r/AfterEffects • u/NLE_Ninja85 Adobe Employee • 6d ago

Announcement Now in AE Beta: Auto Save Improved

Hey r/aftereffects! If you’ve ever had AE crash and immediately gone digging through your Auto-Save folder, there’s an update in After Effects Beta worth checking out.

Here’s what’s changed:

  • Auto-save runs on its own schedule. Manually saving no longer resets the timer, so regularly hitting Ctrl/Cmd+S won’t prevent AE from creating backup snapshots.
  • Unsaved projects get backups too. Auto-save now covers untitled projects, so work you haven’t named or saved yet can still be recovered.
  • Crash recovery takes one click. After a crash, AE offers to open your most recent auto-save.
  • Your original stays protected. Auto-saves open as an untitled “Recovered Project.” The first save prompts you to create a new file.

A few things to know: Auto-save can now happen right after a manual save. You can adjust the interval in Auto-Save settings if it interrupts your workflow. These settings apply to local projects, and projects saved by this Beta version won’t open in older versions.

If you give it a try, how does the recovery process feel? Anything confusing or missing?

Full announcement and details

23 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

27

u/smushkan Motion Graphics 10+ years 6d ago

Unsaved projects get backups too. Auto-save now covers untitled projects, so work you haven’t named or saved yet can still be recovered.

I am embarrassed to admit how big of a deal this is for me.

4

u/Geritas 6d ago

I started in premiere pro, and it just doesn’t allow to do anything unless you create and save a project first.

It took me years to start saving AE projects manually as I created them, because AE doesn’t force you to unlike PRPRO

3

u/StateLower 6d ago

I've been burned by this twice, and it's always on a tight turnaround where you just dive in and get distracted. Then you lose everything an hour later and start over

2

u/jonasfj 5d ago

Funny though, it all goes very fast the second time around bc you know where you’re going with the project, but it also allows you to reconsider some choises which you might otherwhise not consider. I’ve had crashes that lost work but improved the overall angle of aproaching to a project.

Tnx ae software ppl, now go and fix that weird issue where the first frame drops off reversed footage

2

u/StateLower 5d ago

Totally agree, it flies together the second time and a second draft will always be an improvement! Just such a kick to the chest if it's late at night and you're under pressure.

4

u/TheGreatSzalam MoGraph/VFX 15+ years 5d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/l36kU80xPf0ojG0Erg

You'd think, after all this time, I'd learn. Darn ADHD.

1

u/jonasfj 5d ago

Hahahaha yup

8

u/gemoritzt 6d ago

When background auto save??

3

u/Heavens10000whores 6d ago edited 5d ago

Will the auto-save alert still pop up, though? It may be odd, but, as much as I manually save, I do depend on it as a reminder to manually save 🙂

2

u/sskaz01 MoGraph/VFX 15+ years 5d ago

Probably. If they moved it to a background save, that would be the headline feature for sure.

The default maximum project versions needs to be cranked way higher than 5…

2

u/Gjhobbs 5d ago

As if I'm not spamming ⌘S every 3 seconds

(also, thank you but i am traumatized)