Lost our entire movie.....

After three months of solid editing (on Final Cut 5), just today the unthinkable happened. 95% of the movie just appeared offline, and nowhere to be found on the hard drive. If anyone knows of ANYTHING that could have possibly caused this, your assistance would be greatly appreciated. All the cuts are still on the timeline, but each one says "Media Offline". Out of about 350 or so clips in the media bin, I think there were around 20 "untitled" clips just from random capturing. Do you guys know of any scenarios where clips with a name like "untitled1" would cause a crash? That's what an apple rep said, but I'm having big trouble believing that because even though it's called "untitled" it still HAS a title.

We were supposed to have this movie done to be sold in about a week. We're utterly screwed right now.

Thanks for any help!
Brennan

Do you remember what you did just before this happened? Try opening your movie from one of the auto-save files.

We tried the archived auto-saved files. Same thing. It's almost like someone has gone in and deleted all the captured media. It was ritual as usual yesterday. Save the timeline, then exit.

The HD where your media lies, is it a FW drive? You try unplugging and plugging back in again? Have you looked into the capture scratch folders where all your media is to see if it is indeed still there?

Media going offline is not an uncommon occurrence. You will be able to reconnect. Media gone missing is another matter.

Hi.

Put the tapes related to the movie in a safe place. They are your last chance by recapturing the footage.
Did anyone used any Hard Drive Utility and change the directorys?
What kind of Hard drive are you using?



Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Did you do an update on ANY software (automatic or manual)?
What is your system set up? Int/Ext drives?
Is your project file kept on the same drive as your media?
Worst case scenerio is your drive has crashed but the fact you can still open the project is a good sign as you can just re-capture the media if that's the case and then re-link to your cuts.

We use two 500 GB external LaCie hard drives. We've tried multiple reboots and reconnects with no luck. I think we may have to just go in and recapture and reassociate all the files, which isn't too big of a deal in the long run, but we do have 27 hours worth of media.

And we haven't done any updates at all. The edit suite is strictly an edit suite, so there is no internet even going into the machine. I have had a similar problem with final cut before, but nothing like this where all the media just disappears.

Hi Brennan.

Since you've sold your project, which I assume means you are risking losing a substantial investment, I'd like to recommend that you find an experienced professional (yes, that means you'll probably need to pay that person) to help you out of you dilemma.

My guess is that your files can be recovered.

I myself am only an amateur video editor, but in my business, I work with hundreds of pro video people, and I often hear their horror stories, and am frequently involved in their fixes. In your current situation you need to have patience, and to NOT grasp at straws trying to recover your media. One wrong move might change your situation from easily recoverable to hopeless. If this was a situation where you didn't have a big investment in time or money I might say "hey, try this...".

Your question to the forum members should be "Who would you recommend to help us recover our files?"

Good luck on this one.



Post Edited (02-09-06 09:01)

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Is the captured media still on the HDs? Disk Warrior might help if it's a directory problem

The captured media is no longer on the hard drive. We just recaptured one of the tapes and it reassociated perfectly, so I'm thinking that's what we're going to have to do.

What's really strange is that all the sound effects and motion graphics are all there. It's just the video that is totally gone. I wish I could figure out exactly what the bug is so all FCP users could be warned.

I'm looking up Disk Warrior right now.....

Travis:
Yeah, we really should try to find someone who knows what they're doing, but we live in Louisville, KY and there aren't very many FCP certified pros around here. The guy I work with is certified, and he's already called the people he knows. They're totally stumped too.

We'll battle through it. Just makes for a wilder story once it's all done anyway.

Take a deep breath and relax for a moment. Then report back with your findings to a few simple questions.
1) Close FCP go to the finder, are any of your media files in the capture scratch folder?
2) Is there all of a sudden more free space on your drives than you had yesterday? How full are they?
3) Is your project file on the same drive or do you keep it on your system/or another drive?
4) How are your drives connected to the computer? i.e. are they plugged straight into the FW port/daisy chained or do they go through a deck or a FW hub?
5) Any other FW devices plugged in?

Check the drives. Did an abnormal amount of free space just appear on the drives? If not, then chances are your clips are lurking in there somewhere.

You cannot trust Final Cut Pro to successfully search for your media. The files searches of FCP often miss things and locations. You must do it by hand in the Finder.

