Autosave doesn't always save

FCP 4 shuts down suddenly... and the last 'Save' as well as last 'Auto Save' reverts back to older saves and the latest saves are gone...!

What to do... what to do?... Anyone have it happen to them too?

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the last 'Save' as well as last 'Auto Save' reverts back to older saves and the latest saves are gone...!

Are you sure about this? This seems highly unlikely - that FCP would delete an already saved **project file.** If so, it is completely heinous, but i really doubt this is happening.

Please post this in the Cafe troubleshooting forum, until you can get more information and some very good specifics. If FCP is quitting unexpectedly on you, you may inadvertently be saving your project file in some other place, because of the way FCP points itself to folders oddly with new prefs.

On the other hand, many people are definately reporting that Autosave doesn't always save projects on schedule.

--Ralph

I suggested he post in here as there have been many people being affected by the missing auto saves. While it is probable that his manual saves are going someplace else and quite possible his auto save vault might be in a place where it's not intended, it's still an issue that should be looked into. Too many people are having it and no one has nailed it down.

mike

Got it. The missing Autosave files thing is quite prevalent. Happens to me too, but I've never found any pattern. Maybe I'll rename this, so it clearly points to the Autosave thing. A missing **PRJOJECT** file would be scary indeed. Reminds me.... I think I need to Back up....

--Ralph

The first time I read about this, the poster (cant remember who) seemed to think that having "Auto Render" enabled was stopping "Auto Save" from working.

I turned it off, (as I didnt much care for it anyway) but I'm pretty sure tuat Autosave hasnt been doing it's thing as it should.
Had autosave off since I was cutting the V3 project in V4, but I'll turn it back on now.

Nick

I've had the same problems with autosave not saving. I don't know why it happens, although I have a couple of theories. 2 situations where autosave DOESN'T work, and isn't supposed to work are during capture and while playing in the timeline.

I've been plagued with some annoying "unexpected quits" that occur most often while in my capture process (I do a lot of batch capture). Initially, I had my autosave set to a really low number; 5 minutes or so, and was crashing all the time during capture. I thought that during long captures, FCP was "saving" up all the autosaves it was supposed to be doing (but put off due to capture), and when it finally gets it's chance to save after a batch, it gets confused and crashes or quits. I raised the time to 15 minutes which lowered the number of crashes. Then I turned off the autosave feature and my capture crashes fell to nearly 0 (not completely, but almost).

This takes me to the other problem of it not saving. The most often I've noticed this behavior is at the beginning of a project when I've done my initial captures. I can't conclusively say this is always the case, but my instincts want to say it's related to the Capture tool.

Still, I've found a work around. I've found that a project session will either autosave or not, that is to say, it's never stopped autosaving in the middle of a session. It either behaves correctly from the time I start FCP or it doesn't. Just to be safe, at the beginning of a session, I go into my preferences and change the autosave properties to 1 or 2 minutes. Make some kind of non-change in my timeline and wait. After time has passed, I'll be able to see it autosave, and then I know it's good for the rest of the session. If not, then I go to my scratch disks preferences, re-set the autosave location (to the same location), and wait again for it to autosave. Without fail that has returned autosave to functionality for me. Then I reset my autosave preferences back to 15 minutes, and edit.

It may seem like a lot of extra work, but it only takes a few minutes, and it only takes 1 day of lost work (like I suffered), to make you realize it's worth it.

Andy

AutoSave is designed to appear and work the very second you're hit with inspiration and reaching for the keyboard or mouse. If that doesn't happen, AutoSave isn't working.

It does get a little hair-raising to watch playback freeze suddenly in the Log and Capture window while Autosave kicks in. But it recovers. Who knows if it's colliding with an actual Capture-- I think not, those are going well.

- Loren
Today's FCP4 keytip:
To resize all video or audio tracks:
press Option and drag any divider!

FCP4 KeyGuide? now available at
www.neotrondesign.com

Anyone know if this was ever resolved? It's so freakin' annoying? I've seen it autosave during this session, but somehow, after my latest crash, the autosaves are not present, very much like ADI's original report above.

Having auto render on or off makes no difference for me. I've trashed prefs, even wiped and reinstalled OS X and FCP 4 and have always had this problem since FCP 4 came along.

I'm running 10.2.6 with the slightly older FCP version 4.1
I need to finish a long project before upgrading.

Do you have Auto Render turned off?
That is suposed to help.
I never have it on, and I dont have autosave problems (touch wood)

Other than that, Andy's sugestion above sounds good.

Nick

I've tried it both ways, but currently I have it off, and haven't noticed an improvement.

This from Craig Seeman/Creative Cow:

"It seems that the autosave bug sometimes happens after going from captureing video to editing (in those versions of FCP4 with the bug). I've found that simply quiting FCP after capture and then reopening to edit (a minor pain work around) and auto save begins to work.

Again, I haven't seen the bug at all in FCP 4.11. "

[www.creativecow.net]

Nick