looking for not existing render files

My problem might be just a smile for the pros, but it is droving me insane and I don't know what to do: Each time I want to play or export a movie from my timeline, I got the message:
"The movie file {sequence name}-FIN-00000XXXf can not be found. Without this file, the movie cannot play properly."
I guess this is a render file - which I can't locate on any drive.
After clicking about 100 of those messages away, I finally get my file - which plays fine.
My system crashed once, but still those render files don't come up anywhere when I look for them. Any idea how I can fix this problem?
(FCP 4.5, G4)

Thanks in advance!

JJ

> - which I can't locate on any drive.
If you can't find it, it's probably not there.

I think your problem could be either nested sequences or exported QT files, which are non-self contained.
If you export a timeline as QT (non-self contained) the file will include a relation to the render files. If you make a change in this sequence the render files might be deleted and the QT file won't open or play anymore since it could not find the data. This could also happen when you've checked "Auto Render".

Andreas

Aside from Andreas' observation, this could also be a render-file corruption. Sometimes a project file loses track of render files and gives you an error similar to the "reference media" problem outlined above. I've never found a reliable way around this other than to dump the render files, re-render, and ditch preferences, and even then, the problem can come back. Usually I see this on a station that's not healthy to begin with, with numerous little glitches like temporary sound corruptions, slow operation, beachballing etc. Is your media drive behaving normally? Is it properly formatted?

It tends to be a waste of time wrangling with render-file issues. It's more reliable to just recreate them afresh. These files are fragile little bastards.

Thank you very much - that's what I feared - I just wished there would have been a way around re-editing.
My drives should be doing okay. I had a lot of imported graphics and AE files that I trashed (and later deleted from HD to make space) and later imported new graphics again, etc. Although I tried to keep my house in order, I guess the problem was caused somewhere there.

Besides that, all behaves normally. Thanks for the advice anyway!

You are right - once I export them as QT & "sef contained", it renders out fine. Before I had to export a smaller QT converted movie file, which gave me all the trouble. I do have some nested sequences in my timeline, so maybe I should copy and paste instead and see if that brings me any luck. Thanks for the advice!
JJ