> there were around 20 "untitled" clips just from random capturing

Never, ever, EVER use Capture Now for 27 hours of footage. You're asking for trouble, and it's even worse because you didn't bother to rename the files. Capture Now always names its resulting media as "Untitled", "Untitled1", etc. And there is no way for FCP to distinguish between "Untitled" files that are in different locations and have different contents.

"Random capturing" is dangerous. One hour of convenience that often ends in days, even weeks of agony, bad file management, and sometimes loss of your editing decisions with low chances of recovery.

Hope you find out what happened. Media disappearing has popped up a few times but it is rare. Did you do a spotlight search to absolutely make sure the media is really gone? You look in the trash for the fun of it?

Lets be seriously clear about this. Every time this sort of incident happens, it is 1) Firewire media and 2) a LaCie Firewire drive.

I have never heard of anyone loosing data from an internal drive. I am not trying to be insensitive to the current situation, but I am serious when I say that I believe Firewire drives can cause untold damage to a project or studio when you count on them for your livelyhood.

I am very sorry that people get hooked into using LaCie drives for precious materials but the history is such that those who do, are bound to loose everything one day.

Now, that doesn't excuse the fact that most of us never do backups of our work and are shocked when things fall apart.

I am asking everyone to consider the possibilities that 1) recommending Fire drives of any manufacture for storage of any serious work, be WARNED that they are taking a big chance with loosing everything one day when least expected.

Let's quit fooling ourselves! If something is SO very important that you can not afford to loose it, 1) NEVER use a Firewire drive for capture and edit suties and 2) learn to backup things that you can not easily recreate. At another level, usng a software RAID 0 to store data that is irreplacable is also asking for problems, albiet far fewer times.

Brennan,

Diskwarrior is one tool that may be helpful in recovering data, but the final tool to try is DATA Recovery Suite from Prosoftengineering. They claim to be able to recover data from any hard drive with some success rate of over 80%

The reason I am so intense about thsi is becasue I had the very same thing happen to me when upgrading from Jaguar to Panther. Everything on my (non critical) Firewire drive just disappeared.

I tried Diskwarrior, but that did not help. I then obtained DATA Rescue and I was able to get over 50% of the know data off the drive. Once I initialize the drive, everything seemed to work again. I see that as a serious problem that you can not trust Firewire drives for uncompromized data.

I gotta agree with John here. Whenever this happens everyone blames FCP.
Truth is, it often has nothing to do with FCP and more to do with external hardware or simply bad practices.

While I sympathize with the problems facing Brenan, anyone who uses FCP in a professional situation (makes a living off of it) should NEVER leave themselves so exposed to catastrophe.

Sorry. That's just the way it is.

Mark

Hi.
Usually when i edit large projects on FCP in the end of each session i always get
an FCP Perf Dump.
Its a log with the information about the computer, FCP, Hard Drives, Files, RAM, etc, etc.
You can find it in Tools_Internal Tools_App/Perf Info. To get internal tools first press Shift, Option and command at the same time and point the mouse to the tools menu.
It helps me finding problems and changes to projects.



Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

We had an internal drive fail. It didn't go all the way south, but it's data transfer rate went into the toilet. We pulled it out, mounted it in a smaller Mac with a Serial card and over a period of many days, pulled all the data off.

But on a lighter note, we have two LaCie TeraByte stacks in RAID 5 configuration. We've had them for about six months. This morning, one of them woke up with a "Drive 3 Failure."

We get to see how well RAID 5 recovery works.

Koz

And I've had a SATA RAID fail in a much worse way than any of my FireWire drives ever did. The point is, backup, backup, backup -- no drive is invulnerable, and I believe John's point: FireWire drives die a little more easily than others.

Good file management and work habits while editing are also a non-negotiable must. When you have the mess sorted out, Brennan, I'd suggest getting a technically proficient FCP editor to examine what you've done, and show you guys what might be off about your process and how disasters could be averted.
Otherwise you might be vulnerable to future occurrences.

I get this request from post houses all the time. Almost every other day. They want a "technically proficient FCP editor" consultant to troubleshoot their systems and be on call. Problem is there are VERY few of them even in LA. This poor guy is in KY. What is he going to do if everyone is stumped?

