Support Center Workflows Restore & Replace
Finish the session without a retake.
How to recover missing audio packets from a remote session automatically with Restore and Replace inside Source-Connect Studio.
The scenario
The best read of the day, with a hole in it
You are the engineer. The performer is somewhere else, and their audio is arriving live on your own timeline, not in a file you will be sent later. Forty minutes in, their connection stutters and a syllable goes missing from a take nobody is going to beat.
Restore and Replace is the reason you do not have to say anything about it. Source-Connect has been writing an uncompressed copy of that performance on the talent's machine the whole time, and it can fetch what your timeline is missing without stopping the session, without a file transfer, and without asking a performer to do a great take twice.
What you need
Before you start
- On the record side: the Source-Connect Studio or Facility standalone application, and a DAW recording to a folder you can point at.
- On the talent side: any version of Source-Connect 4, whichever tier the performer holds. The Restore/Replace process article is the one that describes what each end is doing.
- A bit-accurate path from Source-Connect into the DAW: digital I/O (AES or S/PDIF), virtual routing, or the Source-Connect I/O plugin. Anything that changes gain, pan or channel width on the way in breaks the match between your recording and the talent's copy of it.
- Somewhere to record. The watch folder and your DAW's record directory have to be the same folder.
The setup
Seven steps, in order
- Set the watch folder. Open Source-Connect Studio and go to Settings in the Restore/Replace panel. In Pro Tools, enable the automatic session-folder detection option. In any other DAW, click Set Watch Folder and choose the directory your session audio records into.
- Record exactly what Source-Connect sends. Route the incoming audio into your DAW without changing gain, panning or channel width, and without any plugin after the input. Use digital I/O (AES or S/PDIF), virtual routing, or the Source-Connect I/O plugin.
- Connect with Restore and Replace enabled. Request the connection to the talent from Source-Connect Studio or Facility, leaving both the Restore and the Replace options switched on.
- Check the handshake before you roll. In the connection panel, your side should show a green border with a downward arrow for receiving, and the talent's side a blue border with an upward arrow for sending. Those indicators are what confirm the background link has initialised.
- Record the take, then confirm it logged. Arm and record the incoming stream. Within ten seconds of stopping, click the active connection in the Auto Restore / Replace tab and look in the middle panel: the take should appear reading Restore Not Required, or Restoring and then Restored if a dropout was detected.
- Leave a dropout alone. If instability causes a glitch during tracking, do not stop and do not ask for another take. Source-Connect flags the missing section and pulls the missing packets from the talent's local cache in the background.
- Run Replace before the talent logs out. Check that every take reads Restored or Restore Not Required, then disconnect and ask the talent to stay logged in; they do not need to stay connected to you. In the Restore / Replace tab, open the small menu beside the session in the left panel and select Replace All. When the replacement finishes, the talent can log out.
What good looks like
How you know it worked
- Every take in the middle panel of the Restore / Replace tab reads Restore Not Required or Restored. Nothing is left mid-process when you close the session.
- Nothing was re-recorded because of the network. A glitch you heard during tracking is not in the file afterwards.
- After Replace All, the audio on your timeline is the uncompressed PCM from the talent's own converter, and the edits you already made have been conformed to it — no upload, no download, no re-conform.
When it does not
The things that actually go wrong
Each one has a support article under it. These are the pages to open with the session still live, not afterwards.
You are not sure whether you want Restore or Replace
They are two different jobs: one repairs what went missing, the other swaps the whole file for the talent's uncompressed original. If you only ever run one of them you are probably running the wrong one.
What is the difference between the Restore and the Replace functions?No green or blue border on the connection
Without those indicators the background link has not initialised, so nothing is being cached against your recording. Check that the connection was requested with both options left on, before you record anything you care about.
Restore/Replace Panel: Connections Panel ActionsThe take never appears in the middle panel
The panel lists what it finds in the watch folder. If a take you just recorded is not there, the folder Source-Connect is watching and the folder your DAW is writing to are not the same one.
Restore/Replace Panel: selecting your Recording LocationA file is sitting in a status you do not recognise
Every file in the panel carries a process status, and they are not all “done” or “broken”. The status page is the one that tells you which are still working and which are waiting on you.
Restore/Replace Panel: File Process Status- Setting it up for the first time? Support publishes a step-by-step sample-setup checklist and a quick start guide for Restore / Replace in Studio and Facility.
- Want the whole picture first? The lifecycle of a recording in Source-Connect follows one take from the microphone to the finished file, which is the clearest account of what this feature is protecting.
Official source
Where this comes from
The official support hub
This workflow’s own documentation set: the overview, the panel pages one by one, and the Studio and Facility 4 hub they sit in.
An overview of Restore/Replace in Source-Connect Studio/FacilityThe same feature, from the booth
What the performer has to do at their end for any of this to work — and the one thing they will get wrong.
Automated backup takes with Auto-Restore in Source-Connect TalentThe session this protects
Recording a remote voice actor straight onto your timeline in full quality, with the routing this page assumes you already have.
High-fidelity remote voiceover with Source-Connect Studio
