Save-As "fixes" project coruption?

in Larry Jordan's FCP Hands-On-Training book,
he claims that a save-as will somehow "Fix" certain corruption in your project, (cant remember his exact terminology - something about links between clips and files, i think)
whereas a simple copy & rename in the finder (obviously) wont

i've never heard of this before..... anyone want to comment?


nick

I believe that is correct. However, in my experience, a Save As will not fix every kind of project corruption and is not a replacement for making a new project file and pasting the contents inside. It's just another thing to try. As far as I can tell, project-media connection is a slippery beast and problems with this issue are not consistent or predictable.


www.derekmok.com

ok, thanks, derek.
do you remember where you learnt that?
anyone else?


copy / paste all from one project to another will DEFINITELY break all Master/ Affiliate relationships,
so i wouldn't recommend that except in an emergency.

i dont really like to "save as" and continue working on a re-named project.
i refer to have my master project just have hte one name, nad the archve to have date stamsp or whatever.

but if this is true, then i might "save as" with date-stamp,
then "save-as" again without the date-stamp, and over-write the original.


nick

I do 'save as" so I don't keep adding different versions to memory...

but there is one problem I can't figure out, every time I do a save as, when I want to close the project, it asks me "do you want to save".

even when I do a save as a second time, it still doesn't allow me to close without asking me to save again.

Why is that?

Sometimes it closes alright though.

"I do 'save as" so I don't keep adding different versions to memory... "

im saying i prefer to copy and archive the project at the finder level, date-stamp that copy,
and continue working in the original.
as you know FCP makes new sets of scratch folders for each new project,
so by working on only the one version, i reduce the number of folders and media locations.
many people do work on their "saved-as" projects, and having al the locations doesn't really affect them adversely.
it;s just the way i choose to work


as for the re-save on close,
you must have changed something.
even changing the position of the playhead on the timeline constitutes a change,
and will require a save-as.


cheers,
nck

one thing you can do to get the advantages of save as without the file management problems....

do a "saveas" with copy appended to the end.

close fcp

go into the browser and add a date stamp to the end of the original project file, then delete the "copy" from the end of the new project file, leaving a project file that is "new" but with the old name.

greg

that's what i thought, too, originally,
but the double save-as means you don't have to leave FCP at all.


nick

> one thing you can do to get the advantages of save as without the file management
> problems...
> do a "saveas" with copy appended to the end.

Ooh, I would never recommend that. Too many people leave the "copy" on the filename and you end up with "Titanic.proj", "Titanic.proj copy", "Titanic.proj copy copy", "Titanic.proj copy2", and "Titanic.proj copy2 copy". How do you tell which is which? If you're going to do the date-time stamp, why not just do it during the Save As?

The reason I deliberately leave FCP to do this in OS is because Save As makes the new "Save As" copy your active open project. If you forget this little fact and keep editing, then your archive project gets written to and the date/time stamp is no longer accurate. The only way around this is to close and then reopen the right copy -- if it's a big project, it costs a lot more time than to hit APPLE-H to hide Final Cut and do the archiving in OS.

I do use Save As as a troubleshooting step, but not often. I think I've had that in my toolbox since the FCP3 days. When I do have to use it, I usually have to make it "Titanic.proj2" and then archive the original "Titanic.proj" permanently, date/time-stamp it, then move it permanently out of my active "Project" folder so I don't confuse it with the newer copies.


www.derekmok.com

Not sure how this would work. Generally a corrupted project doesn't open. Not sure how you would do the Save As.

i'ts not that this is a "fix" for that sort of corruption,
but it was suggested that the save-as does some sort of minor "repair" on the file conections.

as i said, i'd never heard that before.

nick

> Generally a corrupted project doesn't open.

True, but there's another quirk: Corrupted project files don't open, but they can often stay open if they're already open. If a project file becomes corrupt and you recognize the signs (whenever I encounter an in-session corruption, it's usually signalled by multi-coloured streaks appearing in the Canvas), you can copy and paste all the contents to a new project file and save that. And strangely enough, the contents will usually be okay while the original project file will stay closed once you close it.

So I always instruct students to hold their hand on restarts, closing files etc. whenever something strange happens in the interface.


www.derekmok.com

I'm pretty certain Save As completely overwrites the original file and removes all incremental saves-- and the need for whatever housekeeping is required for those is thus eliminated. I haven't tested this but it should actually be a slightly smaller file than the working file. This is how Save As works in apps like Word. "Flattening" a Soundtrack Pro file is similar-- the history of actions is gone and it's a smaller file.

Save As has utility, but as indicated not for profoundly corrupted projects-- a Save As in that case would merely overwrite the original corrupted project with a NEW version of the corrupted project! If you can open it in the first place.

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