flash crash and corrupt FLA

[aleq]

Hey

FLASH 8 problems og Vista 64 Ultimate SP1:

Lately I've experienced that several of my FLA's became corrupt.

File 1: suddenly corrupt after I tried to apply more color shades to the shapes, that are already inside some symbols, inside other symbols, that are tweened on the main timeline. When opened, no timeline is visible, and neither with working space. It's just plain white. When Library is opened, the symbols are there, but when clicked anywhere within the Flash window, Flash crashes saying that it stopped responding.

File 2: corrupt as well, with same behaviour as File 1. Here is what I did, before it got corrupt. I have FLA file "A" open in Flash. I edited some symbols by adding more color shades, that were frame by frame animated in a symbol , that is tweened on the main timeline in another symbol. Later I open file "B" to copy the a preloader from it to "A". Now both files are open in Flash. I export "A" as SWF, send the FLA file over MSN to my mate, upload the SWF to my webpage. When alt tabbed back to Flash it crashes and suddenly I find out that the file can't open.

Lucky for me I have some backup, even though I've lost few hours of work. I name my files as Name_01, Name_02, etc.
It's annoying, not only to lose your work, but KNOW that it can happen again, demotivating you and preventing you from going wild creatively, knowing that at some point it might happen again. I ask you to share your experiences of corrupt files and how to prevent them. Write, what you did exactly that resulted in a corrupt FLA, and what you did/didn't do to prevent the problem from occuring.

As you see my two examples, it might look like a same pattern of; that Flash does not like, when you edit shapes or colors of your symbols, already animated and tweened inside several other symbols. And ofcourse it does not like, when another programs, like MSN start interfering with the very same file opened in Flash. BUT THAT IS ONLY MY THEORY.

Share your experience.

Thanks for your effort.

-Alex

[SeeHaus]

Hit save a lot, hit save as a lot, use the test movie command. That will keep you from encountering devastating heart ache. Flash seems to have problems when you draw a hugely detailed and complex shape in one layer. Flash is an extremely glitchy program and it loves to send things to hell in a hand basket for no reason. One thing that it always does to me is make lines randomly disappear, or make shapes fill in one color and then crash. Anyhow, I once kicked out a cable to my computer and lost numerous hours of work... I've learned to save incessantly. But the occasional crash followed by loss of work is inevitable. Sorry.

When I once screwed things up, I made this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slJUUVaTy0

[Cel]

Hmm.. Well, Flash only crashed a few times for me. Ever. And only one corrupted .fla. (And I've been using it ever since Flash 4 existed).

That video kinda inspires me! lol
It's been almost a year since I animated/drew anything.. Just been coding all that time. :\

[aleq]

Wow.. I am sorry to hear that you have lost so much work. How did you find motivation to remake all that? I made same topic as well on Flash kit and here is what one person replied. http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?p=4086896#post4086896

Hit save a lot, hit save as a lot, use the test movie command. That will keep you from encountering devastating heart ache. Flash seems to have problems when you draw a hugely detailed and complex shape in one layer. Flash is an extremely glitchy program and it loves to send things to hell in a hand basket for no reason. One thing that it always does to me is make lines randomly disappear, or make shapes fill in one color and then crash. Anyhow, I once kicked out a cable to my computer and lost numerous hours of work... I've learned to save incessantly. But the occasional crash followed by loss of work is inevitable. Sorry.

When I once screwed things up, I made this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slJUUVaTy0

[Cel]

Vista is to blame, as always...
And CS3 > 8. Don't listen to the people there