Every Time I ReOpen a Library, Different Clips Come up as Red with a Modified File warning

I just created a new library from a recent trip and everything seemed to be fine. But when I connect the drive again, I get the yellow triangle and series of clips come up as red, and say Modified File. The first time it happened, they would not reconnect the normal way, so I deleted the red clips and reimported the clips and everything seemed to be fine.

I mount the drive today, and there's the yellow exclamation point, and now, there are a random series of clips, some of which I re-imported, but some that were fine last time, with the same Red color and marked Modified File.

At first, I thought it was just some 120fps footage from my Sony RX10ii, but now I see other clips that are just regular 24fps.

Any ideas on what could be causing this and how I might fix it? Thanks in advance!

Hi Bob
Haven't had this issue so just possible suggestions.
While importing, did FCPX finish the actual clip import? I have seen where people would remove the camera card before FCP finished importing and converting the files = missing files. Now that you can immediately begin editing and skimming clips, people often do not realize that the import is not finished so they remove the card.
You can also try deleting the preferences and see if this helps.
Is all the media from your Sony or other cams as well?
What formats for the clips and are you transcoding/proxy/optimizing on import?
What version of FCPX?

Good luck and Happy Editing
Hope this helps, Greg

Greg: I will try your suggestions., thank you.

The clips are from two different Sony cameras, they are in the XAVC-S codec and they were fully imported and transcoded before I quit the program (I always watch the Background Tasks window carefully). I have 10.2.2 of FCPX.

When you say "delete the preferences" do you mean FCPX's preferences? (Sorry, I'm a still shooter dabbling in video and a software dummy).

I am also trying to track down my original SD cards (I did not erase them) because although I copy the cards using Offload, which is supposed to do a bit by bit verification of the copy, I did import these clips from the card archives on my hard drive, so maybe there's an issue there.

Launch FCPX while holding down both the Opt & Cmd keys, to delete pref files.

First, I'd use the function that reimport from the camera card, somewhere in the File menu. Not at my desk at the moment.

Okay, I have it figured out and it isn't pretty. If you use several Sony bodies (A7Rii, RX10ii, RX100iv), the file names are all the same. If FCPX sees two files with the same name (even from different cameras) it can't seem to resolve it and that's why you get that RED MODIFIED FILE notification...sometimes it'll load the thumbnail from one file and the content from the other identically named file, but it's a duplicate file name issue. And it screws up your Event.

Still photo programs, like Photo Mechanic, resolve duplicate file name issues when ingesting files by simply adding an A after the file name of the second file to be ingested with an already-existing name. If a third identical file name and number is ingested, the program will add a B and so on. So you never run into this issue.

But FCPX apparently won't do that, and to date, Sony will not let the user customize the file naming protocol for each camera body as Nikon does.

This is going to be an annoyance until Sony, or FCPX, figures something out.

Hi Bob
What version of FCPX are you using? In 10.2.X I thought FCP added time stamps to the file names in order to avoid this issue.
Maybe update is in order?
Other wise you will need to change the file names either before or after moving files.

Hope this helps, Greg

Greg: 10.2.2 which I think is the current version, no? It didn't do anything of the sort. It has kind of wreaked havoc with the current project I'm trying to get imported, actually.

Hi Bob
10.2.2 is the latest version of FCPX.
Not sure why FCP is messing up. Thought this was a thing of the past.

Here is a Ripple Training video that may or may not give you some ideas about what is going on.


Having it lose file connections is frustrating.
Immediately after importing clips do you have this issue?
Can you make Smart Collections based on Camera Model? If you can, you could append a name change on all the clips from each different camera.

Let us know if you work it out.
Hope this helps, Greg

Well, that's interesting because it doesn't seem to do that all the time. I've resolved to rename files before I import them from here on out...should avoid this altogether!