I just got an error message saying "The Project appears to be damaged, it cannot be opened." Anything that can be done??????

PPro has an autosave feature that might help you out:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=41596
Let us know what happens.

Jerry, you can also try to create a new project and import the damaged project into the new one. It works sometimes, not always.

When this happens i am glad that i take daily backups of my project files so i dont lost days of work. Sometimes i take backups of the project files several times a day. Backups has saved me sometimes.

/Roger

THANK YOU ALL!!!!! As bad as I was cussing Adobe last night, today, thanks to you guys and thier auto save feature I'm doing the happy dance! Man do I feel better. Now to start a new back up drive solely for that. Hard drives are too cheap today to lose a days work. Thanks again.

Jerry,
Making your day happier makes our day happier, too. Glad it worked out!

How do you suggest to structure a backup sytem for your projects. Just simply save the Projects on another hard drive?

In theory, just copying the *.prproj project file will allow you to recreate a PPRO project; if necessary, the project will ask you to locate all other files. But in practice that could be a hassle if you use a lot of different sources, including other files created by PPro itself:

- *.pbl batch capture file(s) (lists the in and out points for capture from tape; there may be more than one per project if you captured from multiple tapes or at different times)
- *.prtl title file(s)

I'm totally an amateur with the editing toys, so my workflow may not be the best in the world. But what I have is a folder with all of my prproj, pbl, and prtl files (and After Effects *.aep files, too) to make PPro file backup easy. Then I have COPIES of all source material (stills, video, sound files, whatever) in a separate folder for each project. That way if I'm sure I'm done with a project and don't need those copies, I can delete the folder without losing any source material...but if I DO decide later to recreate the project the PPro file will prompt me for all those source files.

Of course, a full backup of your drive is never a bad idea, either.

Premiere Pro 1.5 includes the project trimmer, which can gather all your source files plus the project file into one folder. It can even trim the excess frames from your video footage to save space, if you so desire.

After Effects has a feature that can gather all source materials for an AE project, as well.

Premiere Pro 1.5 includes the project trimmer, which can gather all your source files plus the project file into one folder. It can even trim the excess frames from your video footage to save space, if you so desire.

After Effects has a feature that can gather all source materials for an AE project, as well.

I have used that feature and it makes a huge difference for archives. Simple also.

THANK YOU ALL!!!!! As bad as I was cussing Adobe last night, today, thanks to you guys and thier auto save feature I'm doing the happy dance! Man do I feel better. Now to start a new back up drive solely for that. Hard drives are too cheap today to lose a days work. Thanks again.

Never under estimate the most powerful feature when working with Premiere. CTRL-S

Never under estimate the most powerful feature when working with Premiere. CTRL-S

Ctrl+S is a long time friend of mine. :) The problem this time was the project file itself was corrupt. That's why the auto save feature, which gave the file a different name, saved me.

So now CTRL+SHIFT+S is my new friend. :)

Premiere also automatically creates archives of projects. This may also be a source for recovering corrupted project files. These are usually located in the program>Adobe folder. They need to be purged every now and then too.

Autosave is a great feature but it can bite you in the butt too! For example, if you are trying different options (filters, clip order, etc.) at a certain point in the timeline and you do let's say 5-10 commands, then autosave jumps in a saves the last known command. Then you cannot go back and undo all of those commands if you didn't like the alterations. However, there is a revert button which I'm not too familiar with but from what I have read, this is a last resort and is permanent. I have just made it a habbit to ctrl>s after every edit to ensure that the latest work is saved. Once you get in that habit, it is automatic.

The lesson that I learned about autosave was when I first got my NLE 5 years ago and didn't know diddly about PCs much less NLE software. Well, I had been practicing and learning Premiere and cut my first music video which took about 5 hours because I was learning. Well, a friend of mine was showing me how to make different versions of projects by copying them and how you could alter one while the others stayed the same until individually changed. Well, before he made a copy of the original project, he erased all of the timeline and was going to save that alteration as a new project name but the autosave kicked in while we were talking and you know the rest. I lost 5 hours of work in the blink of an eye!! At first we couldn't figure out what had happened and then went into the settings to find the auto save set to default. Well, since then, I have deactivated it and always manually saved as I progressed in a project and have never had that happen again.

One other incident similar to Jerry's was that I was working on a project and my PC's power supply went out. Well, after replacing that and being down for a week, upon a restart Premiere said the same thing, the project was corrupted and could not be opened. Luckily, I had saved a recent copy and was able pick up right where I left off. So, yet another lesson learned. I now always periodically create copies throughout a project at different stages to always have a version close to my latest saved version, especially if there is a complex edit or effects that would take forever to recreate. So, take note that apparently sudden power failure can corrupt projects and/or files so make copies!!