MSP7 Video Editor "Unable to open the File" URGENT

[Brendon]

I am currently editing a feature length film. And it is now due in two days time, and have been working on it for the whole of this year.

Whenever I try to open the editing file (.dvp) it says "Unable to open the file" or rather "File Format not Supported"

I have been constantly working on this file throughout the year and never had problems. Now it is essential that I recover the file immediately, as the film premieres in a local cinema to 186 people in two days time!

It has also displayed the message "File Format not Supported" but this is ridiculous as it was saved in MSP7 and has worked for months.

"Unable to open the file" is the only information presented by Video Editor...

Please help (I'm desperate!)

Cheers,
Brendon

[Terry Stetler]

Try inserting the project on the timeline by right-clicking over it and selecting Project File from the context menu. This sometimes works with project files that for one reason or another won't load the "conventional" way.

[Brendon]

Thanks for your reply Terry. I have already tried doing this, and the same error message appears, I have also tried opening it from the "Recent Docs" list, the original folder, and through Media Studio. All produce the same message "Unable to open this file"

Some people have suggested that I may not have enough RAM or temp hard drive space to properly run the file. At the moment, I have a total of 16Gb free. Which includes 10Gb on my primary harddrive which holds the majoritiy of the footage files.

Is this a message that is likely to appear when there is insufficient hard drive space?

[Terry Stetler]

Is that free space on your C:\ drive or on your video drive? If C:\ gets crowded with temp, preview and the swapfile it could well cause an error when loading a project file. I set Preferences to put the temp and preview files on another physical HDD or a nearly empty partition.

[Brendon]

I have 10Gb free on C:/ on which MSP7 is installed. I also have about 5Gb free on my video hard drive. The problem is that I had to overflow onto C:/ fo video storage because I had so much footage. I will try and free up some hard drive space on C:/ to make more room for caching.

Do you have any recommendations/instructions for altering preferences about temp?

[Terry Stetler]

I'd try to keep at least 12g free when the temps are stored on C not only because of MSPro's Temp, Proxy and Preview files but also because of the system swapfile, which can grow quite large when editing a large project due to program module swapping. How much module swapping goes on depends on the amount of physical RAM, but even with 1g it can occur if the project is big/complex enough.

Another issue is that the MPEG encoder creates its own temp files in the destination folder as it analyzes the projects contents, especially when it's doing 2-pass. Here the encoder uses the first pass to analyze the projects content, jots the results down in the temp file (which can get quite large) then it uses that info to optimize the actual encode which is done in the second pass.

Some people put a HDD on the primary slave IDE cable and move the temps there while others create a TEMP folder on their video drive. Others with a very large primary HDD will create a partition just for them.

My preference is to place them on a different physical device on a different connector than the OS drive is installed on. As such mine are in a dedicated TEMP folder on the RAID5.

No lack of space there

[Brendon]

Thanks Terry,

I've had a Tech guy look at my computer, and there seems to be no way to solve the problem. He tried altering the coding of the actual file, and it was due to file corruption.

We tracked it back to the computer crashing while Video Editor was rendering that movie file. Upon restart, the file would no longer open.
It wasn't a problem with temp cache space, because the error message came up immediately. For a cache problem, the software would first have to overload the cache space.

To all of you idiots out there like me... BACK UP YOUR FILES!!!

You never know what will happen!

Does anyone out there know if there's a program/way of repairing corrupted .DVP files?

[Terry Stetler]

There is a guy on the Canopus forums who is developing a program that will back up project files from numerous editing programs, including MSPro, to an alternate location as you work.

This would prevent issues due to the program itself messing up during an auto-save, HDD or software crash etc. Yes, a batch file could do the same thing, but not with as much ease or transparency.

I received a beta of it a couple of days ago. Looks like it's something that'll be of considerable utility. If/when he finishes with it I'll post a link here.

[Brendon]

Thanks heaps Terry.

Thanks for all your help. Even if the result wasn't positive, but now I will never make a movie again without backing up my files.

Cheers,
Brendon