Recovering lost edits

[Ron Cooper]

As some of the frames on an ext. drive dropped out I accidentally closed Vegas without saving, thinking that I did not want to save it with the dropped frames. Now of course I realise I have lost about 2 hrs. editing.

Is there a way to recover this version from auto save ?
RonC.

[Edward Troxel]

This is one of the reasons why I wrote AutoSave (it's free and is installed when you install Excalibur) which you can set to save your project every few minutes under a NEW (date/time stamp) file name. Then you can easily go back to any version you desire.

Unfortunately, since you did not save it, I'm going to guess the answer is NO. If Vegas had CRASHED, the answer would have probably been Yes. But since you actually shut down normally telling it not to save, the auto save would have been "cleaned up" during the shutdown process.

[Ron Cooper]

Thanks very much Edward for enlightening me.

I half suspected this. But I'm miffed by the fact that Vegas doesn't seem to have a way of auto saving your project like Adobe does. I remember a setting in Premiere where I could set it to save every few minutes if necessary. I know Vegas does auto saves which helps when it crashes but these are deleted when you close, - why ?

Surely something as important as this where hours of editing can be lost in a click, should be addressed in a Vegas update if it's not available already. Does V.9 have it ?

I have heard of your Excalibur but I haven't had time to read up on scripts which I don't really understand. No doubt this is the answer, but it is disappointing that a selectable auto-save feature is not simply part of Vegas.

RonC.

[Kevin Lewis]

What if you reset your computer to a previous date through system recovery?

[Edward Troxel]

Kevin, that wouldn't make any difference. The system restore does not affect user files and the VEG files are user files.

[Edward Troxel]

Ron, Vegas 9 also does not have a save feature such as you're asking. Your best bet is to go download Excalibur, install it, and then go to Tools - Extensions - Autio Save. I think you'll find it does all that you're asking. It's also free so you don't need to purchase Excalibur (or even open Excalibur) if you don't want to. (If you do, go to View - Extensions which will show you both Excalibur and another free plugin - Project Inspector)

[Ron Cooper]

Sorry for the delay with this, - I have serious internet line/cable problems in my street which now can still take up to to 10 days to replace. (Do I really need this as well ? !!)

Thanks Kevin & Edward, yes, I had thought of this but I don't think system restore works on these type of files, more on registry stuff etc. and even if it did work, unless you had just created a system restore immediately before the crash it is of no help as at best it would restore to a point usually a few days or many hours before.
However, now the worst has happened. - After completing a complicated edit with 3 cameras, titles, end credits, the lot, & doing 2 saves, I then went to record this final result back to tape. Vegas crashed after rendering for the "export to tape". The whole screen went very pale and totally locked up and no amount of trying would budge it. The only option was a power turn off.

On re-booting the system & Vegas, it would not recover the project and showed some lost files. - (AVCHD which Vegas 8 in its blurb, was supposed to now handle these !)
As they were labelled, I then pointed Vegas back to them (13, - 1 at a time), but then it said they were an unsupported format !! I did this twice with the same result. For goodness sake, I had just completed an 8 hour edit with these files ! Plus they all looked and worked flawlessly !

No persuading would recover the "saved " project and I'm now left with a previous version which is only in the early stage of the edit. - Is there anyone out there who knows where Vegas might hide these files ?? Particularly the final tape render which I gave a different name to. Unfortunately this was a deadline job which failed me virtually at the 11th. Hour. I was devastated.

Hence, I am absolutely disgusted with a so-called professional product which has not only failed to recognise my final saves but does not even save its own autosave files so you can at least get back a fairly late version of your edit. How wierd is that !

Thanks to you Edward, - (Where would we be without this guy ?) I will set up your Excalibur if its not too much of a learning curve, but due to the previous deadline nature of this project I could not do it before.

I would definately consider not going further with a product which does not have an easily recoverable auto save feature as this is absolutely vital. - For goodness sake, Adobe Premiere has had this feature for about 10 years !
- Maybe Vegas 10 !

