You experience an application failure and Avid DS exits. When you restart, a message tells you that it cannot recover that sequence.
Is the timeline content lost, and is there a way to manually recover the data?
Based on the interval set in your User Preferences, Avid DS will save a copy of your sequence as an AutoSave file.
This AutoSave is saved to a maximum of 4 copies.
In the event of an application crash, these AutoSaves are used by the recovery mechanism to reopen the sequence.
As always, it is recommended that you save your work often.
Ideally, you should be able to rely on copies of your sequence (created via File > Save As) or an archive of your project.
The AutoSave files only exist to recover a sequence from a crash and the manual recovery of sequences should not be considered a replacement for frequent saves and archives of your project, and should be used as a last resort.
Note: The AutoSave files are purged on the next successful launch of Avid DS.
This means that a new set of AutoSave files are created and previous AutoSaves are no longer available, unlike the Media Composer Attic folder option.
To manually recover a sequence from an AutoSave file:
- Locate the most recent AutoSave files from the application folder.
These can be found at C:\Program Files\Avid\DS_vX.X\DSSystem\temp."USERNAME"
Text appearing in bold will vary based on your version of software and the user account name.
- Drag a copy of the most recent AutoSaves to the project's folder location.
The root of the project is probably the best location for this operation.
- For each AutoSave that you intend to recover, right-click the AutoSave file and choose rename. When renaming the file, add the extension ".Segment" to the end of the file name.
This is case-sensitive, the "S" in Segment is capitalized.
When you launch Avid DS and choose that project, you will see a new sequence called AutoSave.
Open this sequence and verify its content.
If this sequence is usable, choose File > Save As, save a copy of this sequence and exit the application to clean the memory from the potentially dirty content.
Restart Avid DS and you can now safely open the newly saved sequence (from the recovered AutoSave copy) and resume work.
If there was no AutoSave file present in the temp.[USERNAME] folder, verify the CrashBackup folder content.
You may found additional AutoSave files in there.
If present, check their data and time stamps.
If the match the date and time of the crash, you can also use these AutoSave files and attempt to manually recover the sequence.
C:\Program Files\Avid\DS_vX.X\DSSystem\temp."USERNAME" maximum number of AutoSave files: 4
AutoSave1 < latest autosave recovery file - also created if you press Ctrl+S
AutoSave2 < autosave1 renamed autosave2
AutoSave3 < autosave2 renamed autosave3
AutoSave4 < autosave3 renamed autosave4 - when a new autosave1 is created, autosave4 is then deleted
When Avid DS is restarted, it automatically reads the most recent AutoSave file and loads the data.
If the content is deemed too corrupted, it automatically reads the next available AutoSave until it picks the least damaged file content.
The sequence then appears as "Untitled" and Avid DS presents the user with a message requesting this recovered sequence to be save to a new name, and to restart the application.
The user MUST not ignore this message.
C:\Program Files\Avid\DS_vX.X\DSSystem\temp."USERNAME"\CrashBackup maximum number of AutoSave files: 3 *
AutoSave5 < present only if autosave2 existed
AutoSave6 < present only if autosave2 and autosave3 existed
AutoSave7 < present only if autosave2, autosave3 and autosave4 existed
* The reason being that AutoSave1 is usually lost in the crash, thus AutoSave2, 3 and 4 are automatically pushed in the CrashBackup folder and are renamed AutoSave 5, 6 and 7.