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So, sharing this more as a warning to others - make backups of your project!!

I've been working quite happily in TVP Pro 11, barring the irritating 'playhead jumping ahead bug' which I posted about in another thread.

Anyways, I have a 5 minute project that consists of 54 clips (scenes). I have a new Mac Mini M4 that runs well, skipping between clips so I can work on multiple clips as I like, which is imo one of the big benefits of TVPaint's workflow; being able to work across multiple clips very quickly and preview the animation back.

However, whenever I save the 18gb project, it takes 1 minute to save and another minute where the wheel spins until I can use the program again. So I usually play a move of Chess on my phone or something during that waiting time.

A couple minutes ago I tried to save after working on one clip for a while, and it saved so quickly, I thought - something must be wrong. BRUH. All but one of my clips were GONE - deleted, somehow, I'm not sure how, if it happened after I applied a 'glow' effect to a layer or what. I certainly didn't do anything I don't think accidentally and definitely not purposefully.

I was luckily able to restore a Time Machine backup from earlier today (I had only set this up a few days ago) but I would've been BLEAK if I had lost or had to redo a lot of work. I also periodically upload files to the cloud for safekeeping.

I don't know why TVPaint 11 is misbehaving. Either the project is too big and I need to break it up into at least half (I've already broken it up, the full project is 8 mins) [EDIT: In fact I'm in the process of breaking it up] and my guess is maybe the long length and huge file size is also causing the skipping-ahead playhead issue (although I experience the same issue in a fresh project with nothing in it), or something else is going on.

Anyways. If you haven't already, this is your sign to set up proper backups for your projects. I'm so pleased I set up stuff a couple days ago.

I try and keep my file sizes under 2 GB, much better to handle.

When I only had 8 GB of RAM on my PowerPC, I had an 11 GB TVP project - it took bout 10 minutes to open or save, and I took great care not or do anything else on that machine during that process. Once open it worked flawlessly. I never lost a TVP project (so far, knock on wood). However, once I lost a 1,5 GB Photoshop file because electricity went off for a moment during saving. Yes, backups are necessary.

Don't be fooled by the mighty Mac Mini specs: I found that operations which take a bit longer than a few seconds can easily be irritated by stuff they shouldn't get influenced by, like a power save screen This goes for all programs.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I try not multi-task on the comp while TVPaint is saving. I must say, this is the first time I've lost a bunch of work in TVPaint (temporarily, luckily the backups saved me). I'm impressed at how fast the TVP engine is once the project is open and working within it.

I've since broken my 5 minute project up into 3 separate projects, saving is quicker now. Still experiencing some weirdness, I 'split audio to clips' and in one clip the audio won't play even though I can see the waveform and there's no automation applied to the volume. And the playhead skip ahead bug. But otherwise, performance is impressive. I remember even in the early LostMarble Moho forums days you'd be an advocate for TVPaint, slowtiger

I've also delayed my power save / sleep mode to a longer time in case that messes anything up.

Little update: I split up my long 8 min project into separate projects of about 1-2 mins each, about a month ago, and though I'm not yet finished with the project, since then [touch wood] from what I can remember, have not experienced crashes. Nice.

It seemed to be the looong project that was maybe causing memory crashes. So, shorter projects seem to be far more manageable for my M4 Mini as well as TVPaint, doesn't take as long to save, etc.
Still getting the issue of the playhead skipping ahead from wherever I play it anytime I preview keyframes with the keyframer effect, it seems to play ahead exponentially further the further the playhead is in the scene, almost as if it's playing from whatever the current frame X2 is, that's still a bit irritating (explained this in another thread) so I have to play the scene right from the beginning every time to preview keyframes, and I hope that gets solved.

Hello Mikdog, I am still searching for a way to reproduce the skipping playhead bug. Not having much success, though :/

Dean wrote: ↑25 Jun 2025, 09:01 Hello Mikdog, I am still searching for a way to reproduce the skipping playhead bug. Not having much success, though :/

Thanks Dean. If I can I’ll try see more exactly how the playhead skip bug when previewing keyframer works, I suspect it doubles the frame number eg the skip is not so noticeable early on in the timeline, so if I play from frame 5 it might skip to 10, but if I play from frame 100 it might skip to frame 200. Will try record and analyze. If there’s any way I can help like zipping and sending you a project or something, happy to do so, please let me know.