How do I fix missing clips

Question

Level 1

81 points

How do I fix missing clips

Last night I was worked on a video segment and everything was fine. Today I came into work and played my FCP project, and now there are two compound clips that are nothing but blackness and silence. I went inside the compound clips and it shows "(missing)" for the clip names. I can see that the media files are not missing though. Everything is where it's supposed to be -- all in one library file on one hard drive. I haven't changed anything since last night.

I could just re-edit those sections again, but that would be time-consuming, and I don't want to duplicate my work when I have no way of knowing if the same thing might happen again. I tried going to File -> Relink Files... but nothing appears in the "Original files" list, and all the buttons are greyed out.

I would like to make FCP find the "missing" media, but barring that, I would at least like to know how to prevent this from happening in the future.

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2), 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel, 16 GBram

Posted on Jul 15, 2016 5:50 PM

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Answer 1

Jeremy Bell2 Author

Level 1

81 points

Jul 19, 2016 7:19 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

How can you see that?

FCP lets you see all your raw, unedited footage in the Browser. You can just click on it and view it. Or am I misunderstanding your question?

I am attaching two screenshots: one is of the compound clip selected in the project, and the other is inside the compound clip. This is one of a couple compound clips that inexplicably went black.

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Answer 2

Jeremy Bell2 Author

Level 1

81 points

Jul 20, 2016 5:55 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

Yes, I can see that angle in the the multicam editor. I can even see the exact footage that's missing. But I had it edited just the way I wanted it, and I don't want to have to do it again, but I'm starting to think I have no choice. Very upsetting!

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Answer 3

Jeremy Bell2 Author

Level 1

81 points

Jul 19, 2016 12:19 PM in response to Alchroma

Thanks for your reply. I was going to try this, but I wanted to backup my library file first, and then I realized that I don't have the space to backup a 1.5 TB file. So before I delete this file, could someone tell me what deleting it will do? Can I put it back if it doesn't help or if it makes things worse?

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Answer 4

Jeremy Bell2 Author

Level 1

81 points

Jul 19, 2016 4:44 PM in response to Alchroma

I couldn't wait anymore, so I went ahead and deleted that file. Unfortunately it didn't do anything. I really need some help here.

I have earlier versions that do have the compound clips still intact. I thought maybe I could copy them and then replace the clips that became blank, but there doesn't even seem to be any way of doing that. If I select the bogus clip and then paste, it will cut the new clip into the middle of the old clip. And if I delete the old clip first and then paste in the correct clip, the background music gets completely out of whack.

I'm starting to get very concerned. Is there a better forum for these types of questions than Apple Support? Would a local Apple store be able to fix this for me? We're on a tight schedule here, and we can't have our FCP sessions randomly blowing up like this.

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Answer 5

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,780 points

Jul 19, 2016 7:30 PM in response to Jeremy Bell2

I wanted got be clear whether you had the media in the browser and it played in the browser, or whether the media was on your hard drive and you determined that it existed there, or both.

You have missing Multicam clips inside the compound the clip. Audio Multicam clips? Where are the Multicam clips? When you open them do you see all the the media in Multicam editor?

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Answer 6

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,780 points

Jul 20, 2016 6:05 PM in response to Jeremy Bell2

Can you find the compound clip in the browser? Shift-F. Wonder if something strange has happened because you're working in a snapshot. The compound in the snapshot is independent from the original project, as should be the Multicam clip. Is the Multicam clip that's after the compound in the project the same as the one that's in the compound? Can you double-click the Multicam that's in the project and open it. It should be independent of the one that's in the browser because of the snapshot.

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