'Backups' App - what does it actually do?

Hey, I've been keeping an eye on NP Associates Backups App for FCPX which had just been updated for 10.1.

This may sound dumb, but what does it actually do? I realise it makes backups (the name gave that away, lol) but if I understand correctly FCPX automatically backups up projects now. So if the worst happened (and original media was backed up) a hard drive crash would 'in theory' be recoverable ?

So do does 'backups' just give you more manual control as to how and when you make a backup?

npassociatesllc.com/backupsforfcp/

Backups was a great utility when FCPX only had limited backup features. But since 10.1 a lot of things have changed.

Now you can create Snapshots in FCPX just like with Backups, and FCPX saves timed backups of your Libraries (by default every 15 minutes if any changes are detected) as well. So I think at this time Backups does not offer much more than you already have in FCPX.

This said, I can see the Backups team is continuing to develop their utility. So it's certainly worth keeping an eye on this.


- Ronny

Backups has a few things thing that FCP 10.1.1 doesn't have.

The biggest for me is that it backups when YOU want. You can't force a backup in FCP. Say you only open up FCP for a few minutes to do a quick change nothing will get back-uped because you're under the 15 min. And you can't say 'backup now' in FCP.
Secondly you are done after a long day, but the last automatic backup happened 5 min ago before you close down. That means you have no backup for the last five minutes for your work, or the last 14 min and 59 sec...

Further Backups creates nice bundles per drive. Less clutter and easy to double backup for archiving.

Backups has already saved me big time in the time of going from 10.0.9 to 10.1.

Yes you may be able to live quite well now without it but to be 100% sure I very much think you need some external backup solution for FCP and Backups is the best.

Happy editing
Carsten

Are we sure about that? Does FCPX check when it quits to see if there are any changes?

Look at the backup FCP creates and you see that they are time stamped. Close FCP and then look at the time stamp of your your last backup. It's no the time you just closed unless you hit by chance the beginning of a new interval by a few seconds.
So yes we do know that FCP doesn't backup on quit.

Happy editing
Carsten

Thanks for the info everyone. It sounds like it's handy if your workflow involves manually backing up as and when you need.