Never loose your Premiere Pro CS5 project again

Premiere Pro pros already know what to do, but casual users should get prepared.

I recently tried to open a trailer I had been editing and was met with crash after crash. I put a lot of work into that and had just gotten past a tricky edit. I was preparing to get pissed. I rebooted and thankfully the project opened just fine. But that was almost a disaster. I checked to see what my previous version of the project looked like. (Every now and then I use Save As and add a new number after the file name.) When I opened my “Gumiho4.prproj” I saw that it looked nothing at all like “Gumiho5.prproj.” Apparently I had been so absorbed in a tricky edit that I just kept saving and didn’t bother to increment. I decided I never wanted to go through that again.

Increment and Save
I looked up File/Increment and Save and that feature seems to be gone now from version CS5. (Please tell me if I’m wrong.) Well, we’ll just have to do it by hand then. Every time you save, save twice. First, just File/Save. And immediately after use File/Save As and add a higher number at the end of your file name. Why save twice? Because if you only do it once (and increment) the differences between your last two projects will be greater (depending on how often you do it.) If something happens to your last file, know that your previous file won’t be so different. And that means less lost work.

Use Auto Save
You can tell Premiere Pro CS5 to automatically save your project as much and as often as you like. In Preferences, choose Auto Save. In the new dialogue check Automatically Save Projects. Next, enter how often you want Auto Save to work (in minutes). Finally indicate the Maximum Project Versions you want. (Auto Save does the same thing as Increment and Save; it adds a higher number after each file name.) Auto Saves are saved in a new folder kept with your project called Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save.

If you choose to Auto Save every 10 minutes and set Maximum Project Versions to 6, then the last hour of editing will be pretty safe.

Do both
After Premiere Pro has Auto Saved the set number of project versions, it will begin to overwrite the older files. So in our example, after an hour instead of yourproject-7.prproj being created, yourproject-1.prproj will be overwritten. Auto Save only protects you in the short run. But if something does happen, and you’re a quick editor, you’ll be really glad you had Auto Save set to save often.