically backup to Dropbox or another cloud-based storage service. If you're library is too big, it could put your backup strategy in jeopardy.

We've added a new setting in OnSong that brings the size of your backup files down while still giving you a novel way to rebuild your library in the event of a device failure.

Go into the Utilities Menu in OnSong by tapping on the gear icon in the menubar. Then tap on Settings and choose Advanced. One of the first options is Backup Media Files which defaults to being toggled on. Toggle this off and then tap the Done button. If you have large media files contained in your OnSong library, they will be omitted from the backup file, making it much smaller.

You may be curious as to what happens when you restore a library that had the media files removed. OnSong still backs up your entire library such as songs, sets, settings, books, and even media. The references to those backing tracks and motion backgrounds are still restored, but the underlying media files will be missing. You can then restore those separately. To do this, you would just import the files again. As long as the filename of the original media file is the same as that in the restored library, OnSong will relink the media file to the original media entry. This makes restoring a library a multi-step process, but it also means you can backup and restore faster, and then just import the media you need when you need it.

I hope that gives you a new way to work with OnSong. If you have any questions, please contact us.