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Due to the time an autosave takes, it will kill your creative workflow if it happens in the middle of it !
Saving a gigabyte or two to disk is not a half-second affair.

Sad but true. One great thing about TVPaint is that it gives me a real drawing feel and I developed some style whithout using undo and stuff so i forget that i'm drawing on screen. But unfortunenately one has to save from time to time. In this case i drew about an hour and suddenly... I tried to create a save button to have it on the same screen I'm drawing on but thats not possible. I've attached a picture I'm working on. Somehow it corresponds with the feeling when realizing that TVPAint crashed. @ematecki: It would be great to have this After Effects-like Option: TVPaint has crashed, you may save the last version now.

After-effects does not work directly with pixels, but with "links", so its files are usually smaller (if I remember well).

There was a conversation not a long ago about auto save : http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5407&" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm habitually saving files after each bigger action, say processing a whole layer, or after 1 drawing. Doesn't take too much time, and I don't have any feeling of "interrupting my workflow".

I was however in the situation of working with a 10 GB file once, where each opening or saving took 10 minutes (on my G5 PPC). Since then I've improved my planning a lot so I don't end up with such big files again.

(I have merged the both topics about auto-save)

conclusion: please provide an auto-save option with an interval configurable for those who need it. And make it so that when the interval is set to zero, that the auto-save is disabled, for those who want to take 'responsibility' themselves .

slowtiger wrote:Due to the time an autosave takes, it will kill your creative workflow if it happens in the middle of it !
Saving a gigabyte or two to disk is not a half-second affair.

This can be handled by treating the auto-save in a background-manner (much like background-printing in MS-Office for example). it will not be treated with priority and be treated on spare CPU-time.

???

This can be handled by treating the auto-save in a background-manner (much like background-printing in MS-Office for example). it will not be treated with priority and be treated on spare CPU-time.

It's a little bit more complicated than that
But ok, we will try to do something.

has there been any progress in developing the auto-save function?

Wait for TVPaint Animation 10.5

We have prepared something.
Not exactly what you want, but it should help a lot.

This is an extremely important feature, and strange it wasn't implemented yet. Most modern software has auto-save or temporary recovery file system, that will allow you to recover almost all work in case of system crash, even if you forgot to save. The Autobackup is only a half-solution and only helps in the very rare case that the file becomes damaged, but it doesn't help you to recover lost work.
I just had a system crash and lost 1 hour of work. I wanted to check if there was a feature request for this and I found this request already made...
Maybe it's possible to easily script such a thing? Any scripters out there?

....

http://www.tvpaint.com/v2/content/artic ... new105.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Automatic save alarm

Thanks to that new tool, you can configure an alarm to remind you to save your project.

Combine this option to the Auto Backup, and you will never lose hours of work.

Elodie wrote:....
http://www.tvpaint.com/v2/content/artic ... new105.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Automatic save alarm
Thanks to that new tool, you can configure an alarm to remind you to save your project.
Combine this option to the Auto Backup, and you will never lose hours of work.

Hmm... this is a bit weird, but ok - better than nothing
But where do I get 10.5? is it an upgrade? it's not on your website yet

We already explained that in the past : an Auto-save function would be an open door to instability. What if you apply a big FX at the moment where TVPaint wants to auto-save ? Crashes hazard increase, the loss of your files too. Nothing is more disturbing than an Auto-save when you are drawing or animating. What if you are working on a heavy file ? You'll have to wait 5 real minutes for its save ? No, auto-save are definitely NOT a solution.

Soom wrote:But where do I get 10.5? is it an upgrade? it's not on your website yet

Everything is explained here, Soom : http://forum.tvpaint.com/viewtopic.php? ... 320#p63817" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This version wasn't announced yet on the web, because it is only dedicated to members of the TVPaint forum.

As a TVPAint 9.5 owner, you'll need to pay an upgrade, yes.

I concur that autosave can cause problems because very often I work in a search and scribble stage when I am not sure how I want something to look. Also very often the more I scribble the worse my drawing looks and need to start over again. I would hate it if during these moments of frustration everything would keep on saving and I'd have to make a search through all the automated instances to get back to where I had started. Sometimes it could happen that all the backups could be used up on drek.

My save button is the period on my numbers pad and the closest key to my drawing hand. I have fallen into the routine of pecking on that key every few seconds and this has paid off many times. As another measure, just when I start one of those scribble and search moments I make a point of putting an X into my top History column so that after I am done and still hate what I have drawn, I hit the "go to previous mark" of the History Panel which takes me back to where I had started my unhappy scribbles and I can start fresh.

Paul Fierlinger wrote:I concur that autosave can cause problems because very often I work in a search and scribble stage when I am not sure how I want something to look. Also very often the more I scribble the worse my drawing looks and need to start over again. I would hate it if during these moments of frustration everything would keep on saving and I'd have to make a search through all the automated instances to get back to where I had started. Sometimes it could happen that all the backups could be used up on drek.

My save button is the period on my numbers pad and the closest key to my drawing hand. I have fallen into the routine of pecking on that key every few seconds and this has paid off many times. As another measure, just when I start one of those scribble and search moments I make a point of putting an X into my top History column so that after I am done and still hate what I have drawn, I hit the "go to previous mark" of the History Panel which takes me back to where I had started my unhappy scribbles and I can start fresh.

I have my Save button just next to my drawing hand - on the top button on my Cintiq. But even with that, I sometimes forget to save, and especially when I'm in this search and scribble stage, when I actually hesitate to save yet. TVPaint is quite stable software, and I never had crashes on TVP 9.5 on Mac, therefore I don't have this habit of saving like I had on Flash.
I also work with big files and frankly don't feel any major disturbance while saving - it usually takes couple of seconds. I don't fully understand the instability hazard, because - and I am sorry for blasphemy again - Photoshop cs6 uses background aut-saving and recovery system, which doesn't affect workflow in any way, even when working on huge files. So I believe it is possible somehow, although it's probably not easy.