Saving projects

[David_S]

Can someone please explain how the auto project save and backup is meant to work. When I first installed MS8Pro I set the Automatically save option in the Preferences box. This appeared to work by saving files sequentially with 001,002 suffixes placing them all in a new folder with the same name as the project.

After a reinstall due to MS8 deciding not to recognise audio filters the autosave feature no longer appears to work. In my work folder I now have both a ABC.dvp and and ABC.veproj file where ABC is my project name but no sequentially backed up files and no project folder. (What is a *.veproj file? I can find no mention of them in the manual).

MS8 has now crashed on me and in doing so corrupted my latest project file so that it cannot be opened even though I have been manually saving the file. A sequential backup would have been useful if it had been working. Fortunately I had saved the file earlier under a different name so I have "only" lost 2 hours work.

But it would be nice to know how the auto save option is meant to work and how to set it up so that it does work.

I am running W2k, SP4, 1Gb RAM, Athlon 2800

[Devil]

I've no idea how you have it set up. By default, your working directory should contain a sub-directory with the same name as your project. The backup files should be in that sub-directory, created at 10 minute intervals and numbered sequentially. In your VE Preferences|General, you have a check box to switch the function on or off and a number of files to keep. I recommend setting it to about 10-20 for general use. When that number is reached, the oldest files are deleted.

Note that this is not foolproof. If something goes wrong with your dvp file or a file to which it refers - as may occasionally happen - VE may appear to continue to work normally and all your subsequent backups won't work any better than the dvp. For this reason, it is better to make regular manual save as (say, every 2 or 3 hours but before your current backups expire), with a new project name. Exit VE and restart with the new project name. If this starts up OK, then continue there. In the rare case that it doesn't, you can search the latest backup under the previous filename that does work. This ensures minimal work loss and provides a double security. I hope that this auto backup system will, some day, be complemented by a data integrity check as the files are saved.

[heinz-oz]

Auto save has also been suspected in many a system crash due to deciding to do an auto backup while all CPU power was needed to keep a render or burn cranking over. I never use it. Frequently doing a "Save As" with alternating names makes a lot more sense to me.

[David_S]

Thank you Devil and Heinz-Oz for your prompt replies. I suspected the autosave may have been the cause of corrupting the file and will stick to manual save as I do with other programs.

I had set the autosave preferences as Devil suggested but my MS8 installation, after working well for a month has quite suddenly become very unstable and unpredictable - eg deciding not to recognise audio and video filters in the Production Library or video clips in the Project Tray which had all worked fine earlier, not to mention the autosave not functioning even with the correct preferences set. The weirdest incident has been a video clip which "disappears" from the timeline when I scroll left and reappears when I scroll right. The audio clip remains throughout, and can be played in the source window but the video clip won't play when visible or invisible!!!!

I have uninstalled MS8 and also MS7 and will reinstall MS8 only, after defragmenting the drive which had become quite fragmented and cleaning out the registry. I will also in due course adopt Devil's suggestion in an earlier post of having a dual boot system with just the OS and MS8 loaded in one system which should improve stability. Probably also put this 2nd OS on a separate SATA drive dedicated to video editing alone (and maybe photo editing). Does this make sense? Currently I use W2k with SP4 as my OS. Would XP be any more stable with MS8?

Finally a thank you to the regular contributors, Heinz-oz, Devil, Terry Stetler etc. Your help is much appreciated. - David

[Devil]

Sounds like a re-install is in order. I still recommend separate drives for OS and video; I've 4 drives in my video system: OS and utilities, swap file and applications (separate partitions), temp and preview files+logo videos etc. and video working drives.

I believe XP may be better with MSP8. When we were beta testing, those who had W2k seemed (subjectively) to have more difficulties with stability than those with XP. However, the SPs seem to introduce more problems. For video work, I use XP Pro without any SP (I have SP2 for both my other machines). Same when I was running MSP7 on W2k; as soon as I went higher than SP2, I started having problems, so I uninstalled SP3 and order was restored.

[David_S]

An update - I have reinstalled MS8 which has improved things somewhat. (Drive was quite fragmented) I have unchecked autosave and now save manually. This works similarly to autosave - opening a project folder ABC and saving files sequentially as ABC001 etc. So far so good.

BUT if I use the Save As function to save the project with a new file name (ABCv2, say) it saves OK as far as I can see but I lose all thevideo and audio clips in the Project Tray. Thumbnails are replaced by a rectangle with diagonal lines from corner to corner. If I change to "List" format the file type is listed as "none". The clips cannot be dragged to the timeline or be opened in the Source Window - the link is gone. This seems to happen consistently with Save As and is reproducible on my second computer.