All my clips are gone, but timeline is still intact!

[sittingduck]

When I opened up my video project today, all my clips were gone. Instead there were just little, white boxes with a black cross in them. My timeline is intact with all the edited clips, but they are gone from the Media Bin. It's like I moved the original footage to another location, but I didn't. It's still in the same directory. And right clicking on the empty boxes does nothing - it's not like I can relink or anything. How did this happen and is they're any way to correct it? Would hate to have to redo everything, although I could because my timeline is still intact. Thanks for any input. Image of the problem can be seen here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V6ZS7DH1

[troppo]

It looks like for some reason it can't find the original footage. Did the master clip get deleted? Moved? Renamed? Try a system restore?

By the way, just thought I'd let you know that a moderator will come on soon and tell you off for not filling out your systems specs and reading the 'read this first' posting. Not that it makes much difference with what you're asking, but that's their rules.

[sjj1805]

Have you got autosave enabled?
If so then check the autosave files to see if one of those is OK.
Unfortunately this has happened to me a few times in the past and I realise this will not help you with your current project but what I learned to do is save the project at each major change - using a new file name each time.

What I do is tag a 2 digit number onto the end of my project and increment it at each save. For example:

MyProject01
MyProject02
MyProject03
and so on

This has two benefits. The first obvious one is so that I can recover a project if something occurs like that you have now experienced, the other is that if I later change my mind about something I can turn the clock back and go back to a previously saved state to resume editing from an earlier point.

When this problem has occurred it is normally due to some slight corruption with one of the files - either a video, slide or sound file.

[sittingduck]

I filled out my pc specs - can't have moderators telling me off Thanks for the heads up, troppo.

No, all the master clips are exactly where they have always been and with the same name, which makes it a strange problem. But it probably is like sjj1805 says - something got corrupted along the way. In the future I will make backups with new names.

But actually I have autosave enabled by default and I should have up to 99 backups. But which directory do these get save to?

Thanks for helping out, both of you.

[sjj1805]

Using one of my current projects as an example:
I have a project saved here:
M:\Video Projects\Scotland\fri.dvp

This has created a further directory
M:\Video Projects\Scotland\fri

In that directory I have auto save projects named
M:\Video Projects\Scotland\fri\fri001.dvp
M:\Video Projects\Scotland\fri\fri002.dvp
M:\Video Projects\Scotland\fri\fri003.dvp
and so on

[sittingduck]

Thank you - indeed the Backup-dir is in my project folder under the same name. It is a great pleasure coming to a new board and receiving such helpfullness.

[Gene Balmain]

It has been a while since I did a "Movie" style video production.

So this time around I used the "Project Tray".. Video. Then extended the video to the Scenes in my mini movie.

I have also saved (but obviously not every time) major version files. I've also gone back to the sub backups.. When I use a sub backup none of the videos show up in the project tray.

My problem is exactly what the OP posted.

I'm at a critical deadline.. any help would be nice.

Also wondering if the OP fixes HIS problem.. please reply with the fix. I'll be checking in.

Many Thanks,

GENE