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Backup Session

Adrian Grasso
Hi All,

Currently I shoot into a session onto my computer, and then backup to an external hard drive. Is there a way to continue working in Capture One on my computer, and then at the end only backup the adjustments I have made from the computer? I thought if I just replace the .cosessiondb on the external hard drive copy it should apply it, provided I haven't moved any file structuring (which I never do) I'm just thinking if there is a way to not have to transfer over 25+gb every time I am working on a job.

I know you can backup a catalog, but can't find anything for a session so far.

Thank you!
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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    The adjustments aren't just stored in the cosessiondb file. You'll find .cos files and perhaps .comask files in a subfolder called Capture One>Settings 100. The .cos files include the adjustments and the .comask files include information on local adjustments (if any). A safer course would therefore be some kind of incremental backup of the whole session folder. You don't say whether you are on A Windows PC or a Mac, but if it's a Mac, then of course Time Machine is a fairly painless way of achieving it.

    Ian
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  • Ian Wilson
    Moderator
    Top Commenter
    PS - this might help, if you look down to the part where he explains the contents of the various subfolders.



    (That was based on version 8, so the .cos files are in a Settings81 folder whereas they are now in a Settings100 folder, but apart from that the principle is the same.)

    Ian
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  • SFA
    Just to add a small observation to Ian's notes - images employed as ICC profiles, if you use them, may also be found in the folders within a session.

    It would be possible to exclude thumbnails and previews from a backup since they can be recreated at any time and, indeed, will be recreated of the session is opened and the thumbnails and previews are absent. However the trade off is the time taken to recreate on opening the session versus the disk storage capacity used and the back up time taken.

    There is, potentially, also the issue of keeping the current "views" in the backup up to date with the sate of editing as you work on a session should you decide not to backup the thumbs and previews but it's difficult to know whether that would be very significant for every workflow.

    The simplest thing is to backup complete sessions from the top folder.


    HTH.


    Grant
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  • Adrian Grasso
    Thank you Ian and Grant,

    Sorry, I am on Mac Sierra. Cool, I have seen those sub folders now and you are correct. I did a test of making an adjustment on my comp, then copy over the sub folders to the the external hard drive and it did work, but as Grant said, all the previews in the browser had to refresh. Bit annoying. Not that I ever do, but that would be impractical if you had to do that to thousands of images ever time. Anyway, hopefully they will add something for sessions in the future.

    Cheers guys!
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  • SFA
    NNN635667441211566265 wrote:
    Thank you Ian and Grant,

    Sorry, I am on Mac Sierra. Cool, I have seen those sub folders now and you are correct. I did a test of making an adjustment on my comp, then copy over the sub folders to the the external hard drive and it did work, but as Grant said, all the previews in the browser had to refresh. Bit annoying. Not that I ever do, but that would be impractical if you had to do that to thousands of images ever time. Anyway, hopefully they will add something for sessions in the future.

    Cheers guys!


    You may find that the Previews refresh anyway if you have set the default size to be different from your native screen resolution. (If you are running 2 screens with different resolutions things may get interesting ....)

    Personally I just copy the whole folder set onto another drive on the basis that it's mainly intended as a backup and although I can and sometime do work with the external drives directly my expectation of a backup would be to move it back to the main drive (or at least an internal drive) for any serious production re-working.


    Grant
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