Saving & Exporting

OCTAVE always edits in-place — there's no separate "import / export" step for the standard chart formats.

Save (Ctrl/Cmd+S)

Writes the current song to disk:

• notes.mid — full multi-instrument MIDI
• notes.chart — Clone Hero .chart (if the song was originally a .chart)
• song.ini — metadata
• Your audio stems are not rewritten by save — they were never modified.

If Autosave is enabled, manual save is rarely needed.

Save As

File → Save As… writes the song to a new folder, leaving the original untouched. Useful for branching ideas without risking your main version.

Export

File → Export offers format-specific exports:

Format	Notes
MIDI (.mid)	Just the notes file, no song.ini or stems
Chart (.chart)	Clone Hero plain-text chart format
YARG ZIP	A self-contained folder zipped for easy sharing

What gets written

Saving always writes a YARG/Clone Hero–compatible folder structure:

My Song - Artist/
├── notes.mid
├── song.ini
├── album.png       # if you set album art in the Property Panel
├── drums.ogg       # original stems, untouched
├── bass.ogg
├── vocals.ogg
└── song.ogg

Your audio stems are never re-encoded by save — only the chart and metadata change.