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All editing decisions disappeared from my project
Hello Creative Cow Team:
I’m so glad I ran into your site when doing a general search on Vegas 8. In the past 7 years, I went from V4 to V7 and just last year to V8 Pro (my current version is 8.0b build 217). I have run 4 and 7 flawlessly without any issues. But in using 8, I have run into this same issue a couple of times now and just cannot figure out what is happening. So here goes….
Back in September, I finished up a two camera wedding edit that had two tracks of video, two tracks of synced audio and a third track of audio that contained my mini disc recording that I use up at the readers podium at the church.
I made all of my editing decisions, treated my audio accordingly, put in all of my transitions, envelopes, and a few special effects……..basically all the typical things that go into editing a wedding. Please note that I only edit from 8:00 am in the morning until 1:00 pm every weekday, so I do save my project quite frequently. I’m telling you this because on another forum, the person who answered my question was so sure that I was not saving my project before closing it. Trust me, this is not the case.
I completed this edit about two weeks after I started it and the only thing we were waiting on was whether the bride wanted a photo montage added in before the ceremony portion. So I basically left the project as is, and sat back and waited to hear from her. Three weeks pass; she decided not to add a photo montage. So, I open up my Vegas 8 project to render it out to MPEG2 with AC3 audio and much to my surprise, nothing is there except the two tracks of split video clips, and the two tracks of audio that go along with those clips. None of the editing treatments (transitions, audio/video envelopes, special effects, the mini disc audio track) are there………….everything is gone!!!
Now here is the kicker. Earlier this year, a colleague of mine experienced the same thing and when he called to tell me about it, I listened politely, and just figured he didn’t save his project, accidentally deleted his project, something resulting from user error. But now that the exact same thing happened to me and I basically have to start the whole wedding edit over again, I was wondering if you have any idea as to why this happened or have you ever heard of this happening. I’m about to start my last wedding of the year, but I have my reservations about using 8 and may just go back to using 7. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Lori Jackson -
11 Replies
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Lori, take a look in the folder where the project file is.
For this post, let’s call it wedding.veg.
In addition to wedding.veg, you should see a file called wedding.veg.bak
Rename wedding.veg to wedding-old.veg, rename wedding.veg.bak to wedding.veg and then try opening it.
With any luck, this should work.
This is another reason for saving incremental versions.
Whenever I get into a somewhat complicated video, my process is to rename the project file as a newer version at the end of the day.
You may end up with a lot of veg files (my personal record is 75) but they’re small and don’t take up a lot of space.
Also, save it in another location or two as well.
Check out the thread Vegas 8 AutoSave Custom Command.
Edward Troxel wrote a very handy (& free) utility that does this for you (automatically saving in 3 different locations). -
Hi Mike:
First, thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my issue. I followed your instructions, but at first, I could not locate the .bak file within the file folder the project was created in. So I did just a regular search for any file named .bak and came up with no results that would be connected to this file. Example: my project was named smith ceremony only and my search results did not locate any files close to this name with an extension of .bak. Took a look in the recycle bin, nothing there either. I then went online and downloaded a program that will locate and find deleted files that have been emptied from the recycle bin, did a search for any file with an extension of .bak, and there it was!!! A file named smith ceremony only.bak dated 09/17/2008. Somehow the .bak file that was associated with my .veg file was deleted. So I restored that file, opened it up in Vegas 8 and everything was there just as it was upon completion back in September when I actually finished the project. Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction in locating that .bak file. I know that those get created with each and every .veg file, but honestly I have never paid that much attention to them. This really saved me from having to start this entire project over again which was a very long, High Noon, Catholic wedding.I guess the only thing that I do not understand at this point is why all of my editing decisions that I made from 09/01/2008 to 09/17/2008 disappeared from my regular .veg file?? This morning I did some tests where I created a short Lori_Test.veg project, added in some audio envelopes, through in some transitions and a couple titles and saved it. I then went into the file folder where the project was created, located the .bak file and purposely deleted it, and then even emptied the recycle bin. I restarted the computer, opened my .veg file and all treatments where still there, i.e.: transitions, titles, audio envelopes – unlike what happened to my wedding, where everything was gone. The most important thing is that I have my original file back and I have already rendered that baby out to DVD. I just always like to understand the “why” behind things like this.
Again, Thank you so much for your help in saving me weeks worth of re-do!!!
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Lori, I’m very glad to hear that you got your project back.
I know the “pain” of having to rebuild a long project from scratch and it’s not fun.
I have no idea why all the files disappeared from your drive.
Maybe the result of a defrag, a virus scan, etc. but these are just uneducated guesses on my part.
As I said, grab that utility I mentioned as it can be, correction, it is a real stress reliever 🙂 -
Hello Again Mike:
I most definately will take your advice and install that utility!!! I will also pass all of this information on to the one gentleman that I know had this very same issue. I’ts too late now to save his project, as his torment happened in June, and he already delivered the final DVD’s to his clients after having to re-build the entire thing. Believe me, last week I was feeling his pain, big time.
Take care and thank you for all of your help.
Lori J. -
Hello Mike & Lori
i just had the same problem Lori faced with sony vegas.. i have vegas 9 and i’ve been working on a video recently, but i spent like a couple of weeks without working on it, and as i opened vegas i found my project but alot of the progress i made just wasnt there! it only showed a very small part of the video. i’m pretty sure i save everytime i close vegas, and still even if i didnt save last time i closed vegas (which i’m sure i did) that definately wouldnt the last progress i made.. also you should know that both the .veg (which in my version of vegas is .vf) and the bak files are all there, and i used the deleted data recovery software Lori meantioned and i did find two typical copies of the .bak file, so i dunno if thats anything.
I’m really desperate to get my data back, i gave so much work in it, and i’d be so thankfull if you can help me get them back.. thanks -
Hatem, I use the Pro version of Vegas, not the Movie Studio version but it’s my understanding that the same principles apply.
You found 2 .bak files so that’s good.
Place these in a folder that’s different from your project folder.
Delete the .bak extension and rename them.
For example, if they’re named Hatem-1.vf.bak and Hatem-2.vf.bak, rename them something like Hatem-1-new.vf and Hatem-2-new.vf.
Now try opening each of them.
You may get a warning that says something like “Can’t find file ***. What would you like to do?” with a list of options.
Choose the “let me find it myself” option and browse to the folder where the file should be and click it.
Once Vegas knows where the first file is, it should find the rest of them automatically unless you’ve got them in different folders.
In that case, you’ll need to point Vegas to the correct folder each time.
If either of these two .bak files turns out to be the correct one, save it under a new name once again and you should be OK.
Let me know if this helps. -
Well Mike i did as u said, but sadly it didnt work.
Apparently the .bak files cannot open vegas, only the .vf files can. when i renamed them and removed the .bak extension it turns into a .vf file, but when i open it vegas opens but this message shows “warning: an error occurred while loading the project file. the file is most likely corrupted or of an unknown format”.. you should also know that these two .bak files i found are identical to each other and to the one originally in the project folder, same size and everything, so replacing them with the original has no effect..
Thanks for your help anyway Mike. let me know if you know anything.. -
Sorry Hatem but I don’t know what else to suggest.
Using the .bak file (it’s a backup) usually does the job.
If no one else here has any other ideas, contact Sony Customer support to see if they have any ideas. -
> If no one else here has any other ideas, contact Sony Customer support to see if they have any ideas.
I agree with Mike. What you are experiencing should not be happening. It may be a bug in Vegas and the Sony team may be able to look at the project file and see what’s happening. I would contact them.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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