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Deleted Render Files and “Media Offline”
While doing some drive cleanup I deleted some final cut pro render files without fully realizing the impact that would have. I moved entire project folders to a new drive as well but I wasn’t too worried because I moved them as a group and so maintained the same RELATIVE path between assets but I must have wrong about that assumptiomn
I thought all I would have to do is to re-render my sequence if I ever needed to work on that project again. Instead, I get:
* clips in the browser window have a red slash through them
* I see red “Media Offline” warnings in the viewer and canvas windowsI am not surprised by either of these BUT when I try to reconnect the video files in the Browser window all it wants to do is try and reconnect the RENDER files, in other words I can’t tell Final Cut “here’s where the source clip is” – it only seems to care where the RENDER file is – however that is gone.
As a long shot I even tried rendering the timeline while it still has the media offline warning but of course that didn’t work either….what can I do at this point?
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17 Replies
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The only way FCP would refer only to a Render file in the timeline would be if you replaced the original Media in the timeline with the Render file.
FCP does not ever replace your original clips in the timeline, you have to manually do that. So if, for whatever reason, you did do this procedure, then your files are gone.
Or you took your media files offline by accident.
Are the file names in the timeline the correct file names from the original clips or are they showing up as Render Files? Usually something like Sequence 1 followed by numbers / letters….
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
It looks like selecting the clips in the browser with a red slash and then do a “batch capture” (right click) is doing the trick
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Thank you Walter for taking the time to respond…no I didn’t do anything like that in the timeline, all I essentially was delete the render files, move entire projects to a new drive and then re-opened the project whereupon I discovered the problem. I am still not 100% sure why this happened but at least I seem to have a workaround.
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[Steve Crow] “move entire projects to a new drive and then re-opened the project”
Did you Reconnect Media and point FCP to the new drive and one of the files on the new drive? FCP won’t find it automatically.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media“Foul Water, Fiery Serpent” now in Post.
Creative Cow Forum Host:
Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Apple Color, AJA Kona, Business & Marketing, Maxx Digital. -
BATCH CAPTURE will recapture the clips. Did you try the RECONNECT option Walter mentioned? Because if you move clips, even if you keep the same relative path, if the hard drive they are now on is named differently, then they will go offline. Simply choosing RECONNECT and telling FCP to search only the new drive you moved the footage to should work.
Unless you deleted the footage.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Well that was the original problem that when I tried to reconnect the media in the browser window it actually only wanted to look for and reconnect the RENDER file not the original source file, so the answer is that no I couldn’t ever get FCP to recognize the new location of the files which is at the core of my problems.
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Yes, I tried reconnect but it only wanted to reconnect the Render files not the source video file which was strange.
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Note the location of the new footage. Then in the RECONNECT, choose LOCATE instead of SEARCH and then manually navigate to where you know the footage to be. Then reconnect one. The rest should follow.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hi Shane, yes that should have worked but what’s different about this situation is that the Reconnect Media dialog box at the top is looking for the deleted RENDER file, not the original source file – that’s why this is so strange.
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OK… Let’s try to figure this out….slowly.
Do you have missing files in the BROWSER? Yes. When you choose THOSE files, FCP starts looking for RENDER files? It shouldn’t. Not unless you imported RENDER files as MEDIA files, like Walter mentioned.
OR…
In the timeline… when you scrub thru the sequence, can you SEE something on the Canvas? But the little icon on the timeline says OFFLINE and is red? Then the footage is THERE, but the thumbnail cache is corrupt. If the canvas shows OFFLINE, then the media is missing. And a reconnect should look for MEDIA. If it is looking only for RENDERs…something odd is up. Might be how you are doing things, or flakiness in the project.
You can try to trash preferences, then relaunch FCP, then try again. That solves a lot of issues. https://www.digitalrebellion.com get PREFERENCE MANAGER…free…and it trashes prefs for you.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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