premiere deletes project file

[mikec92163573]

I have been noticing premiere projects and after effects projects vanishing .  I recently was able to reproduce this because fortunately, we have a backup system in place and was able to recover the deleted project, and reproduce it.

I have a dynamically linked after effects project with som fottage that became unlinked.  

I choose "edit original" from premiere and relinkd the footage that was unlinked.

When I went into premiere it said the after effects project (that was just there) was offline.

When I looked in the folder that the ae project was in, it was empty

https://youtu.be/a4DBbu6js4c

[mikec92163573]

Hi Nishu

It does not happen in 2024, but I think this is because, when Iedit original in premiere, and it opens the ae project in ae 2024, the ae dynamic link in premiere is still linked to the 2023 version

[mikec92163573]

Ben,

I have responded twice to answer all of your questions, but my responce never shows up in the forum...must be a bug here also.

[Ben Insler]

my responce never shows up in the forum...

This one showed up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Try putting your response inside the code snippet block (the </> formatting button above).  Maybe you have an illegal characgter or something in there that is forcing the post to fail.

[mikec92163573]

Does this happen when you are working somewhere other than your Desktop?

Yes, when the issue first happend, it was on a networked drive.  IT was able to restore from a backup and I copied to the desktop for testing.

How are you getting the comps from After Effects into Premiere Pro?  Are you creating them in After Effects and then importing them/dragging them into Premiere Pro?  Or are you creating them directly from Premiere Pro using Replace With After Effects Composition?

It was created originally in after effects, then imported into premiere.

Did you ever relink your Dynamic Link comp in Premiere Pro during your workflow?

Yes.  I originally created the project in the office.  Then needed to make changes at home. 

Everything was in the same location on a network drive but some of the links, including the link to the ae project,  did not relink when I opened at home. This was when I noticed the file in the AE dynamic link was also unlinked, so I opened the ae project from Premiere via "edit original", edited in after effects, saved, and that was when the ae file was deleted.

Did you ever move you source .aep After Effects file after it was created, into a different folder from where it started?

No.

[Ben Insler]

@mikec92163573 Are you still experiencing this issue?

I've been trying to reproduce it, but I can only reproduce it in the specific scenario I detailed earlier with that specific folder structure that mirrors yours, and the set of exact Premiere Pro/AE versions you were using.  Oddly enough, if I change the folder structure that I mirrored of yours in any way (for exmaple, change the ae folder to be named aex, the problem goes away.

I jsut tested it again in Premiere Pro 24.4.1, and even with the unchanged folder structure that matches yours, I don't reproduce this issue. 

It appears to be a very, very specific circumstance that, outside of that one specific case, does not trigger.  It also appears that newer versions of Premiere Pro have the issue resolved.

[mikec92163573]

could the problem going away have something to do with premiere relinking the files when the folder structure changes?

[Ben Insler]

@mikec92163573 I did have that thought, as Premiere Pro could be conforming/relinking as it upgrades the project to a new Premiere Pro version.

But by that same token, I'd ask, if you make your AE comp offline in Premiere Pro, and then relink, does this resolve the issue on your end?

[mikec92163573]

This has just happened to me again.  This time after effects was not involved in any way (I know the team is really trying to ignore this and make it another depts fault...it is a HUGE problem and needs to taken seriously).

Here is what I remember as workflow.  I connected to our server where the files are via VPN on my PC.  I made edits, saved and closed. 

Then I wanted to export, so I remoted into my mac at the office as it has a 10gig connection to the server and will export much faster. I opened the project.  Premiere could not find one of the files so I relinked,  exported, saved and closed.  POOF the project that I just opened, saved and closed is no longer there, vanished into thin air.

I truly cannot believe the cavelier attitutde adobe is taking with this critical bug.  It needs to be fixed, today there were autosaves, last week my collegue lost an entire days work because this happened and there were no autosaves.

SHAME!!

[Bruce Bullis]

> This has just happened to me again.

Did you make changes to your directory structure naming, as Ben discussed?

>...(I know the team is really trying to ignore this and make it another depts fault...it is a

> HUGE problem and needs to taken seriously).

I'm not sure how having multiple members of the product team work with you diagnose the bug, suggests that we are trying to ignore it.

We still do not have step-by-step instructions which reliably reproduce the issue.

