FCP crashed and now my file is missing!

My FCP crashed (it has done that before with no repercussions), but this time when I tried to log back in, the file for my entire movie was gone. The only thing I've been able to find is an autosaved copy from a month ago that is about half the work that I've done total. There is a file called movie.fcp in the folder when I view it through Final Cut but it's grayed out, you can only click on it when you say 'show all files.' That was my project file. It doesn't have the little clapboard icon next to it now, it has nothing. If anyone has any idea if I can recover my file, please help! I've put so many hours into this. thank you

<<<My FCP crashed (it has done that before with no repercussions)>>>

Often?

It's not normal for Final Cut to just take a dive. If this happens to you often enough to get used to it, then you have an unstable machine.

I'm hoping someone will post how to get your work back from AutoSaves, etc., but if your machine goes down often enough, sooner or later, it's going to dive when it's writing a file. When it does that, there is no file. And if you keep the machine running long enough after that, then any "unerase" programs you may have aren't going to work, either. OS-X has a UNIX heritage and is very unforgiving of "orphan" files.

Should we be finding out why your machine is unstable?

Koz

It's a machine on campus at University of Florida. I don't know why it crashes from time to time, the other computers in the editing lab where I work do the same thing, rarely but still.

Oh man, I just clicked on 'Restore Project' in the File pulldown and it had the copy from today. So, thank the lord, my project is back. Thanks for the help

After you finish praying, take a moment to save to an external media like a USB "thumb drive". You are nuts if you have your project saved in only one location.

Since it seems like you're a student (Univ of Florida) I'll go easy on ya. If you were a professional I'd have no sympathy for practicing unsafe computing. We require our editors to save every night to three places: Locally. Globally (The X-SAN) and "Mobilly" which is a removable media like a USB thumb drive. Professional or not, get in the habit of backing up everyday.

Mark

> You are nuts if you have your project saved in only one location.

Indeed. I'll add a few more points:

1. Always date-stamp your backed up project files. Never leave them as "Titanic.proj copy", "Titanic.project copy copy", "Titanic.fcp new". If you do ever need to go back to these archives, how will you know which is newer, "Titanic.fcp festival" or "Titanic.fcp final"? Use a dead-locked, no-nonsense, unchanging system like:

Titanic.proj
(Active project file; this file name never changes, and this is always the file you go to when you're changing editing decisions)

Titanic.proj 082907 0600
Titanic.proj 091307 1800
(Archived project file from Aug. 29, 2007 at 6AM and Sept. 13, 2007 at 6PM; it's even better if you can stomach using "070913", putting the year number first, because then if your project carries over the new year, your files will still organize themselves in chronological order by file name.)

2. Always backup the project file as your last action before you wrap a session. That way, if something evil happens overnight, you have the last version you'd edited.

3. Do not put a date on the active project file. Because if you call your active project file "Titanic.proj AUG 16", this file name becomes inaccurate within 24 hours, meaning you'd either have to change the date all the time, or you'll forget and a project file called "AUG 16" doesn't reflect what you had on Aug. 16. Date-stamp the project files only when you're archiving.

4. Never just backup the active project file without date-stamping. Imagine this: You backup Titanic.proj to a USB flash stick, and then the next day you edit for 16 hours straight on Titanicl.proj. Now you plug in your USB drive to do the backup. You're so tired that you drag the file the wrong way, from the USB stick to your drive. You've just overwritten your latest project file with the old archived one from yesterday. And this operation cannot be undone -- the file is overwritten. But if you do the date-stamp system above, you can't overwrite new project files (because old ones will have the date on them). And if you do ever drag a file the wrong direction, you won't destroy anything, because older versions will have a different name from your current active project file.

5. Periodically check the Autosave Vault to see if it's working properly. Manual backups are great for preserving big chunks of work, but Autosave Vault can come in handy for fixing file corruptions, restoring recent versions (eg. from 30 minutes ago), getting a missing file back, and a host of other functions that manual backups can't serve. You should always do both manual backups (to multiple media locations, as Mark outlined) as well as make sure you have a functioning Autosave Vault.

I have a maxim: If you're looking at your file system nine months from now and you can't tell on first glance which project file is the most recent and which archived file is from what date, then you don't have a good file-management system. I've been using the same system since 1998 and I can troubleshoot over the phone for my New York director while I'm in LA. Consistency pays off in spades in the long run.


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