I have seen engineers running a recording session where the file name at the top of the software window is still “Untiled.” This is bad. In one instance, they had reached the end of a 3 hour voice over session, and they hadn’t saved once! If the computer crashed, or the power went out, or somebody tripped over the power cord, POOF the audio would be gone.

In Pro Tools (my DAW of choice), there is a particular error that can prevent you from saving your work. This error manifests itself when Pro Tools starts up, but does not give any indication that is has occurred until you try to save your work. It is essentially a file corruption, but since it doesn’t affect the operation of the software until you try to save, it is the bane of many engineers. Imagine you’ve just finished a 5 hour tracking session with a band -they’re paying you- and you go to save your work and get a message that states “The operation could not be completed.” You may be able to recover the audio files, you may not. Or consider this, your mixing a project, and have been at it for several hours, and you hit save… “The operation could not be completed.” All that time, wasted.

There is an easy way to protect yourself from these disasters. SAVE EARLY and SAVE OFTEN! Make saving a habit. Every time you hit stop, hit Apple-S (keyboard shortcut for saving on macs). Every time you get up to take a break, save. Every time you make an edit, save. You get the idea. Don’t work on a project named “Untitled.” Name it, and save it, first thing.

The Pro Tools error I mentioned above is easy to detect: When you create a new session or open an existing one, move the mouse, and save. Pro Tools records the location of the mouse when it saves, so you have to move it so that it will have something to save. If you get the “Operation could not be completed” message, you know you have a problem that needs to be addressed before you start working.

Many software applications have the ability to automatically save at timed intervals. This is a very good thing to have turned on. I have Pro Tools set up to save a backup copy every 10 minutes, and to keep the previous 10 copies. If Pro Tools crashes, I only lose at most, 10 minutes of work.

One final suggestion: make use of the “save as” command. Save as is very powerful, because it gives you a lot of flexibility. Say I’ve been working on a mix, and decide I want to go in a different direction. I use the save as command to keep what I’ve been working on separate from the wild idea I want to try out. Another place where save as is really handy is when you work on a project over multiple days. Each day, when you open the project, use save as, and append the date to the file name. That way, you can easily go back to an earlier version of the project if you (or the client) so desires.