My timeline turned gray. I think I lost my work. PLEASE HELP!

Hello. Thanks for this guidance. This is screenshot no.1. Shots 2, 3 and 4 are given below in order.

This shot 3 [above] is to show that the entire screen faded away, with all the desktop icons not in sight, when I did this: I right clicked upon the FCPX icon in the dock and entereed 'show recents'. With the entire screen faded, I clicked on the Google chrome icon [in the dock] and it pulled up this page in which I was reading about greying of the timeline thread.

This is shot 4 in which the timeline has been restored in all its glory!

Hope this helps.

You had the clips selected and pressed the V key which disabled them.

You are very right Tom. Thanks for your help I am learning. I had after this 'fright' experienced another hurdle: FCPX just froze. Read about others having this problem, but when you yourself face it, then you will understand how to negotiate it. The entire screen simply froze, the arrow shaped cursor included. Tried to take a screenshot, but found that even the keyboard commands were also being ignored. Had to switch the power button off and restart. Wonder why the FCPX froze. Need to look into that thread. Anyway, thanks once again.

DR.SOMANNA

Eric, thank you so much for spelling out how to solve this problem. This just happened to me this morning with a near-completed project and it really scared me...especially since I am fairly new to X and never bothered backing up because I assumed that it was like 7 with the auto backup. This also happened to me while adjusting the length of a gap near the end of a 19 min project. The one thing I would add is that I needed to export the XML file for that project first because upon opening it, it showed 00,00 for duration and only played the video but with no sound. After importing that XML doc (like ismagom7), my timeline was mixed up but at least it plays through now and shows the timeline. So grateful for all of you contributing to these forums and so glad my project has returned!

I found a smal icon on the top left of a clip and doubled clicked on it and the timeline came back. Hope that helps.