Lost Scenes in Adobe Animate 2019

[Cashmus]

I've been working on a project in Adobe Animate 2019 for a few months now. All had been going well until today when I opened up the file and found that I only had three of my 14 scenes. If you look in library all of the graphic assets are still there, even the one's who's scenes don't exist any more.  What's even worse is that I can't seem to find the recovery file either, I checked both the cloud and this right here: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Animate CC 2019/en_US/Configuration.

I'm not sure what could have caused this, as I've only had one crash with Animate recently, and that's when it crashed from an unknown error. It gave me the option to save before I closed it down, and then I reopened the file again and it was fine that day. It wasn't until I opened up the file again today that suddenly the scenes were missing.

I do still have the .swf file which has the up to date version of everything. if there is no other way to get the recovery file, is there a way that I could convert the .swf file back into a flash document?

I really appreciate any tips you guys might have, as I really don't want to redo almost everything from scratch again. Many of the scenes were in the rough state still but it would still be hours and hours of work gone right down the drain if I have to start over again.

[n. tilcheff]

I'm so sorry for this horrible experience, mate!

Try decompling the SWF to get some stuff out of it. There are some OK decompilers, but results are never ideal.

If that does not work, in the worst case, you can screen record your SWF (OBS, Camtasia) to import back as video and use as underlay when you repeat the animation. Possibly you could use Swivel to convert the SWF to video.

You need to learn to Save as... several times a day and have backup copies on at least two external drives, made every night if you value your time and your work. All kinds of things happen with digital files and if you do this work professionally, you have to be always prepared for the worst.

Start each day of work with Save as... and save your file with an added number, letter or date.

When you finish the project you can keep the last 3 copies and delete the rest.

Do not use Scenes. It is not considered to be a good practice.

Sadly there have been many reports as of lately of Animate CC 2019 corrupting files.

If I understand this correctly it has to do with some recent fast-save optimisation they did - caching and delayed writing gone wrong.

Good luck with recovering as much as possible!

NT

[Cashmus · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the speedy response! As a last ditch effort, I went and looked around the cloud and found that there's a timeline tool that allowed me to take the document back a save or two and get it back with minimal losses.

After tonights scare though, I will be taking your advice and doing save as far more often.

[n. tilcheff]

That's a relief, mate!

As a young animator, dabbling in tradigital in the early 90s I once lost about 80 drawings of a drummer-octopus, drawn on a serial port Wacom... One of those lessons I'll never forget.

[DigitalDesignDude]

@n. tilcheff You mentioned it is not considered "good practice" to use Scenes in Adobe Animate/Flash. May you explain why that is?

I am aware of some of its disadvantages which are listed in the Adobe Help Article linked below, but most of the reasons are related to Scenes being confusing for multiple people working on the same .fla file or files taking up more memory. Neither is a problem for me as I work alone and mainly use Adobe Animate/Flash for creating short animated videos under 3 minutes.

How to work with scenes in Animate (adobe.com)

Regardless, thank you Nick for the work you do in the Flash/Adobe Animate Community and the experience and knowledge you share with us.

[kglad]

i don't know that i would say anything about "good practice" and scenes.  but i will say there are no advantages to scenes and some disadvantages. 

i'm pretty sure all the disadvantages can be overcome, but it's easier to avoid scenes and not have to resolve problems caused by their use.

[Nicktendo28]

Scenes should be taken out of animate. It has too many issues and makes the .Fla too heavy and adds risk for problems or bugs. You are better off breaking down your scenes to .fla's. So instead of 14 scenes you would have 14 fla's, this way if something goes wrong with one .fla the other 13 are still safe. Then when you are done with your 14 .fla's you export 14 videos and edit in premiere.