Overwriting done work!

[Marcel Hobi]

We were running into problems using TVPaint with two different computers and a
server.
If one computer has opened a file, the other omputer computer can easily open
the same file.
For a professional production this is very dangerous because of overwriting each
others done work.
How can we solve this problem professionally?

Best regards

Marcel Hobi

[slowtiger]

What you need is "file locking", and I believe there are solutions available for any operating system which would re-configure your server. Maybe a version control system would do the job. In order to work with a file, it must be checked out and later checked in again, so expect some additional steps in your workflow. Which OS is your server running on?

[Mads Juul]

How can we solve this problem professionally?

Don't open the same file
I have made a feature film(and other larger projects) with tvp working on server. and it was never a problem. We had a version number and the initials of the artist in end of all files
like this
sq001_sh001_animation_01mj.tvpp

the 01mj in the end stand for first version and mj is my initials (Mads Juul) if another artist opens the file the first thing he does is to increment the vesion number and put his own initials in the end so if George Clooney opens the file to wotk on it he would call it
sq001_sh001_animation_02gc.tvpp
And again we never had any problems with losing work. not one time.
So it is simple and proffesional.
Kind regards.
-Mads

[idragosani]

This is a common problem in any multi-user project (especially software development). I suggest using something like subversion or similar for controlling access to the file, one person checks it out from the server, so it gets locked, and no one else can overwrite that file. You still have the issue of merging changes into a master copy, however, since the files are binary and not text, but that will be an issue no matter what. It's an asset management issue, though, not a software issue.

[Fabrice]

I'm not sure if it depends on TVPaint Animation, or the OS itself.
I guess the dev team will tell us soon