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Welcome to the Smoke Learning Channel.
In this video we will be looking how to create a project archive to back up an entire project,
which includes media, set-ups and project settings.
Typically, backing up your work is the last stage of production after producing your deliverables.
Some facilities like to back up their work at the end of every day
but that depends on their production workflows as well as available storage.
Whichever way you choose to work, project archiving and backups are all managed within Smoke.
A quick tip just before we start.
If there is anything you do not want in your project archive, I suggest deleting it before backing up.
This will help save on space and time.
To back up your project, you need to switch to the MediaHub.
Normally the default behaviour of the browser is to look for media files on your file system.
Switch the browser mode to Archives.
The file browser still looks the same but the menus at the bottom have updated
and the browser will only be displaying archive related files.
When it comes to creating an archive, firstly you need to choose a location to put it.
The archive buttons are greyed out until you start searching through your devices to go to a designated folder.
I will navigate to through the devices to a specified folder.
As a tip, please do not use your system disk as an archive location.
These files can easily become massive and eat up all your disk space in a short period of time.
Always use a drive dedicated for backups and archiving.
Once in the right location, click NEW ARCHIVE to bring up the archive creation window.
The name of the archive defaults to the name of your project but you can change that to whatever you want.
You also have an editable comments text box which puts the archive creation date by default.
At this point you also need to set a file size limit.
How this works, is that your project could use 20 gigabytes on your system.
If you do not limit the file size, Smoke will generate one archive file that is 20 gigabytes.
That is a very large amount of data to deal with in a single file.
So by limiting the file size, you can tell smoke to create archive segments files up to a specific size.
For example, using a default of one gigabyte per file,
Smoke will create 20 one gigabyte files to back up the 20 gigabyte project.
Another scenario is perhaps you want to use other mediums to back up your data.
For example, you could choose the DVD option in the pop up list.
This means Smoke would create approximately 4 to 5 segment files
and each file could be burnt onto a DVD using a DVD burning application.
You will have to choose the file size that best fits your infrastructure.
When you create the archive, Smoke also opens the empty archive for you to start backing up your project.
This open archive has a tab menu below telling you the current size.
Obviously, it is at zero at the moment.
I just want to briefly highlight the Archive Options tab.
The default settings are normally good for all project back-ups but I want to stress the "Media Options" section.
The Media Options is set to "Create Project Media".
This means that Smoke will pull in all your project media, transcode it and place it in the archive files.
It is the default behaviour for Smoke because it is the most complete archive you can get.
If you deleted or lost any of your original native media, you only need to restore the archive and it will restore the project just as it was.
If you set the Media Options to "Linked Media", than Smoke will only archive any cached intermediates and renders files.
Smoke will also back up all the file paths into the archive but the native media will remain untouched.
This has two major implications.
Firstly, it will be your responsibility to back up your native media.
And secondly, if you restore this project at a later date, you will need to recreate the same folder structures
for your native media if you want Smoke to automatically reconnect to the files.
So "Create Project Media" is the recommended default setting.
Now let's create the archive for this project.
Just click "Archive Project".
Smoke initiates and you can monitor the progress at the bottom of the interface.
Once the archive has completed the backup, You will see a new folder appear
in the archive that is the project folder.
You can navigate through the folder and sub-folders to expose clips that are archived.
Finally click the "Close Archive Button" to exit the currently open backup and return to the file system.
The archive is now represented in the folder by a small briefcase icon.
Your back up is now complete.
Thank you for watching and please subscribe for future videos coming from the Smoke Learning Channel.