Hi there,

As I mad a mistake on a sequence, I went bakc to an earlier version in the attic copied it to my desktop and kept working on it. Then after reopening the project the bin seemed to be invalid, becoming a GenFile and looking just blan without the bin file design. I couldn't open that file anymore and had to retrieve a far earlier version again. So lost several hours of work. What happened here? 

Now, I did retireve it again, mad a new bin in the project and copied the content of the attic bin into the new bin. But am scared now after that experience and would like to know, how to avoid thid in future.

I use Qvid MC 8.6 on a Mac.Mini

Many thanks,

Anita

Hi Anita,

  I'm moving this to MC Mac. This section is for the MC|First version.

Thanks,

RalphC

For whatever reason, Media Composer does not include a filename extension on the bins written to the attic, unlike those found in your project folder (e.g. my_bin.avb). Instead, the files are written with a period-version number convention:

my_bin.1

my_bin.2

my_bin.3... etc.

Consequently, Mac OS has no idea what types of files these are unless you replace the number with ".avb". Renaming the files should help, but be careful: even if you name the recovered bin something different (e.g. my_bin_RECOVERED.avb) it can still conflict with the old bin that remains in your project. I think the best practice is to remove/relocate the newest bin from your project and replace it outright with the version copied out of the attic.

As a general feature request, Avid should really include a tool for intelligently recovering bins from the Attic. Moving/renaming files this way at the Finder level is too precarious. We've seen lost work as a result of this too.

Hope this helps,

Ryan

When you retrieve a Bin from the Attic, it should be copied-and-pasted back into the Project folder. Then refresh the Project Window in Avid by switching tabs, or opening or closing a bin, and the Attic bin will become available. It will have been given the .avb file extension automatically by the refresh process. 

Was this what you did? I've not known it fail before.

Not sure Mike's method is reliable (Hi, Mike). Just tested and it worked for a moment then the bin vanished from the Project window. I always copy to Desktop, change the file extension, make sure the original bin is closed in the project then use File>Open Bin to open the rescued bin from the Desktop. Then make a new bin, named sensibly, and move everything of interest into that bin.

Roger's method is exactly what I do and it has worked perfectly for me since, forever.

Avid should have saved a new back up bin in the attic of the "several hours of work" you did. You should (theoretically) be able to copy and use that bin (and follow the good advice posted above) to recover the work that you think is lost. It's probably still there.