Quick Save x Auto Save

[Oz Perrenoud]

Why is the Quick Save file much smaller than the Auto Save?

[Gregory]

Auto saves are an uncompressed copy of the binary (.d4b) show file as such they can be created with minimal impact to the rest of the software. In all recent versions of software Quick Saves are just a normal save, the only difference is that you can press Disk twice to quickly make the save. A quick save (and normal save) contain both the binary copy of the show file plus an XML version of the show file is generated at that time (the latter makes in possible to load the show in a newer version of software); all of this is then compressed together into a single (.d4z) file. Since it is normally possible to compress both the binary and XML a significant amount the resulting file size is generally less than the auto save even though there is technically more data.

[Oz Perrenoud]

Thanks!