Saving Projects

[Jeremy34650299brtt]

I need help understanding what in the world is going on when I try to save and organize my projects.  I'll create a folder on my hard drive for a Premiere Pro project and save the Premiere Pro project in that folder.  When I exit the project and come back to the folder later, the project saved within that folder will be an outdated, not up to date version of the project.  I'll have to open an autosaved version to work with the most up to date version of my project.

I should be able to save a project and that's that.  I don't understand why there are tons of copies of every project, why every time I open a project to edit it another copy appears, and why I have to sift through 10+ autosaved versions of a project to find an up to date version of it to edit.  How can anybody think this is efficient and well organized?  What am I missing?

[R Neil Haugen]

As we can't see the folder tree, I have no idea what you're doing ... and where.

I don't have any problems at all, for the information. I set the Production tree, Premiere puts the projects in that production in their subfolders, and the autosaves are of course on a different drive and folder.

When I do stand-alone projects, still ... the project goes in the proper folder, the autosaves are as always in their own drive/folder setup.

And that said, I never open projects from the drive ... much quicker to simply launch Premiere, and select the project I want to work fromt the Recent list.

[Jeremy34650299brtt]

I've attached a screenshot.  

In it you can see my bounced .mp4, "DAST Wefunder Video 2".  You can then see two folders that I created, "Wefunder Video" and "Wefunder Video Autosaves".  So far, this makes sense to me.

The next 9 things you then see are (I'm assuming) autosaves.  They are in a folder WITHIN my "Wefunder Video Autosaves" folder that I did NOT create, which is named "Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save".  Why did this folder need to be created within my self-created "Wefunder Video Autosaves" folder?  This folder, "Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save" also contains two folders which I did not create, one of which is labeled "Adobe Premiere Pro Video Previews" (which contains in it another folder, one of the "-55.PRV" folders that you see in the screenshot, it containing a single rendered clip) and the second of which is labeled "Adobe Premiere Pro Audio Previews" (which contains a folder within another folder ending in "-55.PRV", this one labeled "Peak Files", but it is empty).  At this point I am lost.  What are all of these folders within folders that I did not create doing inside of the folder that I created?  Why, at the center of this Russian doll, do I find a single rendered clip from my project of many rendered clips, and why is the other folder completely empty?

You then see two "WeFunder Video.prproj" files.  Why are there two of them?  I never made a copy.  

Finally, you see two "WeFunder Video.PRV" folders.  What are these, and why are there two of them?

I know this may seem confusing, and I apologize if I've missed a more efficient way to communicate what I'm dealing with.  I strongly desire to utilize Premiere Pro, but at this point I am reluctant as I can't imagine working on larger productions until I figure out how to efficiently organize and clean up whatever it is that I'm dealing with here.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

You tell Premiere the folder you want the previews and autosaves in ... and it creates the folder for the actual data itself. That's just the way it works.

Which is actually used by many, as say, if you need to have all project files in one place, all you do is give it the upper folder, and it creates the previews and autosave folders for you within that Project folder.

All of that is controlled by you, actually. The user sets the locations (if you don't want Premiere's default locations) in the Project settings dialog mostly.

And again, I launch Premiere from  the desktop icon ... well, the one "pinned" to the taskbar, so I can one-click launch Premiere, and then select the project to work on from the Recent Projects list.

Going though the file folders to launch a project just sounds like extra work and time.

[Jeremy34650299brtt]

Weird.  I created a folder for data, not for a folder of data.  I don't need to wear a hat on my hat.  I'm capable of creating subfolders myself, and in that case I would at least know and remember where everything is.

But I understand what's happening now.  You've been incredibly helpful.  I see now why it is much more efficient to launch Premiere and find my projects that way.  Thank you!

[MyerPj]

Those screenshots don't help, at least a folder listing with date and time, but we don't really need that. I find the projects are always where I left them, and as Neil said, I autosave on a different drive. 

<<I should be able to save a project and that's that.>> Indeed. For me that's whats happening, and I never go into the AutoSave folder unless it is to clean it out.