Files and backups

RigAstra stores your work in files on the device and can export and import six file types to back up or share your work. This chapter explains what each one contains, when your work is saved and how RigAstra protects your data.

Automatic saving

There’s no button to save a scene: RigAstra saves it on its own when you enter Perform, when you leave the Editor, when the app goes to the background and after actions such as importing, renaming or loading. Settings are saved as soon as you change them.

Save in the scene actions doesn’t save the current scene: it creates a copy in Saved Scenes (see Presets).

File types

When you export, RigAstra opens the system picker so you can save or share the file.

Drone Pad user chords are stored in the device settings and also as a copy inside each Drone Pad in the scene, so they travel both in .rigastrasettings and inside exported scenes.

Make a full backup

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Export Scenes and save the .rigastrascenes file.
3. Tap Export Settings and save the .rigastrasettings file.
4. Export the user presets you want to keep one by one from each preset panel.

To restore on another device, use Import Scenes and Import Settings. Remember that Import Scenes replaces every scene on the device without asking for confirmation.

Saved Scenes live only on the device and aren’t included in any backup. To take one to another device, load it and export it as a scene with Export in its scene actions.

How RigAstra protects your data

• Nothing unreadable gets overwritten. If RigAstra can’t read one of its internal files (scenes, settings, presets or CC values), it keeps a copy of the original, tries to recover it from a backup and, if it can’t, stops writing to that file until you restart the app. In every case it lets you know with an About your files message.
• Automatic backups. RigAstra keeps up to 5 backups of each internal file: one per session and at most one every 10 minutes.
• If you run out of space, RigAstra tells you it couldn’t save. Your changes stay open in the app: free up some storage and try again.

Files from newer versions

• A file made with a newer version of RigAstra that this one can’t read is rejected with a message asking you to update the app. Your file isn’t modified.
• If a scene contains a type of control your version doesn’t know, Perform and the Editor show a gray Requires a newer version of RigAstra marker over its cells. It can’t be touched, moved or edited, its cells count as occupied, and the control is kept intact when saving.
• Unknown options on a known control are kept too, as is an unknown page background, which shows as the default background until you choose another.

The files aren’t readable text, but they aren’t encrypted either: any copy of RigAstra can open them. RigAstra also opens files from older versions.

Compatibility between devices

All files are compatible between iPhone and iPad.

Between iPhone or iPad and Android, not every file transfers from one platform to the other today:

Also, when scenes are opened on Android, the iPad-specific layout isn’t used, and macro ranges saved in the old format are lost.