Premiere Pro - Auto Save is Killing me

[AtonMusic]

I work with a lot of professional applications which have had auto save features included since a decade.

Those fine apps simply save everything in the background, the user senses nothing different going on.

I think that is the way - ANY Auto Save should behave.

In Premiere Pro

1) If the Auto Save starts while I am dragging a clip - I will loose the drag

2) If I am playing back a sequence, showing a client my work, if Auto Save kicks in, Playback stops

3) If I am entering a name into a clip and hit enter and Auto Save kicks in I loose the naming dialog.

Am I doing something wrong or is this feature simply just there to annoy the user ,-)

The feature works i.e. it does what it is supposed to do (Backing Up) but why on earth cant it do it in the background.

[cvid01]

With fast computers, autosave does not interfere too much. But you can always turn autosave off. Just remember to save your project from time to time as you are working.

[AtonMusic]

cvid01 wrote:

With fast computers, autosave does not interfere too much. But you can always turn autosave off. Just remember to save your project from time to time as you are working.

I have a 16 Core, 32GB 2.2GHZ Mac Pro... If that is not fast enough for autosaving, I dont know what is...

As I said, been using adequately-Programmed AutoSavers in many other apps since a decade and never had issues...

And NEVER saw an AUTOSAVE dialog appear while saving... Who cares about that dialog.... After setting the preferences to save every 10 minutes...

Would be the same as if each time you hit play, premiere would halt and put up a seriously SLOW dialog stating.. Premiere Will Now Commence With Playback !

[the_wine_snob]

AutoSave does the Save for how things ARE at that point, and not what might be in the process of being done. It CAN be an annoyance at times, however, depending on what is being done.

You probably know that you can adjust the timing of AutoSave from Edit>Preferences, as well as the number of AutoSave files generated.

If you have a good habit of doing Saves, and Save_As operations, you might want to alter the timing to suit.

Good luck,

Hunt

[AtonMusic]

Bill Hunt wrote:

AutoSave does the Save for how things ARE at that point, and not what might be in the process of being done. It CAN be an annoyance at times, however, depending on what is being done.

You probably know that you can adjust the timing of AutoSave from Edit>Preferences, as well as the number of AutoSave files generated.

If you have a good habit of doing Saves, and Save_As operations, you might want to alter the timing to suit.

Good luck,

Hunt

If only they would kill that stupid dialog coming and refrain from halting playback or whatever the user is currently doing, it would NOT be so annoying.

I use a software a lot, it is called AVID ProTools and the software is being programmed by people who actually use the code they write... Therefor, they know what is good and what not....

I WISH I would say the same about the Premiere Crew... Love the Software but I seriously doubt its programmers (aside from Ubilos who conceived it) EVER use it for Professional Work 😉

[steve1.3]

"If only they would kill that stupid dialog coming and refrain from halting playback or whatever the user is currently doing, it would NOT be so annoying."

I agree. Autosave should definitely be a non-interfering background process. Other programs can do it this way, why not PPro? Even an older NLE from several years ago that I used to use, Pinnacle Liquid, did continuous background autosave without interfering. A non-interfering background autosave would be a great product suggestion but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's already been suggested hundreds of times.

[srukweza-PhMhaR]

I think you are right guys Premiere Pro autosave should run in the BG rather than interferring with the edit. For instance if you have a project size of over 500mb it may take ages for PrPro to write the autosave file.

Feature Request....

[Viktor Devjatov]

I will double that! Autosave sometimes takes up to 15 seconds. And since Premiere can crash sometimes, that would be nice to have an option to make it a background process.

Just like in AVID.

[RedCoyote12]

"If I am playing back a sequence, showing a client my work, if Auto Save kicks in, Playback stops"

This problem has to be fixed! I'm tired of explaining to clients what happened when their video suddenly stops.

[Jeff Bellune]

RedCoyote12 wrote:

"If I am playing back a sequence, showing a client my work, if Auto Save kicks in, Playback stops"

This problem has to be fixed! I'm tired of explaining to clients what happened when their video suddenly stops.

Continuing playback during Auto Save would make a fine feature request.  Please add your voice if you haven't:

Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

Until that feature is implemented, you can solve this problem completely by going to Edit | Preferences | Auto Save and deselecting "Automatically save projects" just before the client arrives.  Once the client leaves, go back and re-select that option.  While the client is there, you can manually Save the project, or increment the project version with a Save As to protect any work done with the client.

Jeff

[RedCoyote12]

Thanks for the reply. I agree that is an option, however to me it seems like a needless burden for an editor, plus I'd be worried I'd forget to turn it back on. I just think for a professional application, this shouldn't be an issue.

I appreciate your help, however, and thank you for listening. I'm a big fan of Premiere Pro and I am encouraging my colleagues to make the switch from FCP.

Jeffrey Parsons

www.parsonspost.com

[needles27]

It was fixed in CS6 - autosave waits until playback has stopped.   

But CS6 introduced another horrible thing (on the Mac side) which is that whenever the autosave fires off when Pr is in the background, Pr moves to the foreground and kills/interrupts anything you were doing at that moment.  Why would this ever be useful!?   This is terrible, and a bug report has been filed.

[RedCoyote12]

Really? Wow that's almost worse!

Jeffrey Parsons

www.parsonspost.com

[needles27]

RedCoyote12 wrote:

Really? Wow that's almost worse!

