/t5/after-effects-discussions/media-cache-and-file-retrieval-post-catastrophic-event/td-p/12967222May 26, 2022
May 26, 2022
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I had a catastrophic computer event. Many AE/AI source files for my website projects have been deleted and are unretrievable. They were on my desktop (Mac) which is also where AE Autosave is/was. However, my AE cache files are still intact. Is there any hope that the cache files would be useful in recreating/retrieving my source files? I know it's a long shot but there is a lot of data there. Thank you.
/t5/after-effects-discussions/media-cache-and-file-retrieval-post-catastrophic-event/m-p/12967380#M201569May 26, 2022
May 26, 2022
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Nope, unfortunately not. They are a custom data format that bears no relation to the source files and there is also no tool to at least convert them to regular image files - outside the developers' inenr circle at least.
I was so hopeful (given how much space they're taking up :-). I also saw that the Captivate cache could work for retrieving files so was hoping that something similar would be possible for AE. Thanks for answering!
One last thing I was just able to do: I had converted most of my project files into Lottie/Bodymovin files and I was able to import those json files back into After Effects to recreate the aep project. I think this will save some of my sanity. I'm going to hold on to (save to external drive) the cache files just in case someone creates a solution in the future.
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