I’m still trying to find my place with DTP. Some of my projects are not working out quite as I thought they might, although that may just be me, not understanding exactly how DTP4 fits into my life yet. For other aspects it’s perfect and I wish I’d discovered it years ago!
On aspect of my life is as a Librarian for a Saxophone Orchestra and DTP4 is really coming into its own in the organisation, storage and retrieval of music files, both PDF manuscript and audio. I’m trying to get to grips with what exactly I should store in DTP4 and what should remain on my hard drive or external drive. For instance:
As well as maintaining the Orchestra library, I also create audio files for rehearsal. For this I use Dorico 6 to create an accurate audio file then Cubase to mix the WAV files and produce MP3 files for our members. I stored the Dorico file in DTP then when I wanted to use or update it I used the Open button in the top menu. This did as expected and opened Dorico, but when I saved the file, it stored it to a folder with just a number (number 28, if I remember) and didn’t seem to reflect the change in the main DTP window. I had to download the file, make the mods then upload it with a new version number to the inbox as normal.
Cubase creates a whole lot of extra files and folders as part of its normal operation. I did all of the modification and creation outside of DTP then imported just the MP3 files into DTP for storage.
Am I correct in thinking that DTP should really only be used for the final files; the MP3s the PDFs, the current version of the Dorico file? and all subsidiary files should remain where they are left by the programme? Effectively, I think I was trying to use DTP as a second hard drive which I’m guessing is not its purpose.
Apologies if this note is a bit rambling, but the more I use DTP, the more I see uses and the more I see possible limitations. Where it’s useful, it’s really useful, so much so that I was happy to pay the fee for the programme. I think the limitations will reduce the more I understand the programme and how it functions.
With most well-behaved Mac apps, if you “Open With” from inside Devonthink you can edit the file and then Save. It should then update the file within Devonthink.
However you should not save a new file directly in the Devonthink database via a 3rd party app. There are a variety of methods to use scripts or watched folders to automate importing documents from your Mac filesystem into Devonthink.
I won’t get into the media management aspects of this but I will say that the short answer to your subject heading is no.
They haven’t designed it to do that, there are many reasons you probably don’t want to do that.
That being said a number of people on this forum have come up with uses beyond what I imagine the designers intended.
I work in with software similar to Cubase and Dorico (video and audio editing) and I don’t store my projects from those packages in DThink. Too many sidecar and setting files that are associated with the actual project file.
What you could try is organizing your music editing projects on your proper hard drive in such a way that you can keep a manifest document of what is what in DThink and then point or link to where it is either by indexing a simple text file at the top of any project folder or copying the file path somewhere.
So for me it would be:
sheet music, contracts, musician contacts in DThink
a file in Dthink pointing to a folder on your hard drive where your Cubase and Dorico projects live
including a list of what you did and why. (First performance, score revisions, recordings, track lists, second performance).
I think it made a new one - although I’m not certain.
It doesn’t really matter though as I won’t be editing stuff directly from DTP. When I need to make a new version of a Dorico piece, I’ll do it outwith DTP. I imagine it’s safer that way so that any temporary files or setting files will remain on my main system.
I’m learning what I can and can’t do as I go along.
Thank you for some excellent suggestions. I’d never considered creating a separate file pointing to the Dorico and Cubase folders, I shall look at that first thing. As I need to keep track of the performances, copyrights, concert notes etc, this file will be an ideal repository for that data.