You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

JWMJWM's avatar
JWMJWM
Explorer | Level 4
7 years ago

Smart Sync doesn't work for Logic Pro files

I'm experiencing an issue with smart sync.

 

It works perfectly for all my files, exept for Logic Pro X Files. 

 

When I right-click and choose 'online only' it syncs, sets the icon to the grey online-only-icon, but within 5 seconds or so, the green 'local-icon' appears again and it's not synced anymore.

 

I tried to find which application is causing this, but I can't find it.

 

Do you have experience with this issue?

 

Thanks!

 

Jaap

 

I'm running High Sierra 10.13.1 and Dropbox 40.4.46

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    6 years ago

    oliespink wrote:
    ... they have said an application is using the files so it’s not a problem with Dropbox, that’s not the case as far as I can tell and I am totally stuck, did you manage to get this sorted?

    Yes, and it wasn't a Dropbox issue. It was the antivirus I was using. An update to the antivirus corrected the behavior.

  • JWMJWM's avatar
    JWMJWM
    Explorer | Level 4

    Well, 4 years after posting this issue, I tried to give it a lucky go today. And guess what; it seems to be fixed.

     

    Logic files stay perfectly online-only as I can see now on both computers (Mac Mini & Macbook Pro, Catalina 10.15.17 and Dropbox version 113.4.507. Who would have thought.

     

    I'm going to transfer all my music to the cloud now.

     

    🎉

    • oliespink's avatar
      oliespink
      Helpful | Level 6
      That’s great news I shall do the same and hopefully it all works as intended. Thanks for letting us all no.
    • zmdelariva's avatar
      zmdelariva
      Explorer | Level 4

      hey JWMJWM,

      thanks so much for letting us know!

      It's working here as well!

       

       

      • Ben_B's avatar
        Ben_B
        Explorer | Level 4

        Disagree.

        Recently moved my Logic files from the local music folder into a Dropbox folder.

         

        When double clicking a Logic cloud file, it opens the project without downloading all the assets, and appears empty.

         

        I've tried trouble shooting, including exploring the package, and manually syncing subfolders.

         

        This helped a little, but when the project opened, I had a warning that the assets were not compatible, and only 8-bit! (Which I knew was not true when it was created!).

         

        In short, Dropbox is not playing nice with Package file formats like Logic. Microsoft Teams has the same problem, and was the only reason I hadn't moved across from Dropbox! I always zip GarageBand/Logic files before uploading to Teams...

        I expected better from dropbox....

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

    It's not just Logic Pro files, or Mac.

     

    I have a Windows 10 laptop. I set the everything in Dropbox to be Online Only. After hours of indexing and syncing, the process completed but there was still more than 10GB of files stored locally (not counting the cache folder). These files and folders were clearly marked as Local, and not Online Only. So I attempted to set one of those folders to Online Only again. Like JWMJWM above, the folder started to sync, turned grey to signify that it was Online Only, then immediately syned again and was back to Local.

     

    The next step was to uninstall Dropbox and remove the entire Dropbox folder. I then reinstalled Dropbox and when presented with the option during install, selected Online Only for the entire Dropbox. Again, after a couple hours of indexing and syncing, the majority of my Dropbox was Online Only but the same 10GB or so of files and folders mentioned above were Local once again.

     

    When attempting to set any of the files within those folders to Online Only, this is what happens...

     

     

    No matter what I do, I cannot set those files to be Online Only without them re-syncing back to Local. It's the same for any files or folders included in the 10GB.

     

    Tagging Ross_S

  • JWMJWM's avatar
    JWMJWM
    Explorer | Level 4

    I found what file triggers the continuous download. Since the Logic files are actually a package, I opened the package. In it, there's a .plist file, which keeps downloading itself.

     

    So, that's another trigger, but no solution.

  • Mike_L's avatar
    Mike_L
    New member | Level 2

    Hi everyone,

     

    I generally like how Smart Sync works, but I've discovered that it is selective in its application. Mainly, JPEGs, PDFs, and a few other filetypes don't Smart-Sync even when the folder they're in is Smart-Synced. Randomly, Coreldraw files and several other formats DO Smart-Sync. I would like a way to ensure that, when folders are switched over to "Smart-Sync" mode, all files within each folder are also "Smart-Synced" so that I can save more space on my hard drive.

     

    If anyone has been able to solve this, let me know; any help would be greatly appreciated.

     

    -Mike

    • Mark's avatar
      Mark
      Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
      I have no answers I'm afraid, however, I'm merging it with another thread that I know the Dropbox team are aware of and working on.
    • oliespink's avatar
      oliespink
      Helpful | Level 6
      I am having this same problem, and not actually getting anywhere with there support, they have said an application is using the files so it’s not a problem with Dropbox, that’s not the case as far as I can tell and I am totally stuck, did you manage to get this sorted?
      • Rich's avatar
        Rich
        Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

        oliespink wrote:
        ... they have said an application is using the files so it’s not a problem with Dropbox, that’s not the case as far as I can tell and I am totally stuck, did you manage to get this sorted?

        Yes, and it wasn't a Dropbox issue. It was the antivirus I was using. An update to the antivirus corrected the behavior.

  • zanerk's avatar
    zanerk
    Explorer | Level 4

    I have the same problem... Did you find a solution?

    • Brian L.30's avatar
      Brian L.30
      New member | Level 2

      I've been looking for a fix for a bit related to Logic X files not smart syncing correctly and the above is NOT the solution. Dropbox treats logic files (packaged files) as folders and inside there are several other folders. Seems something odd is happening in there.

      The easiest way I found was:

      Access your DB with a web browser
      Navigate to the file (it will be a folder)
      Inside the folder, go to Resources and look for ProjectInformation.plist.
      Simply remove file name extension (.plist) and the file will now sync to online only.  DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE OR YOUR PROJECT WILL BE LOST!
      Note that if you want to open the project again, you'll need to add back .plist to the file name.

      So, yeah, if you have a thousand logic files like me, it's not the best solution, but it works.

      Another solution is to zip up the file before you sync.

      • oliespink's avatar
        oliespink
        Helpful | Level 6

        Thanks for this info, but like you there is no way i am doing this for each session, its crazy why dropbox wont reconise this as a problem and fix with an update, I mean we are paying for a sercice and at the moemnt its not working as intended. 

    • Rich's avatar
      Rich
      Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

      If a file doesn't stay set to Online-only, then an application or some other process on your computer is accessing the file, causing Dropbox to download it again. In my case, it was my antivirus attempting to scan the files.

      You'll need to figure out what application is accessing the files, then prevent it from doing so.

About Create, upload, and share

Find help to solve issues with creating, uploading, and sharing files and folders in Dropbox. Get support and advice from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!