Saving Project to external drives and servers

Hello all!

New to Harmony and already I have pipeline questions!

It seems the general rule is never save your scene directly to an external source like a server or external hard drive to avoid corruption because of the way Harmony saves files. Our studio generally works off of a shared server which we can all access.

How does harmony save, and how is their save method different from other programs like say adobe products? What would the risk be if you were to write to a reliable studio server?

Are there any studios that have solved the need for multiple artists needing to access the same files while understanding the efficiency of not leaving it to the artist to copy project files to the shared server? If so, how did they work around Harmony’s limitations?

Thanks!

Julia

The issue is not in how Harmony saves but rather that there is a large
number of small files involved that are too much for normal external drives
and USB drives to deal with unless the project is zipped first. Production
servers by contrast are specifically designed to have faster response and
be more robust but even then, it is much safer to zip the project folder
before moving it anywhere.

The only time the Harmony saving method becomes an issue is with cloud storage.
Cloud storage attempts to update/save all in one step but Harmony saves incrementally
by first backing up the original files to a new name and then creating the originally named
files. The result of the interaction between the two can result in a corrupted save. It
is therefore even more crucial to zip the project before moving it onto a folder linked
to cloud storage. Never directly edit a project stored on cloud storage because this
always runs the risk of corrupting the project.

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Fascinating! Thank you so much for your detailed description of the Harmony saving process.

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