Programme VS X9.5 Stability

[Rollason]

When I activate the programme and install some video it installs OK. When I come to edit it edits fine but when I save and close the programme or put the computer to sleep the library loses its link and the timeline goes to black and white. Sometimes, rarely, I will be asked if I want to open the previous programme and it will reninstall. Otherwise I find it impossible to relink and I have to reinstall the video I wish to work on. There is some inconsistency here as it doesn't always happen that I lose the link but more often than not I am unable to complete the video and burn it to disc. I have had problems relinking before and David K did advised me a method to use but It doesn't seem to work. I realise this thread may entail a number of threads and for that I apologise. Rollason

[Ken Berry]

Is the video in the project on an external hard drive or USB stick drive? If so, do you unplug that hard drive from your computer when you turn the latter off? What you describe (the black and white timeline) usually happens in that sort of situation, or when you move the video to another drive after inserting it in a project and closing Video Studio. It can also happen if your computer assigns a new drive letter to the external drive when you plug it back in.

By now you would have had enough experience with VS to know that everything about the program and editing using it, is virtual. When you insert a video into a project, there is no physical transfer of that file into the project. It remains stored exactly where it was when you made the virtual insertion.

[Davidk]

Following up Ken's advice . .

As a memory management method, do you have different media files on different usb drives - eg, video clips on one, music on another, pictures on a 3rd? You will get the re-link black-and-white bars for every file in your project that is not on a connected drive when using VS to edit: the project file lists the drive, folder and filename for every item in it, so if you change any one of them (eg same file different folder), or effectively remove it (replace the usb drive), the re-link option appears. I had a student once who was trying to do a project like this - and very confused she got because the re-links kept appearing or disappearing for different files as she plugged/un-plugged the different source usb drives during an edit.

You need to have every thing you want to include in your project on a drive - any drive - that is attached to the PC when your VS is open and editing the vsp. If you haven't (eg like the referenced student, its on different source media) then get a larger usb drive and put all the project source material on the one unit.

If you are changing between computers for different tasks - in my case, between desktop (my main machine) and laptop (for class use) - then use the smart package option in VS Edit mode/File to copy the vsp and all it's components with all the virtual links adjusted to a transfer drive, and the open the vsp on the other machine from that drive. I suggest you then re-name the packaged vsp to include a reference to the machine it's intended to run on, or you'll get into the same sort of re-link fix editing project files originated for the "other" PC.

Davidk

[Rollason]

Thank you for these comments. All the information regarding the video is on this computer's hard drive. The video has been downloaded from the video camera into the computer and is available as a file. The VSP is also on this hard drive in the projects folder. All the editing work done on this video is done on the hard drive of this computer and I do understand that everything regarding editing is virtual from the original input to the eventual output to DVD or other drive eg. a memory stick and that all the editing done in the Timeline is virtual and is stored in a file in the project file. What I can't seem to do is reconnect the VSP in the project file with the original downloaded video from the camera which is there available as a file in the video library. More to the point why does the project keep becoming unlinked ? Rollason

[Davidk]

The vsp is the project file. Sometimes - no one seems to know why - when a vsp is opened and all the components are available (eg, you edited the vsp only the previous day and have made no changes to the PC configuration) one or more components of the vsp will be shown as the black-and-white bars, message is they can't be found. Choose the 1st one and select re-link, the file name you want is shown in the title bar of the re-link panel, then navigate to that file and select it. If all the other re-links are in the same folder, VS will find them too and present you with a complete vsp in the timeline. Otherwise you will have to do them one by one.

Why? maybe the pc was busy and the functions calls to find those files got pushed off the stack before execution, but in any event, it does happen. You learn to do re-link in those cases.

[Rollason]

Many thanks for that information, Davidk Roy Rollason