@Gid

Aha, so it does appear to be a bug with v239 - I think that's what your tests show anyway if I've read it correctly 😟. Thanks.

If a few more can confirm, then we all need to send a bug report.

If it is confirmed as a universal bug then it's potentially more catastrophic that the Neat Video bug Magix has just sorted as EVERY Magix user, be they using MS 2025 or VPX whatever, uses the autosave.

AndyW

@me_again Hard to say, I would expect not to get asked if I want to save the project when closing it if auto save is on..

I left that project open since my comment earlier (1½ hrs ago), I closed MMS so sort of recreating a crash, auto save is supposed to save you from such things, I chose Don't save (auto save should've been applied at some point in that 1½hrs surely). Nope.. the project as it was when first created.

I haven't used MMS for a couple of yrs for anything really, but it seems it's got more bugs than Worzel gummidge's hat.

@Gid @me_again

Hi Gid.

When you open a project it does not open on the last auto save but on your last manually 'saved' copy. So yes you should always save manually before closing a project or hunt for the last auto save. There are times when it is easier for me to not save a project I've altered if I wasn't happy with it and done too many alterations to 'undo'.

Ray.

@CubeAce

I do the same Ray BUT now the created autobackups disappear if you don't save before closing, and on reopening after a reboot, no autosaves occur at all.

And if you open a a pre-update project then that doesn't autoupdate at all.

That's my current experience anyway.

AndyW

@me_again

Hi Andy

With patch .239, Autosave is working fine for me, with a new project and re-opening a pre .239 project (so far !).

. . . . If I open an existing pre-v239, there are no autosaves even after an hour or so . . . If I save the project under a new name, still no autosaves. Manual saves work as they should . . . .

This may seem a dumb question however, did you check the same folder as the project file was loaded from, and/or saved to, respectively?

@Gid

Hi Gid

. . . . Waited until it did the flashy saving thing again & opened a New Project, again it asked me if I wanted to save it - "But didn't you just save it for me?" . . .

It did not, the auto save created a backup copy of the project file, eg projectname_BAK0.MV_, you are being asked to save the project file, .MVP, overwriting the original after editing ie projectname.MVP

HTH

John EB

@CubeAce @johnebaker Hi, ok my misunderstanding, I've got used to Vegas's Live Save that does overwrite the project & as you say that's not always what you want so I don't have it turned on,

@me_again 

I do the same Ray BUT now the created autobackups disappear if you don't save before closing

Yep the bak file disappears if you don't click save when exiting the project.. (I didn't trim this capture so let it play)

@me_again

Hi Andy,

Using 24.0.1.239 and a project that was started with 233, I made a few changes, a couple of saves over 20 minutes then left it alone. I got backups every 10 minutes except between the second last and last, the computer went to sleep while I was out working hard snowshoeing with the dog, removing snow, and hauling in firewood. Lazy computer!

So, seemingly, no problem here.

@Gid @johnebaker

If you start a project off, give it a name but never save it and exit the program, then even if a backup is made, it will be deleted, as it should be. Is that what you are seeing? The logic is that if you didn't save the project in the first place, you don't need the backups.

If you save at least once, any automatic backups should remain. Thus, if you intend to keep the project, always do a save first to lock it in.

Note that even though you have given the project a name, when you save the first time, you will get the explorer window with your project name proposed by default. It is now up to you to save in the proposed folder with the project name, or select a different folder - my case 99.9% of the time as the default folder is ....\Projects but I use subfolders by subject.

Sometimes the proposed folder is not the default Projects folder, and you could end up saving to some entirely inappropriate location. It somehow goes out of whack for some reason that I have forgotten. I must watch for the cause of this.

@Gid

I haven't used MMS for a couple of yrs for anything really, but it seems it's got more bugs than Worzel gummidge's hat.

Really? My bug list is quite short and most users will never notice the bugs.

John CB

May not be related, but IMO the Autobackup has been partially borked for some time. Example: yesterday, project had been saved with a name previously. Tried to preview a clip and bang, the whole program disappeared in a flash.

Looked for the backup with File>Load Backup Project. Nothing available. Go into the folder holding the MVP, there are the backup files, last one done a few minutes before the crash. Changed name of the most recent backup file from MV_ to MVP, opened fine and I had most of my project back.

Richard (rffmars) always said: "Save Often!".

Thanks for looking at it. All I can say is "Hmmm"

AndyW

@AAProds

Hi Al

. . . . Richard (rffmars) always said: "Save Often!". . . .

A ststement I totally agree with and to which I would add 'and use versioning' ie adding a number at the project name as shown below on a little project i have been wroking on.

