Digital Commons at Penn State

The Digital Commons editing workstations delete all of the projects which have been saved to them every night when the system updates. It is absolutely necessary that you save your work somewhere other than the hard drive of the editing machine once you intend to leave the Digital Commons. This tutorial will cover your various options for saving your projects. It is important to remember that you need to save both your finished file (.m4v or .mp3 for podcasts, .mov for movies) and the project file (iMovie file or Garageband file) so that you can make any changes later to the project file. If you save only the finished file and not the project file you will lose the ability to remove effects/transitions or edit just a single track.

Option 1: Save to the Digital Commons Storage Server
Please visit The storage server tutorial for more information

Option 2: Bring your own external Hard Drive:

If you own an external hard drive you can bring it to the Digital Commons and save your work to that. To do this, plug the drive into the back of the machine (USB or Firewire port depending on the type of drive you have) and the icon for the drive will appear on the desktop of editing machine. Once you have saved all of your work to the external drive it is important to eject the drive rather than just unplugging it. To do this click on the icon for the external hard drive and drag it to the trash can at the bottom of the screen.

Option 3: Save your project to a blank DVD

If your project is less than 4.7 GB you can save it to a blank DVD-R or DVD-RW. To do this put in your blank disc and then name it in the pop up window. Drag your files to the DVD icon which is on the desktop. Once you have moved all the files you want to save to the DVD click on FILE at the top of the screen and scroll down to Burn Disc.

Option 4: Save to your PASS Space/U-Drive

If your project is small enough (check your available space) to fit on your PASS Space or your U-Drive space you can save to those locations by clicking on the appropriate icon on the desktop and logging into your space. Saving to this space is especially useful for podcasts since the file sizes for audio projects are relatively small. Also keep in mind that transferring files to your PASS Space/U-Drive can take some time, so plan ahead.