Starting a New Project Without Losing An Old One

[Bret Williams]

Nothing is lost unless you specifically deleted the project. Just double click on the timeline (project) in the event. Should be at the top. What did you edit in if not a project? I can’t believe you knew you could create a compound clip and edit in that.

[Erik Young]

Mr. Williams,

Thank you for your reply. That is a relief to hear, but man, it really looks like all my work in the timeline is gone without a trace! I find it ridiculously peculiar myself and I’m confident we should be able to get to the bottom of this.

Let’s start with what I’ve tried. I have double clicked on the project within the event. It is blank. I’ll show you a screen shot:

I’m trying to recover the work I did in the event called ‘Potato Boots’

Again, my concern is I created the Library ‘March 2015’, I created an Event within that Library called ‘Potato Boots’, I created a project within that event, but I think I did all of my editing outside of that project’s timeline. That’s why when I closed the Library, the timeline disappeared and all the work was lost. And thats why when I click on that event’s project now, the timeline is totally empty.

Again I hope that’s not the case and that what I’m describing is impossible.

I’m eagerly awaiting some additional guidance. Thank you for your help so far.

Cheers.

[Bret Williams]

So is it anywhere in the library? You only show the one event contents. Highlight the library instead and see if another project shows up. You can always try the restore from backup. If you choose that you should be presented with a list of backups and their time and date.

[Erik Young]

Bret,

Thanks again for your continued assistance. I can click on the only other event in the library and see the timeline for that respective event (not the one I lost). The timeline that I worked on is nowhere to be found in there.

When I try to restore from backup, I am given multiple versions of the ‘March 2015’ library with ‘Potato Boots’ listed as one of the events. However, the media is in the event and the project timeline is totally blank, just as it is presently.

Have you ever experience something like this before?

[Bret Williams]

Are you sure you didn’t create the project timeline in another library? Open all your recent libraries and highlight each one. Scroll to the top where the projects are shown and check them out. Also restore older backups and see if you find your project. You can’t “edit in an event without creating a project” as you worried in the original post. Dragging media to the empty timeline would create a project. Project exist in events. There is no such thing as an event timeline. A common way to work is to create a library for each video. Usually with just one event since keywording only works across a single event. The projects live in the event. Generally a project for each version or a project for each variant of the video. But everyone works differently and you’re free to organize however you like. A library per client, per year, per subject, whatever works. For me, I do all that at the finder level. I have a folder for each client and a separate library for each video/job Indonfor them. Consolidating media for a completed job is much cleaner, simpler and contained this way.

I’m thinking your issue is user error if you’re not finding the sequence in the backups because if your library had somehow been corrupted, those backups would still be fine. Since they’re empty too, I think your timeline is just somewhere else.

Perhaps someone else has some insight?

[Erik Young]

Bret,

Thank you again for this assurance. It makes sense that when I imported media into the event ‘Potato Boots’ and started pulling things into the timeline, that a new project would have been automatically created.

When that happens, does a save dialouge box appear asking where to save the new project to? Perhaps I saved the project itself to a diffrrent location on my computer? Are there any hints in the timeline “disappearing” when I closed the library it lives in?

I agree this work cannot be lost and its surely my error that I’m not seeing it.

[Russ Haskell]

One possibility is that you edited within a clip’s timeline – very easy to do inadvertently. Go through the clips in your browser, right clicking>Open in Timeline and see whether your work is in one of them.

Russ

[Bret Williams]

Nope. There is no save dialog. The timeline/project lives within the event. Russ’ point below is a good one. If you possibly right clicked on a clip and chose “open in timeline” then you could edit your video INSIDE a clip. Every media clip in FCP X is actually it’s own little sequence. And that’s what the open in timeline command is referring to. The main purpose is to adjust audio or add effects to a clip before you add it to your edit. Apple really should rename that function to “edit clip contents” or something better.

All you really need to do is play / scrub each of your clips and see if the edit is within one. Then it’s just a matter of copy and paste to get your edit out of the clip.