> Here is what I remember as workflow.  I connected to our server where the files are via

> VPN on my PC.  I made edits, saved and closed. 

Confirming: VPN is required, for you to access both projects and media? or just media? 

To what location are you saving your auto-save projects? 

[mikec92163573]

no paths were changed. 

I gave very specific instructions and a project file when I initially posted, and was told it was an after effects problem. I also just told you the exact steps that I took today to make it happen.

the project and media are all accessed via vpn when I am remote, and direct ethernet when in the office.  Auto-save folder is in the same directory as the project.

The original post is from may 10, so no, I do not believe this is being taken seriously on your end.

[mikec92163573]

one other thing I am noticing a lot, not sure if it's related.  Sometimes when I am working on a project and I hit save,  I get a warning "this project has been saved outside this project (or something like that), do you want to save?"

The project was not updated anywhere but within the current premiere session so the message is untrue and possibly related to this bug.

[Bruce Bullis]

> I get a warning "this project has been saved outside this project (or something like that), do you want to save?"

Some other process is accessing the directory containing the project. What process might that be? Some cloud sync service, or maybe an anti-virus?

[Ben Insler]

I understand how frustrating it can be to have an issue like this that is critical to workflow and seems to randomly pop back up unfixed.  That being said, your recent response appears to be a different issue.  Initially, we were troubleshooting an .aep file that was disappearing.  Your latest report is of a .prproj file disappearing.

Regarding the .aep issue, we continue to hear no other reports of this, we cannot reproduce it on our end outside of the single exact case you presented initially while using what is now an older version of Premiere Pro, and it appears this thread has been quiet for over a month after troubleshooting suggestions were presented (which would indicate that the problem had been resolved with those steps):

I jsut tested it again in Premiere Pro 24.4.1, and even with the unchanged folder structure that matches yours, I don't reproduce this issue.  It appears to be a very, very specific circumstance that, outside of that one specific case, does not trigger.  It also appears that newer versions of Premiere Pro have the issue resolved.

if you make your AE comp offline in Premiere Pro, and then relink, does this resolve the issue on your end?

Have you continued to experience this .aep issue over the past month?  Did you try a later version of Premiere Pro than the one you were originally working in when you reported the issue?  Did the offline/online relinking suggestion fix the issue?

Since we can repeatedly reproduce your issue in the specific Premiere Pro version you reported, but the issue does not reproduce in later versions with all other variables remaining the same, this appears to have been resolved.  You would receive that fix by upgrading Premiere Pro.  Without confrimation from you that you have upgraded and then continued to experience the issue, there is nothing further for us to chase as, of course, the version where you reported the issue will continue to exhibit the issue with it's unchanged codebase.  Please upgrade to the latest version of Premiere Pro 2024 and report your results here.

Re: the .proroj files disappearing, new variables have been introduced from the .aep situation previously reported.  We were repducing your .aep situation locally, while the .prproj issue is happening on a server volume.  There is also the new mention of other colleagues, which suggests a collaboration element which wasn't present before.

Separately from our conversation here, we at Adobe had identified an issue where, in specific isolated cases on certain network volumes, Premiere Pro could trigger a project file to be deleted.  This issue was resolved.  Again, if you are not on the latest version of Premiere Pro 2024, please update to the latest version to ensure that you have this fix.

In addition, servers can create additional issues for you to troubleshoot.  This is outside of our scope, but we can try to help.  For example, is your server clock synced with all your client machines?  Out of sync clocks can cause filesystem issues across network resources.  As exhibited in the warning you received: 

Sometimes when I am working on a project and I hit save,  I get a warning "this project has been saved outside this project (or something like that), do you want to save?"

Premiere Pro may think, due to a modification date that doesn't align in time between when Premiere Pro and the server communicated with each other to timestamp the newly saved file, or potentialy seeing a file as timestamped in the future from the persepective of you system's clock, that the file has been unexplicibly modified since it was open.

There are also cases where you may attempt to save a .prproj on a network volume and you receive a saving error, only to hit save again and have the save complete successfully.  This indicates networking, permissions, or server-side issues to be diagnosed by an IT departemnt or systems vendor.

Or, as previously suggested, a process, or another user, is also touching these server-side files to trigger an error like this.

Are you now working in a Premiere Production?  A similar message can be presented if you are working both in projects within a Production and outside the Production at the same time.  Knowing the exact message, rather than one from memory, would be helpful.