A word of warning. I saved my Realband file as an BIAB Song file and it wiped out all my lyrics in the BIAB file leaving me just the chords in BIAB. A few hours wasted and my BIAB song wrecked. It also didn't save any new tracks I'd written in Realband. I then re-did a track and saved it as a SEQ file and it saved the new tracks. I assume you should only use the link between BIAB and RealTracks to reference BIAB and never save as BIAB! I lost several hours of lyric writing etc.

lambada,

Sorry for your loss. Great advice and hopefully your loss is a learning experience for others that insert lyrics in their song.

You may not be aware but RealBand saves files to Band-in-a-Box's MGU/SGU format by default. However, there is a setting to change the file save default to RealBand's SEQ. You can change this action by going to "OPTIONS" (CNTRL + F5) > "Preferences" > "Files" (3) and selecting the bottom checkbox, "Default to SEQ when saving a file".

If you save back to BIAB format from RealBand, you should always save using a different file name to avoid any loss. Also, I always recommend saving to .SEQ (the RealBand format) first. That preserves every setting made in RealBand. You can then save out to other formats, which is going to strip away certain things (for example, you won't get your other audio tracks saved in a BIAB or MIDI format), so you want to make sure you don't lose work you've done.

I've not done it much, and am not at my music machine, so I can't test it, but RealBand is only going to save certain elements from RealBand to a BIAB file. And if you save to an SGU file, you're pretty much only going to get the chord progression and the selected style. I think you can specify a track for a melody to save to .MGU, but that would have to be a MIDI track. And I don't believe you are going to get an VST/VSTi assignments from RealBand saved to the BIAB file (but I could be wrong there).

But bottom line, if you are working in RealBand, always use the .SEQ format to save, then save as something else for particular purposes to ensure you don't lose anything. Once you are finished with your project, you can decide which files to keep or delete.

This has been requested many times.
It only makes sense that if in RB it should default to saving as a SQ file where you lose nothing and can still save to BiaB late.
Once saved to BiaB as a default you suffer loss.

Should be an easy decision to make SEQ the default in my eyes ..

There is a checkbox in preferences to make SEQ the default "save as" setting.

Noted in my first post. See the screenshot above.

Yes this option now exists, and I use it too, but this should be the default. Losing time/effort is way worse (especially when the program doesn't say you are going to lose all your work) ..
SEQ should be the default, plain and simple. This has bit too many users in the butt.

If it Saves as a SEQ file as the default, I can later go back and edit it and save as BIAB file, with my choice on what it contains. But when I've worked for a couple hours and Save the file, only to Open it later and find I lost everything I did; that is unacceptable.

I'm a programmer; I would never allow this to happen if I knew about it.
The user thinks everything is fine, only to find out later they have an un-salvageable disaster.

Example:
I have a BiaB file I got just where I want it. I Open it in RB, record a guy I paid to come here and add parts .. then I hit Save.
Tomorrow everything I paid him for (and the performance) is lost.
It's avoidable .. with no real cost other than a few minutes saving the SEQ file back as a BiaB file later. The 'option' should be to change it to save BiaB files as Biab .. but the default should be the most loss-less, user-proof method; SEQ files.

If you can't tell, I feel strongly about this one.
Why make the defaults cause possible data loss to a new user? It makes no sense.

rharv,

I agree with you that SEQ should be the default save file format in RealBand. I believe this was discussed in a RealBand wish list thread before and after the checkbox was added. Peter Gannon said the checkbox was left unchecked to maintain program operational compatibility but the default can be changed at a later date.

Maybe it's time to make a wish list request to change the checkbox default.

I agree. SEQ is the RealBand file format, and just for that reason should be the default format.

+1 Also RB shouldn't delete stuff entered in BIAB like lyrics. They should be compatible. Not saving stuff that BIAB can't do is reasonable, but zapping stuff done previously in BIAB, that's crazy. And no warning messages.....

I've written the request in the RealBand wish list. If you like the idea then support the request with a +1 please. +++ RealBand Wishlist Request +++