Projects, autosaves and moving machines
The project file is not your video
It holds decisions: which clips, where, trimmed how, with what settings. It holds references to your footage, not the footage itself. That is why it is small and why moving your media breaks it.
It is also the thing you cannot replace. Lose the footage and you can reshoot. Lose the project and you redo the work.
Saving
Ctrl+S, or File → Save Project. It saves a new copy and preserves the existing file rather than overwriting it, so a save is never destructive.
File → Open Project, or Ctrl+Shift+O, opens one.
Autosaves
The program writes a rolling set of autosaves into the data\autosaves folder beside
the executable, a couple of minutes apart, keeping the most recent ten.
Find out where they are before you need them, not after. A rolling set has saved more editing work than any other feature in any editor.
Keeping media and project together
Put your footage in a folder next to the project file and move the two as one thing. Move, rename or unplug a source on its own and the project cannot find it, and the affected entries report "Restore this missing source and reopen the project first."
Moving to another machine
Copy the whole program folder. Your settings, presets, panel layout and autosaves are all in the
data folder inside it, so everything arrives intact.
Copy your media and project folder separately, keeping its internal structure. If the drive letter changes, the references may need restoring.
This is the whole point of the program being portable. It runs from a memory stick with your own presets on a machine that has never seen it.
What to keep when the job is done
Three things, and the smallest matters most.
- The project file.
- The source media, in the structure the project expects.
- One high quality flat export with no platform cropping or loudness applied. In five years the platform version will be gone and the camera files may not open in current software, and the flat master will still play.
Presets you have made
Colour presets, EQ presets and export presets all live in the data folder. They travel with the program folder and they do not travel with the project file, so somebody you hand a project to will not have them.