It is.  A typical scenario is when doing a Dynamic Link - Hide Pr hides and AE comes to the foreground.  And for example, if you are in the middle of moving a graphic around in the comp - even if the mouse button is still pressed - Pr autosave will bring Pr to the foreground and cancel your move in AE.  You have to tab back and do it again...

[Charles VW]

needles27 wrote:

But CS6 introduced another horrible thing (on the Mac side) which is that whenever the autosave fires off when Pr is in the background, Pr moves to the foreground and kills/interrupts anything you were doing at that moment.  Why would this ever be useful!?   This is terrible, and a bug report has been filed.

This should be fixed in the 6.0.2 patch

[BGPictures]

Hey Charles. Any news on fixing the dissapearing Auto Saves leading up to a crash?

[SimonHy]

The disappearing autosaves sounds a lot like the problem mentioned at the end of this thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4679681#4679681

johnricca states that once the maximum number of autosaves is reached, they start getting overwritten incorrectly, resulting in them all being the same and all being out of date. Sounds pretty similar.

It would be great if the autosave was improved in Premiere, it does tend to pop up at odd moments and take far longer than autosaves in any other applications I've used.

Also, I'm really surprised reading through these threads how many people don't just hit save now and then and instead use the autosave as the main method for saving their work. I always think of Autosave as like a safety net. When all else fails, it's really great that it's there and can save you from catastrophy. But if you make the autosave your main way of saving, there is now no back up solution, no safety net. If something goes wrong, there's nothing there to cover you. I couldn't imagine working that way.

[RolandMABrown]

Further to my previous post, I've just seen Simon's message and link, and am shocked to discover that Adobe has presumably known about this problem for at least two years, and has done nothing to sort it out.

With respect, I think the suggestions to save manually are missing the point here. As a journalist for 30 years I have a well developed left-thumb-and-finger twitch to save my work in Word etc every so often. The point with Premiere Pro is that when you see it apparently saving your work automatically, you're surely less inclined to save it yourself — even if, unlike me, you're not hopelessly naive enough to think that it's actually saving it properly, so you don't need to repeat the task.

Which is more dangerous: a) a car with no brakes, or b) a car with good brakes that suddenly fail just when you need them most?

As someone who has just spent a lot of money on Premiere Pro, I'd say the answer is a), but personally I'd buy a car from a different company...

(Mind you, I don't want to sound too grumpy because the rest of Premiere seems brilliant so far! Maybe if Adobe can't fix autosave, they just need to either disable it or warn people that it can't be trusted?)

[shooternz]

(Mind you, I don't want to sound too grumpy because the rest of Premiere seems brilliant so far! Maybe if Adobe can't fix autosave, they just need to either disable it or warn people that it can't be trusted?)

You can disable it your self if you dont trust it.

Use a regular and incremented manual save workflow instead.

[RolandMABrown]

Thanks, glad to know the foreground glitch will be sorted in 6.0.2.

Do you have any thoughts on the missing autosaved files though? From Benjamin's post I'm clearly not the only user who has experienced this, but surely it can't be a fault that Adobe has allowed to exist for some time? What on earth would be the point of an autosave function that had a habit of deleting the most recent files it has saved?

[petergaraway]

Hi AtonMusic and everyone else,

Sorry for the frustration. We're working on this and hope to have it resolved in a future release.

[RolandMABrown]

Hi I'm new to Premiere Pro (and video editing) and had also wondered why Pr brings itself to the front every time it autosaves - hope you can sort that.

Much more annoyingly though, I have been working on a project all last evening and today, watching autosave back up my work every 15 minutes, and assuming I'm safe - that's what autosave does, right?

My Mac just crashed, which shouldn't have been a problem because I'd have had a maximum of 15 minutes' work to redo... except that when I checked the ten autosaved files, there is none from the last few hours!?!

The sixth file is the most recent (and the largest file size), but was last saved about five hours ago. Everything I have added since then seems to have been lost.

Am I missing something here? I've been watching the autosave bar go across the screen so I know it was saving the project, so why can't I find the up-to-date files? Surely, unless I'm going crazy and have missed something, 1) the autosave function is worse than useless — if it didn't exist, I'd have save the project manually every so often, as I do with other software; and b) presumably thousands of other Premiere users would have experienced the same problem when their computers crashed?

[srukweza-PhMhaR]

I would recommend manual saving as well as auto save everytime you edit. Good luck!!

[BGPictures]

I am having the same problem. (autosave only works if I don't crash. If I crash, it deletes the last hour or so of autosaves). I'm also on a Mac. Apparently, this is a bug that Adobe has not addressed since the CS3-5 era.

[dan3430]

How is that coming along???? and why did you not patch it for past releases of Premier? I understand why new features are released in new paid versions, but for the money I already spent I'd like to have a program that functions  bug free. I'm still using CS5, and happily watch the auto-save notification in the bottom of my screen... then upon a sudden inexplicable crash I look in the auto-save folder to not have a version for 2 1/2 hours!!!  Does adobe have any idea how much valuable time they've wasted from BUGS???  I am a heavy user of lightroom, photoshop and occasionally premier pro.  Mark me down as saying that I would be THRILLED if Adobe didn't release a single new feature for 5 years if they could just get their f*ing act together and release some bug free professional grade software!