Projects

The Project Actions menu handles the loading and saving of Axon Investigate projects.

What is a project?

An Axon Investigate project encompasses the following:

  • All items loaded in the file list
  • All “in” marks, “out” marks, and marked frames in the timelines of those files
  • All date/time edits and/or offsets applied
  • All PDF reports added to the file list or generated from within Investigate (metadata and history reports)
  • All items in the narrative report
Note

Any work performed on these items are lost when the file is deleted. This includes "in" and "out" marks, marked frames, subclips, and narrative report links.

An Axon Investigate project does not include any aspect of workflows executed or specific nodes used on the Workflow tab. These items are saved separately as part of the workflow presets options and referenced in the history report.

Create and protect a project

When examining and processing video evidence, it is always considered a best practice to use working copies of the original evidence and protect your originals. Although Axon Investigate contains safeguards in place to ensure that the media loaded into Axon Investigate is not overwritten, you should always create a folder of working copies. Work off the copies, not the originals.

When a Project has been started or changed, and is in an unsaved state, the project name appears with an asterisk beside it indicating that the project is unsaved. Once saved, the asterisk disappears. This is a reminder to save your work.

When beginning a Project, you can indicate the time zone the work is performed in using the Settings icon next to the Project name. This time zone selection will be retained in the Project and restore with every Project load.

You should save your work frequently. To help with this, Axon Investigate automatically creates a backup of projects every two minutes. Users can set the backup interval to any desired number of minutes in Settings.

Save a project

Note

You can also use Ctrl+S to save your project from any tab. If you haven't yet saved your project, this action opens the File Explorer window to name your project..

  1. Load your working copies into the file list and organize as desired.
  2. Select Project Actions > Select Save (or Save As) > Enter name of project.
  3. Save the project file one "level" up from your working copies.

Organizing your project in this way not only protects your original copies, but also makes loading the project easier later.

Load a project

To load a previously saved project, or auto-saved back up, there are three options:

  • Drag and drop the project file into the file list like any other video or image.
  • Select the Add (+) icon at the top of the file list > Add File(s) > project file.
  • Select Project Actions > Load > project file > Open.

To load an auto-saved back up project file, open Documents\Axon Investigate\Project Backups. Choose the folder corresponding to the project name > select the project file with the desired backup date and time appended to the file name.

If the working copies are in the same directory as they were when the project was last saved, Axon Investigate successfully loads the saved project (even if the project file has been moved).

If the working copies have been moved to a different folder path, or if the files have been deleted, Axon Investigate cannot load the missing items.

However, if the .project file and the folder containing the working copies are moved together to a new directory, Axon Investigate loads the saved project successfully.

Hotkeys for saving projects or clearing the workspace are available in the Hotkey Actions under Help, or from the timeline More Actions menu (•••).

Error loading project

If files have been changed, moved, or renamed since the last time the project was saved, Axon Investigate displays a warning message listing all the items that could not be located. The warning message identifies the directory in which each file was last saved.

To load the project anyway, select Close. Axon Investigate provides an error message for any files that the user attempts to interrogate that are missing from the project file.

A project with missing items can be viewed but not saved. It is recommended that you take one of the two following actions:

  • Close Axon Investigate > Move the necessary files back to the appropriate directory.
  • Delete all the missing items from the file list. Note Any work performed on these items are lost when the file is deleted. This includes "in" and "out" marks, marked frames, subclips, and narrative report links.

Once all items in the file list can be found (by either moving the files back to the appropriate directory or by deleting the items from the file list), the Axon Investigate Project can then be opened, saved, and used like normal.