John EB

@browj2

Hi John

. . . . The logic is that if you didn't save the project in the first place, you don't need the backups. .. . .

That is not quite what I am seeing and IMHO the logic is more subtle.

If you do not save the project with a name, the Autosave.MV_ file remains, and contains the timeline content as was at the time of the last auto backup.

If you start a new project and do not add anything to the timeline, the Autosave.MV_ file can be loaded with content - you will see it in the Open project dialog as Unsaved project.

However as soon as you add content to a new project, whether you load the Unsaved project or not the next auto save will overwrite the Autosave.MV_

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John EB,

You're quite right. I forgot about that and usually just ignored it. That is most useful if one has forgotten to save and the program crashes or you just exit without saving...so long as you don't start another new project.

@AAProds

Hi Al,

Tried to preview a clip and bang, the whole program disappeared in a flash.

That is worrisome. I rarely get a crash, but when I do, it's after doing a fair amount of editing without saving and within the 10 minute autosave period. However, if I save more often during this period of doing editing, no crash. Again, I rarely have crashes.

Was that just a one-time event or have you been able to make it happen with other projects?

John CB

@browj2

Was that just a one-time event or have you been able to make it happen with other projects?

Funnily enough John, it just happened again a couple of minutes ago. It's when I'm in the Media Pool looking at files without putting them on the timeline (an unsaved project). I this instance, I tried to open a folder by Double-clicking it and bang, everything's gone. No crash reports, nothing, as though the program was never running.

I don't normally preview media pool files as much as I was in the crash instances, so I don't know if there is a lurking bug I haven't agitated or what.

@AAProds

Hi Al,

Thanks for the reply. Something to monitor. I'll keep an eye out for this.

John CB

Now I'm convinced there's a pronlem with autosave - obviously I can only speak about my system.

Yesterday I started a small project, 20 mins SD digitised VHS, at 12:23 pm and immediately saved the project with a name so no Autosave.mvp. After about 40 minutes editing time, Mrs AndyW decided that I'd had enough time playing and had to go out with her. I saved the project and checked that there were autosaves under the project name. Yes there were, 3 at 10 minute intervals as per settings. Nothing else done with it yesterday.

This morning I opened the project at around 06:50 but didn't do anything with it. just let it run on idle.

An autosave occured at 07:04, another at 07:15 and another at 08:19 - radnom timings!

At the time of writing (10:02) there has been no more autosaves. The computer has been idle with no sleep,

AndyW

UPDATE: After writing I made a cup of tea and came back to the computer to start editing. After ONE split MS2025 crashed.

Even more confusion now.

At 12:24 I started a new test project - 1 short video file 768x576 with MP3 audio - and saved it as 1_Again. Autosave kicked in as expected BUT the first backup seemed to have happened BEFORE I saved the Project. Hmm.

Considering I did NOTHING to the video I can't understand why BAK1 should be considerably larger than the original save and indeed BAK0 and, curiously, BAK2 is smaller than BAK1 but still larger than the orginal save and BAK0.

Very odd.

Now I'll close everything down for a few minutes then reboot reload 1_Again and see what happens.

AndyW

edited to correct rubbish spelling

@me_again

Hi Andy,

If you look at my image, you'll see that the mvp and the first backup were 1,337 KB but the subsequent backups were 515. I did another save and it's now 515. Something hangs around, maybe an undo.

Do you have any external drives that may be going to sleep before your computer?

When you left off MMS, was the focus still on the project or on another program or just elsewhere?

I recall several years ago some of us, Al, I think, complaining about backups being made even though nothing changed in the project for hours. Thus all backups were of the identical state. I don't think that Magix ever did fix this, but maybe they made a partial fix.

Another thing, leaving a project open and unattended for an extended length of time leaves it exposed to Windows gremlins. May be something to avoid or at least save, exit MMS, and restart MMS before continuing.

Has anyone been able to leave a project open without touching for long enough time that the 10 backups are all after the last save?

I use mostly VPX so I'm not able to more closely follow what happens. However, whatever problems occur in MMS, they will likely show up in VPX

I have been going through my database of projects linking up project files with DVD/BD's and at the same time opening old unfinished projects and having to find files that were elsewhere. I haven't had a crash in any of that.

John CB

@me_again, @browj2

Hi

. . . . convinced there's a pronlem with autosave . . . .

Assuming your computer Power Management plans have not been altered, leaving the project open and not doing anything on the computer will result in Windows Power management shutting down/idling services such as Windows (File) Explorer, processes software use, and devices such as hard drives, graphics display etc, ie it goes to sleep.

