Support Center Workflows Auto-Restore backup takes

Never lose a take to the internet.

How to record automated backup takes with the Auto-Restore feature in Source-Connect Talent, so a dropout at your end never costs the studio a performance.

The scenario

The take was perfect. Your broadband was not.

You are mid-read, in your own booth, on a session with a studio you cannot see. Somewhere in the house a router thinks about something else for half a second, and a word of the best take of the morning does not arrive at the other end.

Auto-Restore is why nobody has to mention it. While you are connected, Source-Connect Talent is writing a high-quality copy of your performance to a folder on your own machine, in parallel with the live stream. When the engineer’s timeline comes up short, the missing audio is fetched from that copy in the background — no re-take, no file to upload, no apology.

What you need

Before you start

Source-Connect Talent Source-Connect Studio Source-Connect Facility

The Source-Connect Talent application, and a folder on a local drive it can write to. A solid-state drive is the recommended choice.
An engineer running Source-Connect Studio or Facility. Your side caches and uploads; the high-quality Replace at the end of a session is requested from their side, not yours.
Room on that drive. Every take you record while connected is written there as well as streamed.
Time at the end of the session. This feature is won or lost in what happens after the last take, not during it.

The setup

Six steps, in order

Choose your local cache folder. Launch Source-Connect Talent and open the Restore/Replace Setup options panel. Designate a reliable local directory as your session storage and watch folder; a solid-state drive is the recommended choice. This is where the application writes its copy of your performance.
Connect to the engineer. Make your connection to the recording studio’s Source-Connect Studio or Facility system as you normally would for a session.
Check the handshake before the first take. Look at the active user list: a green border around the engineer’s avatar confirms the background Auto-Restore link has initialised between the two systems. If it is not there, nothing is being cached against their recording.
Perform as usual. Read the script. While you do, Source-Connect streams your audio to the studio and writes a high-quality local copy to your folder at the same time. Within ten seconds of finishing a take it appears in the application’s Recorded Files list.
Do not stop for a dropout. If a glitch happens mid-take, do not stop and do not offer to go again. Source-Connect flags the missing section on the studio’s timeline and uploads the missing data from your local cache in the background.
Stay online until the engineer says otherwise. When recording ends, do not log out or close Source-Connect Talent. Keep it open until the engineer confirms every background upload has finished and the file statuses read Restore Not Required or Restored, including any Replace the engineer has asked for.

What good looks like

How you know it worked

A green border sits around the engineer’s avatar in the active user list before the first take, not after the session.
Each take appears in your Recorded Files list within ten seconds of you stopping.
Every file reads Restore Not Required or Restored before you log out — and you waited for the engineer to say so.
A glitch you heard during the session is not in the engineer’s file at the end of it, and nobody asked you for another take.

When it does not

The things that actually go wrong

Each one has a support article under it. The first two are worth checking before a take, not after.

No green border on the engineer’s avatar

The background link has not initialised, which means the protection you think you have is not running. Say so before the first take — it is the engineer’s connection options that need checking, and there is nothing to recover from afterwards.

Restore/Replace Panel in Talent: Connections Panel Actions

A take is not in Recorded Files

The panel lists what the application has actually written to your folder. A take that is missing from it is a take with no local copy behind it, whatever the connection looked like.

The Restore/Replace Panel in Talent: General Overview

A file is in a status you do not recognise

Files move through several states before they are done, and “still working” and “waiting on you” do not look the same. This is the page that names them, and it is the one to read before you decide a session is finished.

Restore/Replace Panel: File Process Status