Auto saves didn't auto save.

[RearAdmiral]

This is a very weird problem, and has never happened before.

I have auto saves set to every 2 minutes, because premiere crashes a lot for me. I was working on a project for 2 hours, and I saw the auto save window and bar pop up many times. Then premiere crashed, so I opened up the project again only to see I lost 2 full hours of work. I checked the project file, and the existing auto saves, all of them said last modified: 2 hours ago. I have no idea what happened, and this is very stressful. I can't seem to find others with this problem, and I have no idea why it happened. That was the only sequence opened at the time so it wasn't saving a different sequence or anything. This makes no sense at all.

[Michael Grenadier]

sometimes the autosave folder for a project is not where you think it is.  So I'd suggest you do a system wide search for the project name.  Here's an example of a recent project I worked on.  "Kaddish Pr2020.prproj"

 If I do a search for "Kaddish Pr2020" I'll see besides some other stuff, files with a name like this

"Kaddish Pr2020-2021-03-15_19-43-30.prproj". This is an autosave which has the project name with the date and time appended to it.   

If by some chance there are no autosave versions, take confort in the fact that recreating work you've already done is always much faster than doing it the first time.  (this is the voice of experience speaking).

[R Neil Haugen]

Due to some major foulups in saving when I started, and getting reamed here (back around 2014) about what, you didn't do any manual saves? .... by several of the more experienced posters here ... I got started doing a Ctrl-S just every so often without even thinking about it.

Why do manual saves, save a copy and/or save-as iteratively?

Think out the auto-save process. You have it set for say five minutes and keep twenty before it over-writes them. Start working. That means that in a couple hours, you'll be overwriting previous auto-saves.

Now ... at some point, a bit of corruption or error or whatever creeps into a sequence or file database within PrPro, something odd. But it's not on the sequence you're buried in working away. And you keep working.

Then you go to work on that first sequence you worked on this morning, and ... it's hosed. Go to your auto-saves. And even back to the oldest auto-save you've got left, it's ... hosed.

Which means ... you're hosed.

Autosave cannot save you from everything, period.

And any major step forward, it's a good idea to either save-a-copy or do a save-as to an iterative name, and then continue working in the new iteration. You've then got a solid history of that project you can always get back to, with good working parts.

By the time you do it a few times, you don't even have to think anymore, just do. Takes a few seconds per time. And will save you hours, including maybe your neck when you would have otherwise missed a deadline.

Neil

[munir5CEB]

I'll be honest here. I don't care how hard is to build a proper software but as long as it charges you MONEY it HAS TO WORK! And what has it done, it dumped my 8h of work straight into thrash.. I saw autosave pop up window 100s of times and it DID NOT save anything, so what is the purpose of having the opetion which is not reliable or not working at all? It's really the WORST software possible to work with, I don't say this in general because everything else is great but the reliability is WORST ever, the Auto save doesn't work, and SAVE AS also saves exactly N O T H I N G!!!!! So what do I have to do? Save files with my own hands into the hard disk using magic stick? Really disappointing...

Wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

[Michael Grenadier]

I understand your frustration but have you double checked your autosave location in your project scratch disk settings?   and done a system wide search for your project name?  I've been working with video editing system for a very long time and everyonceinawhile I've slipped up and made a mistake...  it happens...

[westwebb]

A very similar thing happened to me. Auto-Save in general needs to be completely revisited. I have mine setup for 2 minutes as well, and it always haults my workflow because when the window pops up you can't do anything until it leaves. With the 15.1 update, Auto-Save has been sending premiere into "Not Responding" mode. A week ago I lost about 20 mins in progress and couldn't find an auto-save, nothing compated to your loss. 

[R Neil Haugen]

As a decently long time user, I simply don't understand a 2- minute a-s. How many saves do you have set?

If 20 ... that would mean that in under an hour you would be over-writing previous auto-saves. And so if there was a bit of corruption in there you didn't notice, you're ... in trouble.

Do you do any manual saves and save/as or save a copy? I learned real quick that auto-save even when working perfectly couldn't save me. I was using 5 minute saves, 20 copies. Didn't otherwise save my project. And yep, after going to a different sequence there was corruption in it. That project came down. And it was in all a-s copies.

From then on, I've done the Ctrl/Cmd-S routinely as an auto-action of my fingers. Do iterative save-as routinely and continue from the new file. Do routine save-a-copy of any major projects.

Neil

[Michael Grenadier]

as I've said before, I save my premiere projects to a folder that is automatically synched to my dropbox account.  There are a number of advantages to this workflow.  First, I work in a few locations on a number of computers with either duplicate drives containing my media or with a portable drive I shlepp with me.  The latest project is available locally on all the computers I work on.  AND, dropbox allows me to access all versions of the project file saved in the last 30 days....   

Been working this way for the last few years in premiere without any issues...

[J25FDA]

As someone said before in this chat, look throughout your entire computer. I had the same problem but when I searched for the video i found several iterations of saved copies. I looked for the most recent one and there it was

[john22732097sp91]

What "professional" software cant do an autosave? totally unacceptable

[Michael Grenadier]

had this problem many times in fpc7.  So other "professional" software can have this problem...   

[R Neil Haugen]

There are routinely complaints on the BlackMagic forums that a user had no autosaves in Resolve. Yea, it happens at times. Seems like it shouldn't, but does.

Which is why I never trust to autosaves with any type of app, spreadsheets, word processing, video post, whatever. Never ever rely on autosaves.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Community, 

I had a bug report I was going to highlight here in this post, but I could not locate a good one. The obvious clickbait one, I believe, has been solved:

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/37064065-auto-save-not-work...

The comment, "Manually saving seems to disable whatever timer auto-save is using," is important in the report. I believe that manually saving used to override the AutoSave function from being enabled. That is no longer the case. Therefore, please file a new bug if you are experiencing something similar.

The User Guide says the following: 

The auto-save occurs irrespective of whether you manually save the changes to the project or not. Earlier, Premiere Pro would not execute auto-save if you manually saved within the interval setting. If the system goes idle for a period beyond the interval setting, Premiere Pro forces an auto-save.

If people are still experiencing Auto Save failing on you, please leave a message below and we can help you troubleshoot.

User Guide Documentation describing the Auto Save feature is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/preferences.html

Thanks,
Kevin