I knew, I knew, knew knew something was off with Project Backup.
On occasion, I have mysteriously had audio data disappear as if I had messed up when moving a project to a folder, or, the audio was stored somewhere else other than the project pool and thus deleted without realizing.
Now I had the suspicion it was Project Backpup but wasn’t able to recreate… Now I have. Now, I don’t know if Project Backup was always this way, but, I had a 2nd suspicion that this protocol changes around version 10 or 10.5… or maybe it was 11.
Here’s how it happens.
Sometimes, I record new ideas into an existing project and want them to be in their own project. Naturally, the quickest way seemed to be using Project Backup… But I don’t want all of the other stuff which let’s say is 20gb, for a phrase that is 10mb.
So, I would save the current project, then save a new version to be safe, then I would delete everything but the new phrase and in Project Backup utilize ‘Remove Unused Files’, then simply ‘Undo’ the delete and carry on with the current project.
You would think it would remove unused files only for the new project and new project location but it has and has been, removing unused files for the current project and location.
a few caveats - sometimes, for some reason, it doesn’t do it for all the audio files in the project. Some files/events do return properly. I haven’t figured out this variable yet, but I think I’m close.
The second variable as I mentioned earlier, is, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t always like this. Something at some point changed in the protocol. I think I’m also about to figure this out so stay tuned…
I believe it has something to do with ‘Keep Current Project Active’ when carrying out this action in the way I am. I believe it is this setting that is the variable of danger… about to find out…
UPDATE:
‘Keep Current Project Active’ is the variable of danger on first test here…
There is still a variable of strangeness to it I haven’t figured out, and that is that for some reason. some files do come back or rather, aren’t removed.
This is a really really really bad place to have inconsistent behavior…
I’m really worried now, because I have done a lot of project backup archiving, and material transferring, project renaming, etc, etc utilizing Project Backup… and there’s two things I know… I’ve encountered this in old archives where it gave me the impression “I messed up, that audio must have stayed in a different project pool that is gone now”, and I’ve utilized this method A LOT… is this the suicide emoji???
Steps to reproduce: (don’t use a working project)
- Create a new project
- save it
- create an audio track
- record audio on that track
- save the project again
- delete the audio
- do a project backup with these settings enabled
-
- Keep Current Project Active
-
- Remove Unused Files
- Now undo the delete in the current project.
- The audio will not return
- the audio will not be in the pool
- the audio will not be in the projects audio folder.