Hey, this just came up and I’d like to know if anyone knows anything about it.
I’ve just had to open an already finished and archived project for a revision the client requested. To my surprise, there are issues where the backed up project differs from the last mix.
Before anything else let me clarify what my procedure for archiving projects is:
I leave everything that was approved as final on the timeline, export the final mix and stems and run a “backup project”, with “minimize audio files” and “make offline processing permanent” checked. Then I open this backed-up project to make sure everything is found in the right folder, and only then I delete the original folder.
This is done in one go, not clicking anywhere else. So I am positively sure that I didn’t make any changes to the timeline between exporting and backing-up.
Now when I was doing the requested changes I noticed at least two spots where the edits did not match the export. In one, a piece of music clearly cuts off, whereas in the mix it was a fade-out. In another spot, there is a very audible edit in a breath, and the mix is perfectly clean in the same spot. I haven’t checked the whole project for issues cause time is very short.
Somehow somewhere things have changed when performing the backup process.
Have you been through someting like this before?
Im VERY worried that all my backed-up projects may have similar issues now.
Thanks!
I always minimize or bounce as I go, and clean out any files from the media/Audio folder that aren’t in the actual project.
All audio files are of the exact same length, since I don’t trust what the pool says, even at the best of times.
I luckly had a copy of the original project still in my cloud backup. And now I’m sure: the original project matches the mixes perfectly. There is something problematic with backup project, possibly one of the functions like “minimize files” or “make offline processing permanent”.
This is very serious. It is made for archiving, but it is not reliable. How can something made for archiving not be 100% reliable? Now suddenly hundreds of projects may be defective and unsuitable for future revisions, if they happen to be requested.
Needless to say, I’ll never use this again.
I’m pretty sure no one is playing their backed up projects from top to bottom and checking to see if there are any problems or differences from the original, so you all may be suffering from these same issues.
This is my exact workflow and its only done when Masters are approved after all rounds of fixes with QC to avoid any issues but definitely the project is supposed to be the same as before the backup is made. I’ve only run into issues in relationship to plug-ins that where updated and not properly backward compatible (after some time has pasts) and haven’t seen anything pertaining to edits or offline processes. I wonder if its related to the new issue where it can delete used material from the project. I haven’t needed to really check over all projects in that kind of detail after running a backup archive but this is definitely alarming. Is that N15?
I’m using N14.
Yeah, I think we have the same workflow. Since I always work with full files in AAFs (I always get them without handles, meaning, the original recordings), projects are too large to be archived without minimizing files. I always thought it would be fool proof, like whatever the state of project when it is backed up, as long as it opens without any issues, it would be 100% identical, just without handles on the edits (which is already bad, as we talked about in the N16 whishlist topic). But I was very surprised to find out that it isn’t so.
I always export thestems before archiving, and I have been using “backup project” going backonly a year or so. So I just hope that the archived projects either won’t have issues, or the issues they might have are not present on any sections that might need a revision, or that those can be reworked based on the stems, should revisions ever arise in those projects.
But still, I believe my days of using “backup project” are gone. With the current state of things I have a hard time believing Steinberg will do anything about this. Specially since I don’t have the time to submit a full dossier about this, they are famous for long standing bugs, and nobody else seems to have noticed any issues with this so far.
That is worrying news - I have the same export+backup procedure.
My previous routine was to right click the pool and ‘Prepare Archive’ before copying the complete project folder to my archive drive, but on a big project the difference in size between this and ‘Backup project’ with ‘minimize audio files’ can be substantial.
Are there other safe backup options?
Ouch yeah scary we definitely need to minimize projects when backing up given the cost of drive space as well these days