Changing power management settings in Windows is not 100% effective, some processes will still go to sleep after a certain period of inactivity, eg hard drives both internal and external, which have their own internal power management, will sleep when there has been no activity after a period of time.

Once the computer is sleeping, there will be no autosave files generated.

As an aside, often Windows Explorer will fail to start on waking up the computer, locking out processes that depend on it such as interacting with programs and device such as the Desktop and mouse.

The quick way of bringing the PC back to life is to press Ctrl + Alt + Del to bring up the lock screen, then press Esc to return to, a fully awake Windows. On the rare occasions this does not work, the PC has usually crashed.

John EB

@browj2

Greetings John, thanks for the reply.

The test I was doing yesterday and today was a one off in that I don't normally leave the computer and/or program running for hours without saving or indeed shutting down (must save a few pennies from the pension🤓). It was purely for testing purposes.

I can't really put my finger on why I've noticed this "problem"; I've not changed the way I work. On reasonably rare occasions in the past, if I've completely b***sed something up while editing I've been able to come out of MEP/MS without saving and my autobackups have come to the rescue to reload. This happened yesterday and because I hadn't saved the work ( yes I know, I know) and the autosaves had been deleted, I lost what I'd done, which wasn't a lot really! I'm sure that prior to this update autosaves stayed where they were. Or maybe I've just been lucky over the past 20+ years of Magix use (I seem to recall my then computer had a P75 CPU and either Windows ME or XP so that must have been early 2000s?)

I have a working theory as to why I may be having this problem. A lot of what I do is more or less the same, that is same settings, same effects, same volume settings, same encoding settings etc. with just a few tweaks here and there and so I would name a project eg "1" edit the clip and export / encode it, the clear the timeline and just save the now empty project keeping the title "1" until the next time I want it.

I don't know why I do this, just habit I suppose and a soupçon of laziness.

Doing tests over the past couple hours always starting with a "clean sheet" I have no problem with autosavea and closing and reopening savig autosaves so maybe something's written in the MVP that clashes with the new clip, I don't know.

Hmmm.

AndyW

@me_again

Hi Andy

. . . . I have a working theory as to why I may be having this problem. A lot of what I do is more or less the same, that is same settings, same effects, same volume settings, same encoding settings etc. with just a few tweaks here and there and so I would name a project eg "1" edit the clip and export / encode it, the clear the timeline and just save the now empty project keeping the title "1" until the next time I want it. . . .

That certainly will cause an issue with the auto save backups, and when saving the project.

I keep every project in its own folder along with its media and other resources, it has a specific folder structure - the current layout I am using is:

This is the Project 'master' folder and subdirectories which I copy, paste and rename as appropriate for each project. It also makes archiving easy and maintains the relative file positions.

Should I need to do any further work on a 'finished' project, putting it back on to the 'work disc' is easy.

I have some projects, from 2006 to 2015 which require re-doing, as I exported to Flash format for upload to the Internet.

John EB

OK, I hold my hands up, I'll change my working practices. However, this has raised more questions for me.

I accept that the autosaves are deleted if I don't save the project before closing. If I do save the project before closing then autosaves are retained should I need them. Fine, all is well.

If the program crashes before I save it, then the autosaves are lost, so I need to save the project manually every few minutes to retain a working project file just in case, which is what the autosaves are supposed to be for surely?

Is that not like having a dog and barking yourself?

If I need to undo more changes than I've set I have to save the rubbish I've created before I can go back to what I had 2 or 3 minutes ago.

Hmm.

Just my musings.

AndyW

@me_again

Hi Andy,

If the program crashes before I save it, then the autosaves are lost, so I need to save the project manually every few minutes to retain a working project file just in case, which is what the autosaves are supposed to be for surely?

I think that you missed something. If you start a new project but don't save, do some work, still without saving and you've kept the unsaved project open long enough, there will be an automatic save (if turned on in Program settings).

If there is now a crash or even if you exit the program without saving, the file Autosave.MV_ will still be there. Start up MMS, Load Project screen - see image below, and you'll see at the top of the recent projects list, the Autosave project.

Click on it. Your unsaved project that had an automatic backup should open.

Other than Autosave.MV_, you will not see the backup files under the list of existing projects when you try to load a project - you only get MVP files as per the above image.

For a saved project, the backup files should be made at the designated frequency if you left the project open long enough. You can see that _BAK0.MV_ ...._BAK9.MV_ files will be with wherever your project was saved, and you can see this using Windows Explorer

or in the project under File, Load Backup Project, to get a listing of what is available.

Does that help understand this?

John CB