Missing Movie File

Hello everyone, I am stumped and need to turn to your collective expertise. After completing a series of training vignettes, I exported them as individual QT Movies and moved them to my newer MacPro. About half of them give me the following error message when I try to play them.

The movie file"filename-FIN00000003" cannot be found. Without this file, the movie cannot play properly.

Now I thought that when I exported a self-contained QT Movie file, that it would play anywhere. And why would half of them be OK and the other half be goofy?

The files were originally edited and exported on my G4, OSX 10.4.8 FCP 5.1.2
and the MacPro is OSX 10.5.4 FCP 6.0.4

Thanx Barry

Those are render files. It sounds as if you exported a reference file. What format are they? How long is the movie, and how large is the file? You can usually tell from that if it's a reference movie.

> After completing a series of training vignettes, I exported them as individual QT Movies and
> moved them to my newer MacPro.

Human error is the #1 suspect: You probably exported some of them without the "self-contained" mark. In 10 years of working with FCP, I've never had a self-contained movie file "missing media". (Other bugs, yes, but not that)

Open them up individually in QuickTime Player and check. The ones that refuse to open are the ones that aren't self-contained.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks guys, You are right, the size of the files gives it away and yes, probably human error. My next question is HOW? I exported the files one after the other and can't figure out HOW I would have managed to uncheck and recheck and unrecheck that box so many times. It's default setting is checked (right?) and I don't conciously recall unchecking the box. So how does it get unchecked and the rechecked?????

I have been able to go back to the G4 and get them back into the time line and re-export them.
Thanks for your quick responses Barry

That's not the only way it can happen. If you're using a misformatted external drive, for example, it could have a 2GB or 4GB upper limit to file sizes. So if you export a file that's larger than that, the file will be split up into different fragments. Just one missing fragment and you won't be able to play it.


www.derekmok.com

another possible solution is that ALL the exported movies were reference files,
but not all of them have problems opening.

this could happen if some sequences had wall-to-wll fx that werent rendered.

a mask overlay, or a simple CC on every shot, for instance might be "Full" quality RT.
which could appear rendered, and also NOT respond to any of the default render commands.
a ref movie of a sequence like this would actually be fully self-contained.


nick

I am having a similar problem with a project file. I try to open the project and get a similar message ("The movie file"filename-FIN0000000x" cannot be found. Without this file, the movie cannot play properly." x=final number of the file name) and the project opens as a qt file in the viewer window, the project doesn't open in the browser and the timeline seems to have disappeared. I can import the clips into a new project and put the qt movie in a new timeline, but that doesn't allow me to work with the individual clips and graphics that were in the original timeline. I have tried to find such a file, but get no results. Any suggestions on where to look for the timeline or anything else I need to do?

Studio 1; 10.4.11; 2x2.66Ghz intel dual core. All files are on an outboard fw drive.

Quote

the project opens as a qt file in the viewer window, the project doesn't open in the browser and the timeline seems to have disappeared

That's not a project file. That's a Quicktime reference movie, without the render files it references. No project file, no project.

That was my project file, in the spot where it was last week when I was working on it (same disk where all my project files are). I did save a reference movie to the desktop when I made a dvd copy of the rough cut, and that is still there. Where would the project file have gone to?

Thanks for that!! I did some poking around and found my project file where I left it and there was a qt file "hiding" it. Those icons look too much alike. Luckily my contact from the client was easy going and didn't blow a gasket when I could open the project properly.

> Those icons look too much alike.

If you're relying on icons to spot your project file, there's something wrong with your file management. You gotta brush up on how to organize things at the OS level.


www.derekmok.com