Moho Forum

When I restarted Moho it prompted me to recover the file, but I foolishly chose not to recover it. Does anyone know what directory the autosave temp files are stored in? And whether my file might still be there?

I think it's C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Smith Micro\Moho Pro\12 (contrary to what the manual says about it being in custom content..) but I think it's emptied when you say "no" to the recovery dialog

Thank you, Hayasidist! Yes, you're right! I just created a test file. The autosave file was in that location, I declined the prompt to recover the file, and then the file was removed from that location. Fortunately, I had saved a render of the file I lost so it wasn't too difficult to recreate. :D

Ugh! I hate when that happens. I tend to save many, many incremental versions of scenes just to cover myself.

Some thoughts:

At work we use the Previous Versions feature in Windows, which has saved my butt a few times. I'm glad we have this enabled but I don't like to rely on it too much because: 1.) it doesn't save as frequently as I do and 2.) it only keeps so many versions before deleting older versions, so I keep saving my own versions until I'm finished with the scene. (I still like to preserve few early versions in a 'wip' folder just in case I need to regress to older animation or artwork.)

I'd like to enable Previous Versions at home but I'm not sure I can afford the disk space. Maybe I can enable it for just my current projects? Guess I should look into it.

The AutoSave and recover file needs to be looked at again and changed. I just worked on a lip sync file that took me quite a bit of time. When trying to render, Moho just locked up. I had to shut down and restart. On the first restart, I choose to recover. Then, Moho locked up again on render. I shut down and checked the my file system to see if my file was were I saved it. It was. Also, during animating, I saved the file several times. I then restart Moho, and choose to NOT recover and was able to open my file by selecting Open. Then, Moho locked up again. I shut down Moho with End Task as there was no other option.

Now, not only is the Autosave recovery file gone, my working file is now corrupt. It has a JSON error and it is 0 kb. How would/could the original working file become corrupt during render??? The working file should be protected against a program shut down. This is ridiculous. No other program that I have or currently work on becomes corrupt if I have to shut down the program.

Please dev team revisit the file system within Moho and have original files protected when Moho crashes.

Yeah, the zero-length file issue with Auto-save has been a problem for a lot of people. We stopped using this option at my workplace quite a while ago, and I suggest other should off until it's been fixed.

It's much more reliable to make frequent version saves as you work. Out of habit, I save my work every few minutes (Ctrl-s) and use 'Save As...' to create a new version about every 15 minutes. Alternatively, you can enable Windows Previous Versions. (We do both where I work, and we rarely lose work or much time due to crashing.)

Another option is to use the auto-save script posted elsewhere in these forums.

It's also a good idea to reboot your computer everyday or at least a few times a week, especially if you tend to do a lot of heavy work in multiple programs.

These are actually general suggestions and not specific to using Moho. I do the same when using Photoshop, After Effects, LightWave, Maya, Fusion...doesn't matter. It's just good practice.

I agree developers need to re-visit this feature. It's been reported so I'm sure they're looking at it. I'm hoping that they will expand it to include an option to save multiple versions. But until then, leave it off.