So I was working on an animation and suddenly, when I tried to save my project, Pro Motion crashed. The blue saving message at the bottom stayed still for some seconds, and I couldn’t do anything anymore on my computer. I couldn’t click PM, I couldn’t close it, even with alt f4, couldn’t go to another tab. I literally coulnd’t do anything. I closed my computer, reopened it, still in the same state. I then turned of my computer, turned it on again, lauched ProMotionNG, tried to open the project…
And it doesn’t work. I can’t open it, even though it’s the same file name and same extension as before. PM says the file type is unknown. When looking at the properties of the file, it’s written that the file size is 0 octet. I have a backup file and some upsized gifs I can downscale, but I still lost some changes. Nothing fatal, just annnoying, and I fear that it might happen again. Has this already happened to anyone ? How could I prevent it from happening again, or maybe restore my file ?
Oh man. That’s rough. Sorry to hear that.
My best suggestion when it comes to file issues is to directly email @jan.cosmigo .
Be sure to keep your corrupted file as he may need it.
I think something similar happened to me before. But i remember i was having windows and memory issues back then. I’m not saying this might be your issue but try to check if you do have memory issues.
If there are no OS or hardware issues, there was this time when i was experimenting with PMNG that made it unresponsive and crashy. It was when i had a LARGE canvas and was drawing on it while the whole canvas was fitted on the screen. There were no issues if you just zoom in and use the tools as normal.
But, I tried the same file on my gaming rig. The experience was different.
I can only conclude that time that we can’t do this if our CPU is just too weak or that our memory capacity is too low.
If you’re working on something that has A LOT of frames combo-ed with a big canvas and somehow, after one action PMNG becomes unresponsive, there’s no way around it but to wait for it to finish, even if windows pesters you that PMNG is being unresponsive, i press wait.
Hope this helps some.
To prevent work loss (any type of work, not just PM project) the solution is to use version control, even for local projects which are not shared on the Internet:
If you’re lucky, and if your Windows OS has all the correct settings in place, you can try to recover previous versions (i.e. previous to the corrupted save) of your project file via the file history functionality:
Hi @myrmyxo,
I’m sorry to hear that you lost work. There can be dozens of reasons for this behavior from malfunction in Pro Motion to Virus protection software hooking in and interfering too much. The scenario mentioned is new to me and as long as we can’t make it happen again, there is no chance to track down the reason.
I suggest to activate the automatic backup mechanism in Pro Motion. To do so please go to File/Project Settings… and activate the backup feature:
To have this automatically enabled with every new project please set up the default project preferences in File/Preferences…
Thank you very much for all your helpful responses !
I’ll auto-backup my files in PMNG every 10 minutes now, thank you for the help Dan ! To tajmone, I prefer not to use git as I totally not versed in programming, but I’ll setup window’s recovery system. And after some reflection, I think this problem might have kind of similar origins to yours cageburner, my computer has been having some problems with the TPM device not being detected anymore, so that’s possibly the root of the problem.
Thank you again for your time !