Hiyah John! - Y'know what, SO had I! . . . . It was only recently VP9>VP10>VP11 that I had broken the habit; I switched to a new PC and generally ignored some very basic precepts.

So yes, maybe that is why you haven't, and hopefully now NEITHER will I.

VP11 just feels more stable, I'm not getting those . . . "Wait for it" moments. Could it be possible that the Save<>Bak system was timing into and out of the folders?

G

More Hmmmm: I do Find-and-delete all *.bak files at least once a day - and my Vegas (11) also works really nice and steady.

But: the existence of any file with the extension .bak in any directory should not have the remotest influence on Vegas as Vegas should not even contemplate to open these files unless you intentionally try to go backwards to such a .bak project. - just my one-and-a-half.

Ritzy? Put it another way - please?

G

Another way is that if this whole .bak file/temp folder thing is true, it's a bug that shouldn't be happening. Having a buncha .bak files in one folder or separate folders or any combination thereof shouldn't be having any effect on how Vegas operates.

Ah! Thanks Prof.

So, improved stability shouldn't be happening by just making separate Folders.

G

No, no, no - maybe separate folders do improve stability - BUT as Kelly says: then it's a bug that shouldn't be happening.

BTW: did you ever check if the stability of Vegas correlates with the current Moon phase?

Sorry, Graham - couldn't resist on a dull and rainy Sunday here in CPH :- )

Yes yes yes, I DO concur with Kelly.

G

I never liked the way Vegas project backups worked. In my Timeline Tools Vegas add-in, I added an Auto-save feature that provides much more than a simple backup.

If my project file is named XYZ.veg, TLT creates a series of backups in the same location as the project file, but with the File Date & Time appended to the project file name - XYX[Date Time].veg. Backups are created at the specified time interval, but only if the project had been modified since the last backup. This way, I'm not simply creating a project backup, I'm creating a series of backups that contain the evolution of project development at specific points in time. When my project is done, I simply delete all the .veg files that I don't want to keep. This allows me to experiment and try things that I might not want in my final project, but are worth saving.

This is what the C# backup code looks like:

// do nothing if project hasn't changed

if ( false == Globals.myVegas.Project.IsModified )

   return;



try

{

   // get the name of the Vegas Project File on disk

   string projpath = Globals.myVegas.Project.FilePath;



   // generate temp file name based on the project file plus the date and time it was saved

   string tmpfile = Path.GetDirectoryName ( projpath ) + @"\" + Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension ( projpath ) + " [" + File.GetLastWriteTime ( projpath ).ToString ( "yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss tt" ).Replace ( @"/", "-" ).Replace ( @":", "-" ).Replace ( @" ", "_" ) + "].veg";



   // rename the Vegas Project File on disk to the temp file name

   File.Move ( projpath, tmpfile );



   // save the vegas project to disk using the normal project name

   Globals.myVegas.SaveProject ();

}

catch { }

Essentially whenever the Auto-save interval timer times out, the project .VEG file is renamed by appending the file creation date & time to the base file name. Then the Project is saved as it normally is, re-creating the project file.

Of course, like any Vegas add-in, the add-in must be loaded and running for the Auto-save feature to be active.

I believe that Gary James makes a very significant point that the code behind creating backups in VegasPro needed serious revision which he has done. I use his Timeline Tools and have never had any problems. And then, again, I was not a user who was experiencing random and disastrous crashes.

What I have heard from some users, is that with unexpected crashes of the VegasPro program, they were not able to get to any backup file. This has been recounted in many previous threads. I would like to see comments from some user who experience these kind of frustrations, and if so, did they try to upgrade their installation with use of Timeline Tools.

Thanks Gary James, great idea - I always use save as to create a continual set of backups (in any app I'm using) - so this is great.

You could put this code in a script file and attach it to a toolbar button. Then you can simply press the button whenever you want to manually create your own history backup file.

Unfortunately scripts are modal. You start them. They run to completion. And then they stop. So they can't run quietly in the background periodically performing an Auto-save action. For that you would have to place this code in a Vegas extension add-in. Excalibur, Ultimate-S, Vegasaur, and my Timeline Tools utility are all Vegas extensions that can run quietly in the background.

I must be missing something here. When I look at my temp files folder, Vegas already HAS separate folders for each version. I'm looking at prefs/general/temporary files folder yes?

Yes, Vegas defaults to different temp folders on installation. However, i believe a lot of us change this temp folder location upon installing. I certainly always have done. And this is the point, my temp folder was shared for all the versions currently installed. C:\vegastemp. in my case. This seems to be the problem. re-assigning them to separate folders seems to help - it just cured my crash on exits. (still testing this).

Paul.

Excellent Paul! - I'm very pleased.

G

Same as Arthur, my Vegas 10 and 11 have their separate temp folders by defaults and I do experience crashes...

Now can I delete the content in these temp folders? I have 1300-1600 files in each folders.

Rob

Probably *most* of the contents are deletable. Things to watch out for is if you've had sessions crash (not just Vegas, but also Sound Forge, ACID, etc.) without saving then the software will have tried to save what it can there. Any audio files you were in the middle of recording will be in there as .tmp files. Project files that hadn't been saved at the time of the crash will be in there with "recover" in the name. You might want to see if any of these are undiscovered treasures that you might want to keep.

Thanks Chienworks, did a cleanup but kept the files on hold in a separate folder just in case.