Damaged project - how to recover ?
 

Hi all,

well I am desperate ... have been edited whole day, then my pc crashed and now the premiere file is damaged.
The thing is that restart happened with premiere opened ....

If someone has an idea or maybe tool for recovering damaged files, please let me know.


Thanx in advance.
Darko

Maybe you lost a day editing, but what about the footage?
That's what I'd worry about.

Backup, backup, backup.
from someone whose been burned more than once....


Jeff P

Source footage should be unaffected, so no need to worry there.

PPro by default autosaves the pproj file at regular intervals; I'm at work now so can't check on the details but I THINK it keeps each autosave as a backup? Perhaps it is possible to do a recovery? Not sure...depending on how it is set up, the files might be where you normally save video files, or you might have to change Windows Explorer folder/file properties to reveal hidden or system files to find the backups in Documents and Settings or some such.

Darko,

What version of Premiere are you using?

Premiere does create backups, of projects provided you set it... So you could try loading the backup?

If you have lost the footage then, you will need to capture it in again and probably start all over.

You could try importing the damaged project into a new project.

However as Jeff has said Backup, backup, backup...

Cheers,

Darko,

I've checked on the backup situation. I'm not sure about older versions, but PPro 1.5 definitely does have a back-up feature. In the Edit>>Preferences>>Autosave... dialog you can choose options. By default, PPro creates a subfolder called "Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save" within the same folder that your project is located. Files have the same name with numbers appended.

Unless something really terrible happened to your hard drive, your source files and the backup *.prproj files should be unharmed. You should be able to open the most recently saved backup file and you should lose minimal work.

I might have changed the defaults -- don't remember, but I doubt that I did. My autosave is set to every 20 minutes and keeps the last 5 backups...if that's the default, you shouldn't have lost more than 20 minutes worth of work.

Sure hope that works for you!

A tip: always save to a new project file if you are going to do
some major work (or start a new day etc.). So the max thing you
will loose is one days work.

I would use filenames like: "project 20050322.prproj" for example

Thanx to all for answers,

well I lost almost everything, because I found only one version in auto save folder. The auto save is set to 20 min. but there is only one version in the folder. Tried to import project but no luck.

Thanx again for help,
best regards

Rob your tenacity has paid off
 

And it sounds like Adobe was listening to you. The file naming convention by date for keeping a restorative file nearby is done quite nicely now in PPro. The nice part is, you'll only lose a few minutes work based on your entry in preferences. No need to make a separate file at the start of every edit day. Since auto-save isn't saving your current file, (a big benefit) the new file in the backup folder will be free of whatever contaminent that causes PPro to occasionally crash. With computer speed now no longer an issue it would be fool-hardy and un-productive to switch off the new auto-save feature.

To be extra safe, you could keep an archive on a separate drive as loss prevention against total drive failure. But likely not every day. There has to be some risk in this or else everybody would do it themselves!

O.T. : Let us know what flavour of ice cream Chris sends you when you hit ten thousand. But I hope it's more than that. I think you deserve a nice new hdcam from JVC...

Hehehe, thanks Jimmy!

Such features are definitely nice and good to see them implemented.
Personally I like to keep different stages of project (files) on my
project harddisk(s), so I can always look at earlier stages. This
creates a nice way to backup automatically as well.

Thank you very much for this post. I was about 95% done with a wedding video and my main file (which included EVERYTHING) crapped out and luckily I found an auto save file and only lost the last 10 secs of edits on the highlight sequence (everything else was fine). I now have about 3 back up files.

When I got that message about the original file being damaged and cannot be opened I almost had a heart attack.

Darko, you might try to open your damaged project file in a little app called XML Wrench (www.xmlwrench.com) and run "Check if well formed" command there. Chances are there are jut some maformed links to media (garbage characters or so). This has saved my projects more than once.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Jiri!

I thought I lost a days work due to a bad file. All my recent auto-save files were "bad" also. I downloaded XMLWrench, fixed the errors now I'm good to go! Not sure why they were bad to begin with but this helped out tremendously!

Thanks again man!!!