A corrupt MainStage concert has got to be one of the worst things in the world, especially if you’ve been working on it for a long time. While all may seem lost, it’s actually possible to rebuild a MainStage concert in some cases. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to turn a corrupt MainStage concert into a patch file that can be easily imported into a new concert file.
Create & Import the Patch File
Did you know a MainStage concert is actually a folder in disguise? Even though .concert is used as an extension, right clicking on a concert file reveals that it’s possible to Show Package Contents.
Take a look inside the Nodes folder. It contains all the patches and sets in your concert. Conveniently enough, this file hierarchy is very similar to that of a .patch file, which can be imported and exported in MainStage.
Here’s how you can create a patch file containing all your patches and sets from the remnants of a corrupted MainStage concert. I recommend reading through the whole tutorial once before starting the process.
- Navigate to the corrupt MainStage concert, right click, and select Show Package Contents.
- Open the Nodes folder. You should see folders corresponding to sets in your concert, a few .plistZ files, and your master channel strips (e.g. 001 Reverb.cst, etc.)
- Create a new folder, and copy the contents of the Nodes folder into the new folder.
- Delete mappings.plistZ and uidata.plistZ from the root directory of the new folder. Do not delete any files inside the set and patch folders.
- Rename base.plistZ in the new folder to nodes.plistZ.
- The rest of the tutorial requires a basic knowledge of Terminal to show and hide hidden files. If you are not comfortable using Terminal, download and use invisibliX instead.
- Open up Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), and use the following command to show hidden files: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
- Use the following command to restart finder: killall Finder
- Download this file (LSOverride), and move it into the new folder. MS2 users should download this one instead.
- Rename the file to .LSOverride. Ignore the Finder warning about hidden files.
- Open up Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), and use the following command to hide hidden files: defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
- Use the following command to restart finder: killall Finder
- The folder should now contain .LSOverride (hidden), nodes.plistZ, and the set folders.
- Append .patch at the end of the new folder, so it looks something like YourConcert.patch. Ignore the Finder warning about showing the folder as a single file.
- Create a new concert file, save it, and close the file.
- Right click on the corrupt concert file and Show Package Contents.
- Right click on the new concert file and Show Package Contents.
- Move the Sampler Instruments and Samples folders from the corrupt concert to the new one.
- Open the new concert file, and import YourConcert.patch by clicking ⌘I.
- Wait for the file to finish importing, then save it. The import process can take a long time depending on how complex the concert is. I recommend not touching your computer during the import process.
- Remember to backup consistently to avoid having to do this again in the future.
Disclaimer:_ This method may not work for all types of corruption._
This method has been confirmed working in the latest versions of MainStage 2 and MainStage 3 (up to 3.1.x). For information on rebuilding MainStage 3.2 concerts, click _ here._