File not found – Error: Out of Memory

[David Bogie]

You can search the forum for those terms, you will find some interesting reading.

Are you storing your media files on your system disk?
If you’re not, then stop everything. Make backup copies of as much of everything as you can.

Can you actually see the files in question on your media drive and in the scratch folder? Can you open them in QT?
If not, stop everything and back up all you can.

Run your drive utility apps on the media drives but DO NOT USE NORTON.

Assume the worst case scenario: Your drive is failing or the directory has been trashed. Locate your original tapes because you may have to recapture everything.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Mark Albertin]

I am storing my media files on separate firewire drives. Only the program file is on my system drive and that has been backed up.

Yes, I can open any of the files in question in QT or photoshop (stills).

So, I’m not going crazy yet…but I’m not holding my breathe.

I’ve also already run Techtool Pro and everything comes out fine…not major problems.

Any other ideas?

Markus

[Mel Matsuoka]

I figured out that this error is caused by one of (at least) two things:

1. FCP is trying to relink to a media/graphic file that it can see on
the harddrive (or over the network–ya gotta be careful about NOT
keeping network drives mounted when reconnecting media in FCP, because
it will ofterntimes find matching media filenames on network mounts
FIRST, which you may not notice if your Finder windows default to
Column View), but doesn’t have Read permissions on said file.

2. One or more media files are/have been corrupted somehow.

The best solution I found is to use the Media Mangler to select the
un-openable sequence in the Browser, then tell it to “Create Offline”,
and UN-CHECK all the available options (delete unused media, etc), and
to base new clipnames on existsing filenames. This will create a new
project with the sequence, and a bin containing all the media in the
sequence. You can then systematically go through your bin, and Make
Offline media files one by one (leaving the media on the disk–DONT
DELETE them!), until you are able to open the sequence without an
error message. Then you can check the mediafile in question at the
finder level and see if it’s either corrupted or has the wrong
permissions set on it.

Pain in the arse, but it works.

[Mark Albertin]

Thanks Mel,

As you can imagine, this always happens at the worst possible time. Three quarters of the way through a project…almost finished, late at night and then…what in the heck is going on?

Everytime this happened it was when I was right around a Photoshop PSD in my sequence. I can’t be for sure on this, but I suspect it could be the problem. I’ve found myself inching along with my project…work awhile, burn a quick tape copy of what is done and saving the project file with a differnt name constantly. Once this starts happening it gets to the point that if I close the sequence it will not open. The message appears and I can’t get back to where I was before. Very frustrating.
I was also given a bunch of Powerpoint files from a third party…I’m going to see about those first thing this morning.

Thanks again for your help.

Markus

[David Bogie]

Mel, this is probably the ONLY practical use of Media Manager I’ve ever seen around here.
Great advice, good suggestion and excellent detective work on possible file location/naming issues. Hope it helps in this situation.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Chris Love]

Same problem. Searched all day and finally found your advice Mel. IT WORKED! After seeing lots of posts blaming stills and photoshop files, I was surprised to find that my corrupt file was a DV file. Although the nested sequences, still images and photoshop files in my project do load slowly, they were not to blame.

Almost six years after you originally posted, it’s still helping out people like me. Thanks.