Final Cut Not Saving Live Projects!!

Hi Guys,

For the first time in my years as an FCP user, the software has on 2 consecutive occasions not autosaved work as I was doing it. I have lost 2 projects in a row. First time I thought I may have deleted the media accidentally then closing FCP, but it's twice in a row now.

I'm using a Mac Book Pro Mid 2012, running Sierra OSX. Latest FCPX.

Has anyone ever experienced this and do they know what to do to remedy it?

Thanks as always (best FCP forum on the web!!!!),
Phil

Check the backups?

My experience is that FCPX's libraries are remarkably robust and the record of your editing progress is in there somewhere. You may have been editing in a clip instead of project Everyone does that a couple of times.

Autosave is not a reliable life preserver because the user has no real control over when they are updated. My current library's autosaves are listed as modified yesterday at 1053, 1210, 1543, and 1547. The project was open and in progress all day from about 080 to 1700 yet those are the only autosaves I have and they have no pattern or frequency that I can discern. I do not know what triggers an autosave operation.

This is just my workflow, your mileage will be different. Each day, I increment my project by saving a snapshot and incrementing the version number. That way we can revert to a previous version of the timeline without hassle.

I have panicked over what I thought was a bad library file. I've come back to a library the next day only to discover many hours worth of work apparently missing. That is, I fire up FCPX, it loads the current library, and what I think is the current project appears in the viewer and timeline. And there are many edits and elements missing. It's like the library has forgotten all of yesterday's work. The backup is no good because it was last updated 3 hours before I shut down.

Strictly user error. On the previous day, I had incremented the version number as usual but today I had opened the previous snapshot.

That happened to me once......stopped creating backups as well as stopped saving library.
Every time I reopened the library my edits were gone.

I created a new library, dragged my project over to the new library so that all the media would copy over......and then I started fresh on the new library. That solved it. I agree that I wish FCPX had an option to manual save.....its something you would never have to use.....but in the event you were working on a massive project that is really critical......it would feel nice to know that you could hit save and be sure.

Where would they be hanging around?

FCPX.guru wrote: Check the backups?

Sorry... Where would I find these?

By default, in your user folder, in the Movies folder, in the Final Cut Backups folder.

Just had the same problem for the second time since updating to 10.4.

Here are the details as I posted them on the FCPX editors Facebook group:

FIRST TIME:

Bit of a disaster yesterday while finishing this week's episode of one of the TV shows we produce.
Apparently, FCPX (10.4) had stopped making automatic backups at 16:35, despite having made them at regular intervals all day long. Problem was, when I finished coloring the episode (with Color Finale Pro) at 20:45 and went to open the library for next week's show so I could color the "coming up next time" promo, the app locked up. Not uncommon, so I force quit the app, re launched it.....and my work from the last 5 hours is gone....go into backup folder...and there is no backup since 16:35!
I had to redo all the work to get the show to the network in time and didn't get home until 4am.
Even when I changed the location of the backups, FCPX is still not making backups. Has anyone had this problem? Any solutions? None of our other workstations have had this issue. I'm thinking I'll just wipe the system and do a clean install if everything, but would still like to figure out why this happened.

AFTER THE SECOND OCCURRENCE:

So I wiped the computer and did a clean install of Sierra and FCPX 10.4. Opened up the project that crapped out on me yesterday and started playing catch up. It made one backup...ONE and then stopped. The library also wasn't saving changes (last modified time not updating). Since the app didn't freeze, I could save out XMLs to backup and closing the library also saved the changes. Tried making a new library, importing the XML backup and working in there. Same thing...didn't even create a folder in the backups folder for the library. Undo in the menu is greyed out...changing the backup location doesn't make a difference. Something is very strange here.

ANYONE HAVE ANY INSIGHTS?

HI Daniel,

did you find a solution to this issue?
Same thing is happening to me: Projects not saving or backing up. And then FCP is unexpectedly quiting and all my work is getting lost.

I have formatted my system HD, reinstalled system software, reinstalled FCPX and the issue persists. Driving me mad!

OS High Sierra 10.13.4
FCPX: 10.4.1

PLugins reinstalled:
Magic Bullet looks
Color Finale
Noise reduction by Neat Video

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Hey Gavin,

We did sort of find a solution...we thought the computer had some issue since the problem only occurred on our iMac finishing station and not our other Mac mini workstations. We bought a new 5k iMac, and the problem is still there. I have narrowed it down to COLOR FINALE...unfortunately. Any projects with CF have become super glitchy, not saving changes, showing "color finale is not registered screens" but only on some clips and sometimes even only on parts of clips.

I hope Denver and his team can sort it out, but for now I'm going to have to stop using CF and remove it from all our machines....we've literally lost days of work in the last month alone and I need a more reliable solution.

Thanks for the response. I'll let Denver know that this has been an issue for me too.

What I did do to get around the problem was to export my project as an XML.

I then imported that XML to a new library. It played nicely for a while and then stopped saving again (I was keeping an eye on the auto save increments in the FCP Backups folder).

As soon as I saw that the project was not auto saving , I quit FCPX. I re-openned the project - everything was there. I started working again and watched if the autosaves were working, and they did. So I continued.

I'll see how I go today.