VS9 Project is Unreadable -- Please Help

[Tim&Crystal]

Hello,

I'm using VS9 and ran into a serious problem today. I can no longer open my existing project file to continue editing. Please help if you can!

I had an existing project file started with lots of edits and time invested into it already. I opened it back up today to finish up the edits and when I tried to save my work, the video thumbnails in the timeline disappeared and the program told me there was a "file format mismatch". When I tried to re-open the project again, it said the file was unreadable.

The weird thing is, this happened to me once before, although I didn't loose nearly as much work. So, this time, I made sure to do a "save as..." to keep the original project intact. But...guess what...now it can't read the original as well! Weird.

Is there anything I can do to recover my editing information, and how can I avoid this in the future? Also, when going back into a project file, is it better to "open" the file, or drag it into the timeline of a new, untitled project?

Thanks!
--Tim

Project attributes:
Made up of three AVI video files with the following properties:

--Panasonic DV CODEC type 2 compression (from camcorder)
--24 bits, 4:3, NTSC
--PCM audio, 32kHz, 16bit (except for one of the files, which is 48kHz)

The eventual destination for this video is a standard NTSC DVD.

[Ron P.]

Hi Tim or Crystal,

When you are opening the project file, are you clicking on the *.vsp or using the File>Open inside of VS9?
That may or maynot make a difference.

When you Save your projects are they saved to the same HDD as the program, or to a seperate HDD/Partition?

Can you open any other VS project file without problems? (Trying to eliminate the file extention being forgotten and needs to be re-assigned again).

What if anything has changed on your system, since you were last able to open the project file?

Ron P.

[Tim&Crystal]

Vidoman,

Thanks for the reply. I'll try and answer as best I can

I'm opening the project by clicking File>Open Project inside VS9. From what I recall (I'm at work and not at that computer right now), this action adds a link to the project file to the right hand area. I believe I then dragged the project into the timeline. Should I have double-clicked instead? I'm unsure now. Now, however, it won't even create a thumbnail/link to the project.

PC is setup with one HDD in a single partition.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I couldn't open another project, although I didn't have many to choose from.

System changes could have been multiple, unfortunately. My wife also uses the system and may have done Windows and/or McAfee updates.

I'd also like to reiterate that this problem occured right after saving the project.

Thanks!
--Tim

[sjj1805]

You haven't fallen into the common error of deleting your video, image and sound clips have you?

The Project file is no more, no less than a set of instructions telling VideoStudio what to do with those videos, image clips and sound files.

The project file does not contain or copy those files which must remain in their original locations.

[Tim&Crystal]

Steve,

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, that isn't the case. I've known that about the project files as simply pointers since I first started editing a little while ago.

Again, I had opened an existing project, performed some edits, and then tried to save my work when it got corrupted. I'd really like to know how to get my project back and how to prevent this from happening again!

Thanks,
--Tim

[sjj1805]

.....how to prevent this from happening again!

Whenever I reach a point where I have just completed a set of edits that I am satisfied with I save the Project under a new Name. I can then always revert to an earlier point if something happens to the current project which could be corruption or simply I might have changed my mind about certain things and wanted to go back in time.

A simple 2digit number at the end of the project name is suffice

ThisProject01
ThisProject02
....
ThisProject25
etc.