A most unhappy RonC.

[Jeff Harper]

Ron, try going to where your veg files are located, right click on the bak file and open with Vegas. See what happens.

If you have reopened the project after last closing it might be too late. I have used this feature after accidentally closing without saving and it has saved me on numerous occasions. The bak file does not always save up to the point at which I last edited, but it will have a version that was further along than the regular veg file was.

[Jeff Harper]

Ron, don't know how long you waited when Vegas froze, but when it goes pale, and if you haven't saved your work, leave it alone. When it goes pale it is trying to catch up. Do not shut down; 9 times out of 10 it will be fine.

If you did wait a long time (20-30 minutes or more) then nothing you could do. I have had this happen on many occassions. Vegas usually only requires a few minutes to catch up. Best thing to do if you have a lot of unsaved work is to take a break, allow up to a 1/2 hour or even more for Vegas to "get right", and shut down all other unneccesary programs.

I believe also, though not sure, that during this greyed out period the auto save feature may still work in the background when resources are available, so leaving it alone for a long time can give you an autosaved version with the .bak file. The longer you leave it the better the chances are this will occur.

Crashes are common with Premier, one visit to the forum here will tell you that, as it appears that the Adobe NLE has its own host of issues that I wouldn't trade for in a million years.

It is your privilege to be miffed with Vegas, we all have been at one time for another. But as your original post shows, you didn't save, and at the time your reasoning was sound, but in retrospect you now know differently. Just chalk it up to a painful learning experience and if you save your projects often as you go (on two different drives) you will be fine, and you will have two .bak files to choose from.

As a side note, I had a fantastic AVCHD camera (Panny 150), but AVCHD sucks for editing. I don't see it as an editable format, but that is just my opinion. NOT trying to start an argument, but I don't care what Vegas says in its blurbs. AVCHD is not worth the hassle for me. I sold the camera within a month and was happy to be rid of it.

[Jeff Harper]

One more suggestion, Ron. When unsure whether to save latest version of a project, I save to my desktop temporarily to give myself time to decide whether or not I want the new version or the old.

[Ron Cooper]

Many thanks Jeff. I am in agreement with you on AVCHD as I had none of these problems when editing DV or HDV. The obvious question of course, - why did they release this monster format without very thorough testing ? If it works OK via Cineform (as some say it does), then supply it as part of the package. All my troubles stemmed from one file that was AVCHD.

However, I still sure hope that the next version of Vegas will have an auto save feature.

RonC.

[Jeff Harper]

I don't understand it either, Ron. It is just dumb. Transcoding, the whole mess is just awful. I still don't understand the attraction to AVCHD.

[Mike Kujbida]

Originally Posted by Ron Cooper

However, I still sure hope that the next version of Vegas will have an auto save feature.

Please do as Edward suggested and download Excalibur as the AutoSave feature (as well as a few others) remain even after the trial expires.
If you don't want to do that, get into the habit of saving often.
To this day (even though I now have Excalibur), I do a few edits and then Ctrl+S as it's become an ingrained part of my editing workflow.
If it's a valuable project, I'll give it a new version number every hour or so.

[Jeff Harper]

I always "save as" rather than save. As Mike's method of saving with new name does, "save as" prevents corrupt .veg files. I only had to experience that once to stop using the plain save feature. After enough "regular" saves (it takes a lot) .veg files will become corrupt; or at least they did in Vegas 7. I now "save as" twice, very often and to different hard drives.

[Edward Troxel]

The auto save in Excalibur works as follows: It will do a normal "save" and then will COPY that save into the same file name followed by a date/time stamp. That will give you a running series of backups which can be invaluable at times.

In your case, I agree with the recommendation to locate the "bak" file and try opening that instead. When you save a project in Vegas, it takes the current "Veg" file, renames it to "bak", and then saves the new VEG file so the "bak" file is always one version behind.