Bringing back old AE projects

[Floh Peters]

[Bobby MV] “Everytime i try to revive an old ae project, it takes me literally hours sometimes to open the project because AE and quicktime are trying to link up the reference files to the original source media. How can i get around this?”

This only happens if you exported something as a “by reference” file from Media 100, and not when exporting an AE project from Media 100. If you deleted the original media files that were used in the “by ref” export there is no reason in keeping the reference container files. Deleting the “by ref” QuickTime files will avoid the slow QuickTime search for the files used in the by ref files.

If you used the “Export to AfterEffects” command you don

[Jackattack]

Aaah, yes… the beloved AE Relink issue…

There is no way around this in your case, unfortunately… I assume you’ve long since deleted the Media 100-created folders and files the REF files are trying to relink to?

It’s not AE’s fault. It’s not Media 100’s fault. It actually does make sense that if you’ve deleted the original digitized files that your REF clip is referring to, then it’s going to fail in its search and take a long time searching for each piece of that REF file.

Think of exporting your Media 100 Timeline in “reference” mode as such: rather than recreating self-contained data, it’s simply making calculations that refer back to the original clips in the places you originally digitized them to. If you eventually move those original clips or delete them, the file instinctively begins to search for them throughout your system. So, the more of your Media 100 timeline you exported by reference, the more original clips it’s going to need to search for… black frames, transitions, effects, digitized audio and video, etc…

Exporting by reference speeds up your process in the short term, but ultimately the few extra minutes to export a self-contained or even a different Codec can save you much AE headaches and time down the road.

Suggestion: try exporting a Quicktime as a Motion JPEG B. It does take longer to export from Media 100 than a by-Reference, but it saves you major time in rendering in After Effects… because the rendered video stays off the slower processors on the Media 100 Vincent/P6000 card. Your renders will feel like they took only 1/4 the time you were used to.

I know it’s not great news. But I hope it helps.

Jacob (a.k.a. “Jack”) ||
Creative Director / Co-Founder ||
LaunchPad Media ||
100 Galen Street, 2nd Floor ||
Watertown, MA 02472 ||
http://www.launchpad.tv