Videostudio Pro X2 - missing clips after reinstall

[digi-ghost]

Hi

I'm hoping the experts on here may be able to help me to avoid a lot of rework on a project I've put together.

I put together a propject on another laptop (Dell Latitude D630C) and practically finished it. Just a little bit of shortening of a particular sequence and time to finalise and burn it. However, I changed laptop before doing this (opportunity to upgrade in work) and, following reinstalling Videostudio Pro X2 on the new laptop (Dell Precision M4500) I now have a problem.

I backed up the project file from the old laptop, along with all the clips (all the relevant files, including the project file, were in one main folder, with clips in subfolders). When I've opened the project file on the new laptop, all of the sounds are there, the text, subtitles etc, and all the images, but the clips themselves simply show as black and wite rectangles. I've tried adding all of the MPG files back in to the library, thinking that perhaps it couldn't find them, but this doesn't make any difference. Right-clicking these rectangles and chooins gproperties just gives the message "The content of the file is unreadable". the video files themselves play fine, both within from the library within Videostudio, and in WMP.

I'm really hoping that I don't have to go back through and redo all of the video clips in this project - it took soooo long just the thought of it is depressing!

Does anyone have any ideas about what might be causing this? Any advice on how I can salvage this project?

Thanks in advance

Stuart

[Ron P.]

Welcome to the forums,

Did you install SP2 for VS X2? It is suppose to address running it on a Win7 machine.

VS X2 SP2

You might also try updating DirectX. Just because it's a new machine, does not necessarily mean that everything is up to date. The link to download and run it are found in THIS THREAD.

[digi-ghost]

Hi Ron

Thanks for the welcome and the suggestions; I've not installed the service pack yet (on holiday across a pretty rough blackberry modem connection, so that will have to wait until I can find a wifi connection!), and I'll give updating Direct X a bash. Fingers crossed one of these will work; it's the video of our honeymoon trip, so I don't think my wife will be too pleased if we have to go through and redo all of the video clips before she can show it to her family...

Stuart

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

The clips within the library and timeline are just virtual clips/ thumbnails linked to files on the hard drive.
Any clips displayed as black and white rectangles are missing files.
That is Video Studio cannot find them and will request a Re-Link.

The re-link window will give the last known location and name of the files.
All you have to do is locate these files on the new laptop.

So make a note of the actual file you are looking for as it is possible to re-link to the wrong file and that would really mess things up.

Two question

1 / Are the files your own personal files or sample clips from the VS program?
2 / When you say you "backed up the files" , did you use Smart Package or backed up manually

[digi-ghost]

Hi Trevor

I had a feeling it was something like that; last night I noticed that the audio tracks are also not playing, even though they are on the timeline (and even have the name of the file written on them). The files are my own, not the sample ones, but I'm not sure how to get VS to try and re-link them. When I load the project you can see it going through all of the file names as the progress bar is moving, but it never asks me to re-link.

I backed up manually (didn't find out about the smart package until Googling for this problem...), so I've got all of the video and audio files in the same relative folder to the project as on the original laptop. Is it possible to force VS to ask for the re-link?

Thanks again for everyone's help

Stuart

PS I've updated VS via SP1 and the Windows 7 SP, and updated DirectX, and now downloading some up to date codec packs, but I'm not sure that will help. Pretty long process over a Bluetooth paied Blackberry with a single bar of reception as a modem!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

Strange that it does not do an auto re-link.

There are settings under preferences regarding re-link, usually works by default
File-Preferences-General tab-Re-Link Checking.

Yes you can force a re-lnk
Select the clip in the timeline File-relink

Just a thought, what type of files are they?
If Mov, have you installed QuickTime???????????

[Black Lab]

I had a feeling it was something like that; last night I noticed that the audio tracks are also not playing, even though they are on the timeline (and even have the name of the file written on them). The files are my own, not the sample ones, but I'm not sure how to get VS to try and re-link them. When I load the project you can see it going through all of the file names as the progress bar is moving, but it never asks me to re-link.

Unlinked clips, whether they be video, audio, etc., will show as a white on black clip in the timeline. If you are seeing the files on your timeline, with file name on them, then they are linked, and you have some other problem.

[digi-ghost]

Well, it worked - I had to manually go through each clip and use File..Re-link and then find the file (for the video clips and the audio).Took a while, but it worked. Thanks for the the pointers Trevor.

I also figured out why it happened. The project and all the clips were originally on my Win XP machine in a folder within My Documents. The full path for that was something along the lines of C:\Documents and Settings\firstname.lastname\etc etc etc. However, I have Windows 7 on my new laptop, and the Documents and Settings folder doesn't exist, instead being called Users. You can't even create a folder called Document and Settings in Win 7, because it's 'sort of' there in the root of C: already, you can't can't see it, acccess it, or link to it.

So, beware! If you're moving from Win XP to Win7 (which in all other areas was a great move), any links such as that won't work, and you'll have to manually re-link.

Thanks again for the help, and hopefully the above will help anyone else with a similar problem.

Stuart

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi Stuart

Glad you managed the re-link.

Its still very strange as to why VS did not request a re-link when you initially opened the project.
Not to worry, your up and running.