Apple Final Cut Express 4 - Manual (Page 941)

Chapter 59 Backing Up and Restoring Projects 941
XI
Opening a Project File After Your Computer
Is Unexpectedly Shut Down
If your computer is abruptly shut down, you can open the most recently autosaved
project file after you restart your computer.
In this situation, you have several options:
 Open the project file and restore the latest autosaved version.
 Open the latest autosaved version of the project directly from the Finder. In this case,
Final Cut Express treats the opened autosaved project as a completely separate
project, leaving your original project file unchanged. If you choose this approach, you
should move or copy the autosaved project file to the location where you normally
store your project files and rename it without the additional time and date suffixes
added by the autosave process.
Archiving Completed Projects
After living and breathing a project for months or years, it may be hard to imagine
you’ll ever want to look at it or touch it again—but you never know for sure. You might
get a surprise distribution offer, but with the caveat that you shorten the project by
5 minutes. If that happens, will you be able to resurrect the project from its individual
media and sequence components? Did you save everything you needed?
When you archive your project, you need to ask yourself, “How long will I need this
project?” This is a hard question to answer with certainty, so most people err on the
side of caution. It’s almost always better to back up more than less.
For long-term archiving, you should save both the project file and the original media
(such as the actual videotapes). As long as there is an accurate timecode relationship
between the clips in your project and the timecode on your videotapes (or film), you
can open your project and recapture your media at any time.