DISCUSS: Background Auto Save now in Premiere Pro (Beta)

I'm really excited about this functionality.  I think someone else mentioned this, but it'd be great to get a little granularity in how/when it saves. I.e. try to save once every 5 minutes, but for sure interrupt and save every 20 minutes if it hasn't been able to happen. Depending on people's editing style and project size, based on what i've read, maybe it's even possible to save every 2 minutes. Then, on top of all that, some sort of functionality analagous to time machine. I.e. keep files every two minutes for the last hour and then more sparsely. That way, in the event of a crash, you're always close to your most recent autosave, but files aren't piling up.

Blimey, I can't believe the level of interest in autosave! 

That said, I'll add my tuppenorth...

I definitely need a reliable, regular save (cos, crashes) that is as invisible as possible. I very rarely need to go into autosave vault. Current behaviour is actually pretty acceptable (though I would like control of 'inactivity' period with a 'force at X mins' override - see 5. below)

1. Seems like this isn't 'background save' as I'd understand it, or it wouldn't wait for a break in editing. It's just hidden the progress bar. Which is fine.

2. Presumably 'waiting for a break' is current behaviour too - which explains why I see much longer gaps in autosaves than the 2 mins I have it set to.

3. Please make 'autosave saves current project' the default. Especially in productions.

With this set (which matches behaviour in Avid) the *only* two reasons to need to go to autosave vault is

a. corrupt project file (rare) or

b. to revert to a previous edit (also rare with sequence versioning)

4. The copy of the current project in the autosave vault is then pretty much redundant + a waste of cpu/storage io. Last modified version in vault should be the one *before* current save.

5. Avid offers granularity in the 'break in editing' wait. So you can set autosave to 3 mins, with 'inactivity' set to 15 secs, but 'force' autosave at 10 mins. 

6. Could the 'vault' versioning be set to keep, say,  last 5 autosaves, then hourly + 24 hourly autosaves. (Maybe done on file size rather than strictly on time + would therefore better reflect big changes).

@Joseph_D Forgive my generalized tone of voice in that line, I'm sorry if it was confusing. Background Auto Save has been tested internally by the Premiere Pro team for a few months now, including hours of dedicated testing by people such as myself who have real world editorial experience and tested it doing actual editing. That is what I was describing.

>Why not show it to us first, the actual people using and buying these products?

Beta builds are how we new functionality available for feedback, without impacting those who rely on having official releases of PPro continue to behave as they expect. 

I too would like to see an implementation that would auto save after every keystroke - I think the original feature request on user voice was like that. Please make the feature actually useful and don't release it just because there's a deadline coming for the CC 23 release. Take your time and implement it in a proper way, everyone will be thankful in the end.

>Does this mean that if I'm constantly editing and dont take a long enough break, will it Not autosave?

Conceivably, yes. PPro will always need to pick a moment, at which to take a snapshot of the project. 

> Is it possible to just have it autosave the actual project file and not create a ton of autosave files?

That sounds tremendously risky, and would remove a level of safety provided by having the project data in a distinct location. If the downside to which you're responding is 'too many autosave files', the user can dial down the "Maximum Project Versions" setting.