Someone can make a major killing and a very lucrative career on FCP tech consulting if he/she wanted too. The demand is HUGE. Course you got to find 5 other people to help you as there would be no way you can do it on your own. There is only 24 hours in a day.

> They want a "technically proficient FCP editor" consultant to troubleshoot
> their systems and be on call. Problem is there are VERY few of them even in
> LA. This poor guy is in KY. What is he going to do if everyone is stumped?

You're right, of course, Mike. It's just unfortunate that this kind of thing can't be learned just by reading about it. I just did two online-editing jobs where I felt ill-equipped -- I can read about the specs all I want in here, online, in Creative Cow...but when it comes to actually operating, nothing can substitute field experience.

Once we recover from meltdowns in our editing sessions, we gain experience that's unshakeable.

Wow, you guys are great. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot more time on here!

Well here's the deal. The stuff just up and disappeared off the external LaCie HDs. Lucky for us, we're doing a batch capture of all the stuff we used, and it's going back into place perfectly. Of course we lose an entire day's worth of work, but this is much better than having to recut an entire film. I can't imagine anything worse than trying to re-edit all the work you did, you're totally pissed off, and have zero creativity. I'm almost HAPPY it's just recapturing, and nothing worse.

But once this thing sells, we're going to get a network professional in here to set up a server and a backup system to protect us from anything like this happening again. This is also our company's first feature film and we learned tons on and off set.

Thanks for all the help ya'll! You'll probably be seeing me around here, and hopefully I'll be able to help one of you guys out of a sticky situation.

Brennan

Most of us arent technical. We need to be yes, and there are sometimes we just get stumped and there ain't nothing we can do but bring in the army. The internet is very helpful and forums like this one can be a blessing, but its not a substitute for good tech help. This has nothing to do with getting it right before you get it wrong. Sh*t happens as they say.

Many post houses and certainly the studios have budget for "when things go wrong" and they are finding it difficult to find anyone to even set up their systems so the chances of anything going wrong are minimized. Apple is looking for System Integrators for LA and they are having a hard time. They even dropped the usual B.C.S. degree requirement. It's a real problem.

<<<I'm going to be spending a lot more time on here!>>>

...in order to help other people, right?

Doesn't matter how good you are, you're going to know something somebody else doesn't.

Koz

> you're going to know something somebody else doesn't.

That's what I like to call "pagan tricks" -- personal quirks that speed us up, usually coming from experimentation, playing around, and accidents. We all love 'em; they get wows from clients and producers.

Imagine if Brennan had had his project file on his capture drive he really would have been screwed had it gone down. The nice thing about having the project file on the boot drive or a separate drive from the capture / scratch drive.

There's a worthwhile utility called File Buddy that is good for searching hidden folders, inccluding old trashes-- every drive in OS X has a hidden folder called Trashes, where trashed files live until the trash is emptied. Occasionally stuff can be recovered out of there *after* the trash is emptied, but it can also see 'ghosts' of deleted files. it may not get your media back, but it can help you figure out what happened, particularly in the case of human error. I recently had 10 or so gig of media mysteriously disappear; it was the subject of much speculation among myself, the other assistant editor, the post super, and the techs at our post house. I rooted around for the missing media with file buddy and came to the conclusion that an editor had accidentally deleted it (though we didn't tell her that . . .)

As a new FCP5 user, I lost my entire feature film a few weeks ago, and due to the super-mess I had created in trying to "safeguard" my files by moving them around from external hard drive to external hard drive and disconnecting one external hard drive "to make sure" FCP didn't change file names or make them offline -- and after all the advice I got here to reconnect my files -- I found out it takes a shorter time to re-digitize and re-edit the entire movie. My movie wasn't pre-sold but I do have to wait a few months before finishing the movie. ... It was a lesson well-learned. Be prepared to lose your movie if you're using digital media exclusively to edit your movie. LOL. Just kidding, the lesson is to... ahem, be very careful before you click.

why re-edit?
surely you had a backup of your project file somewhere?

just select all in the browser and batch capture.

nick

Well the batch capture worked very well and now we're completely caught up to where we were on that dreaded Friday morning.

Yeah, I think filmman is right now when he says "the lesson is to be very careful before you click." Anyway, thanks for all the help everyone!