When a particular piece of software is acting up (ie, unstable, crashing a lot) a good rule of thumb is Save Often and Frequently.
However when things are running smoothly, which is most of the time, one must also remember to save one's work.
And I don't just mean hitting the save button. I am talking about archiving.
Here are some of the habits I am trying to get into the habit of making into habits.
(for the sake of argument this will concern Premiere)
1. Save your project frequently.
2. If you get an error message (ie, Premiere is running low on memory), save, exit and reboot.
3. If you get a program crash, pray.
3. (the real one) - You should have set your auto-save to a reasonable interval, so a crash should not bag you too much. Just open the last auto save. Remember the auto-save does not save the project file you are working on - it saves its own backup file in the auto save folder.
However these frequent saves only go so far. What if an asteroid hits your computer? Ok, technically it would be a meteorite, and a right tiny one with perfect angle of attack to take out your computer but not kill you.
In other words, backup.
4. At the end of the day, copy and paste your project file and anything new that would be difficult to re-create (artwork, one-of-a-kind compositions) to another drive or a usb thumb drive. I keep a folder on my desktop (system drive, separate from project drive) where I drag project files. Video, audio files (narration, music) and artwork created by another person are generally easy to recreate.
I am not working in the RAID world (not yet), in case you are wondering.
It is up to you how worried you want to be about separating the backup drive from the computer. I tend to eject the external drive from its bay when I shut off the computer, just in case of a lightning strike or previously mentioned meteorite. Not sure if a meteorite strike causes any electrical disturbances. Perhaps the static electricity from the displaced air, if there is not too much humidity, could have a capacitive effect. I'll ask Professor Hawking next time I see him.
5. Up until this point, a project is generally in progress. Again, whenever something is imported into a project that does not exist anywhere else, it is a good idea to make it exist somewhere else, even on another drive in the same system. What are the chances that all drives will die at the same time?
C3-PO: Approximately 325,000 to 1
Han Solo: Thanks Threepio. Chewie, take the professor and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Chewie: Grawrrl!
6. Once your project is finished, or anytime before that, make sure you have your project backed up in its entirety. It is, again, up to you if you archive the raw video, a project managed (trimmed) copy of the project, or just the non-video assets assuming you can confidently keep track of the tapes. If you are tapeless, make sure your original media (ie, Mp4/MOV/MPEG/MXF) files are doubly backed up.
Hard Drives = Cheap
Time = Not cheap
7. What about the potential to have the backup drive fail?
It could happen. Depending upon the project (one-off, never to be seen again vs. Your annual mortgage payment) you may want some additional redundancy. For example, I have a 1.5 terabyte drive with backups of really really important projects that are already backed up somewhere else. You never know.
8. Keep track of where everything is. Use Excel, Word, a TXT or HTM file, or go so far as to create a web-based mSQL file (aka, ask someone who knows how to do this do this for you), MS Access or an off the shelf asset management suite. At present, I am using Word. Sometime down the road we may go to a web-based database. Luckily, we have an in-house guy who knows how to create web-based things from scratch.
9. If it is every man for himself as far as backups go, share your list of file backup locations with your team, in case someone needs something of yours when you are not around, or you need something of someone else's. Murphy's Law states that things will go badly when it is least convenient, and that you will need a particular file when the guy who knows about it is on a plane to China.
10. Remind others you work with, such as folks who do not have mountains of data, to make periodic backups. 100 lost word docs could be just as bad for a book project as 1 lost Premiere project file is for a video project. There are open-source and paid backup software apps you can install on your network for this exact purpose. We use such a thing on our in-house servers for backing up in-house databases. I may investigate adding this to our overall network, for example to backup everyone's My Documents folder once a month. This would need to be done at the appropriate time of day so as to not bring the network to a standstill.
In summary, saving your work is important, but backing up your work, which is a form of saving, is vital. Granted, many projects are in fact one-off projects. But for the important and really really important stuff, it is in everyone's interest to back it up, and back that up. Automation can help, but determination to make a habit out of backing up in a timely organized manner is the first step.
Thanks for reading.
Mike Cohen
