Veg files vanish with no backup

Sidecar2 wrote on 4/7/2005, 9:51 AM
For reasons unknown but possibly due to the data drive being fragmented and nearly full, several recent short but complex Vegas edits simply disappeared. No VEG file no VEG BAK files. Some music files disappeared too.

I can recover the music files from the orig. I can't even find the VEG files. I did a search. Not there. I most definitely did not "erase" the VEG files. Did an error correction and defrag on the data drive. No recovery. The VEG files are simply gone. This has happened several times. It may be Microsoft Win2000 Pro's file management's fault, but the files are gone.

Vegas 5 also will begin opening a previous edit, almost get it open then present a dialog box informing me "Warning: An error occurred while loading the project file xxx.veg. The file is an unsupported format." I click OK and an empty untitled Vegas window opens. No show. Not very reassuring.

This is considered professional editing?

A future Vegas upgrade should include automatically created backup files on the C: drive in the Programs folder. The automatic backups should not be on the same drive as the data. If something goes wrong with the data drive, all is lost.

Media 100 does this with great reassurance. Every couple of minutes it's autosaving a backup version to the program drive. You tell it how often and how many versions it should save before it starts overwriting the earlier versions. VEG files aren't that big. Vegas should be doing this.

I am a single voice in the midst of a pile of Macs trying to prove the PC and Vegas in particular are suitable for a professional editing environment.

So far, Vegas isn't up to the task. It's a nice try, but it's no Media 100. It has lots of features and pseudo "real time" (until you get that two-hour render to do) but it can't even open a show I did three weeks ago.

And if it's Microsoft's fault that files unexpectedly and irretrievably disappear, all the more proof that editing should be done on a Mac, not a PC.

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 4/7/2005, 10:15 AM
Sounds like you've made your mind up already...

As for your problems... they are very unique to your setup and indicates something serious is going very wrong with your PC / drive .. not with Vegas.

The fact you are happy to work with a data drive that is fragmented and nearly full tells us something about your priorities as far as editing system setup.

Vegas does not magically make files disappear. It takes seconds to save a new version of your veg files wherever you would like. Autosaves are going on all the time (and they end up on your system drive in the Application Data section of your personal settings).

Bottom line. Sort out your system problems and stop blaming Vegas for something outside of it's control.
Jimmy_W wrote on 4/7/2005, 11:34 AM
And if it's Microsoft's fault that files unexpectedly and irretrievably disappear, all the more proof that editing should be done on a Mac, not a PC.

Or user.
Jimmy

johnmeyer wrote on 4/7/2005, 12:49 PM
As I posted in another thread, fragmentation is seldom the cause of any problem. Whether you agree with that or not, here is something that is indisputable:

Doing a disk defragmentation when you are trying to recover data is the worst thing you can possible do.

If the data was written to disk, but then erased, or if there was some sort of other corruption, the data can often be recovered with simple file recovery utilities, such as those sold by Symantec. However, defragmentation -- especially on a full disk -- virtually guarantees that all remnants of old files will be overwritten. In fact, many sites that describe the defragmentation process list as one the benefits that old, deleted files wilil be overwritten, thus making your computer more secure.

Thus, I can't offer any way to recover your files now. If your disk drive is almost full, then I would certainly try to free up some space so that you have at least 5% of the disk open and available. When a disk becomes full, all bets are off as to what is going to happen. The five pound bag has become full, and your ten pounds of stuff just ain't gonna fit.

BillyBoy wrote on 4/7/2005, 1:19 PM
Are you SURE they are gone?

About the only time no .veg file gets made is if you suffer a power outage or a system hang or application crash. Even then almost always there will be a .veg or bakup file. It may not be any good, but its there, they never disappear.

If you haven't already try this:

Assuming you know WHERE you saved your project to*** go to Windows Explorer, at the very top click on View, change icon sort order to 'last modified" Is a easy way to see the last files worked on in any folder. If you haven't searched your whole system use Windows' search and specify .veg then all files and folders. Any .veg anywhere on your PC will show up.

*** Its easy to reorder where things go. A .veg file normally ends up in a known folder, but its possible for it to get written to a folder where one of the source files came from. Why you want to do a global search so you look everywhere.
klimvid wrote on 4/7/2005, 5:02 PM
I recently had a similar thing happen to an entire 95 GB project on an external drive. Nothing showed up, no vegs no avis, blank. I spent hours trying numerous recovery programs and the one that worked and recovered every missing file with original files names was a free program called pci_filerecovery.exe. Search Google for download and good luck.
WedVidMan wrote on 4/7/2005, 5:31 PM
Dan, you might also try a system restore (Last ditch effort?) back to the last date you had the veggie