Relink issues

Hi everyone,

I've searched before asking but did not find anything similar to this:

Client copied his SD cards to internal hard drive of his MBP. The cards are copied inside a folder, not at root level.
He then imported the footage, selecting the uppermost folder containing the three cards, with "Leave in place" option. It worked for him and he started editing.

The next time he opened all those files were offline with a "Camera Missing" message. He chose to select all and simply Import again, pointing again at the folder containing the card backups. File became relinked....until the next time etc.
He finished the edit and went for sharing, at which point FCPX refused to export, mentioning media being on camera cards aor something like this.

Then he called me for help.

Because the media was on his internal drive I created a MEDIA and CACHE folders on an external drive, and with all files linked Consolidated the lot to the external drive, hoping that it would solve the problem. But no. Files are still offline. Trying to relink them to the files FCPX copied in the MEDIA folder does not work.

Has anybody had to deal with something like this before?

Thanks

Hello Patrice,

What happens when you consolidate the linked media into the Library instead of into a folder on an external drive?

- Ronny

Patrice Freymond wrote: I created a MEDIA and CACHE folders on an external drive, and with all files linked Consolidated the lot to the external drive, hoping that it would solve the problem. But no. Files are still offline. Trying to relink them to the files FCPX copied in the MEDIA folder does not work...Trying to relink them to the files FCPX copied in the MEDIA folder does not work...

What Ronny said is a good suggestion. As a general troubleshooting step I'd recommend manually backing up the library before each major step, and renaming it or making Finder comments (CMD-I) about the current state and step you're about to take. This enables easier roll back if something goes wrong. Obviously this is only feasible if dealing with a "lean library" before you import lots of data to the library. An easy way to back it up is right click, select "Duplicate", then rename that file or CMD-I and enter descriptive comments.

Before he does anything else, I'd also recommend he export XML files of the library, the event and the project. Also as a dire worst-case contingency take some screen shots of the timeline and Event Browser with them expanded to good detail.

I don't understand why relinking to the files FCPX copied to the MEDIA folder didn't work. However if you still have the original media on the hard drive you could try relinking to that, not re-importing from it.

The only time I've seen behavior like this is when dealing with external proxies and when the drive volume name has changed. Relink is unreliable in that case. So whether using proxies or not, if there is any possibility the drive volume name has changed, you could rename the volume to match the original name and try relink again.

I'd also suggest he inspect his library size via CMD-I. It should be quite small, no longer than a 100MB. If it is very large he has somehow imported media to it or has generated proxies. The proxies normally shouldn't hurt anything, but in a troubleshooting situation you want the simplest situation so I'd recommend deleting them then rebuilding them after this is resolved. If he's ready to export the final project he doesn't need them anyway.

Re "relink failed", if you pick a *single* file and try to relink that, FCPX will tell you why the relink failed. I suggest doing that for a few individual files and take a screen capture of each error message. That could help diagnose what's going wrong.

Another troubleshooting step is open the library package, go to the Original Media folder and do a CMD-I (Get Info) on a few symlinks pointing to the media. This will show what pathname it's looking for. Unfortunately there is a previous level of pointers which reference the symlinks and those contain the expected file info such as size, audio config, etc. If any of that data is wrong the relink will also fail. To my knowledge there is no way to inspect those. However just examining the available symlinks sometimes gives a hint about what's wrong.

In general I'd suggest trying Ronny's suggest first.

What Ronny said is a good suggestion.

Agreed, it is the first thing I'll try when I get my hands back on the stuff.

I don't understand why relinking to the files FCPX copied to the MEDIA folder didn't work.

Neither do I. I thought it would work. I think that somehow FCPX gets confused by the fact that the import was a folder on a disk (enabling leave files in place - which is what I think the client did) but that it contained Card like subfolders....


....there is any possibility the drive volume name has changed, you could rename the volume to match the original name and try relink again.

I'll have to aask about that.

Re "relink failed", if you pick a *single* file and try to relink that, FCPX will tell you why the relink failed. I suggest doing that for a few individual files and take a screen capture of each error message. That could help diagnose what's going wrong.

A few of the files actually relinked but with problems: shots edited from those clips all had their IN point as the first frame of the clip. In other words the clip was correct but not the TC...


THANK YOU for the help, both of you. I will keep you posted on how we progress with this.

Patrice

Patrice Freymond wrote: files were offline with a "Camera Missing" message....I think that somehow FCPX gets confused by the fact that the import was a folder on a disk (enabling leave files in place - which is what I think the client did) but that it contained Card like subfolders....

The "camera missing" message might imply he originally did the import from the camera card then cancelled that before the file copy phase was completed. He may have then tried importing from a disk copy of the camera card folders -- without creating a new library. The library may have references to both locations. If the card was removed this might produce "camera missing" errors. In a relink case, I'm not sure what FCPX would do. He can examine where FCPX thinks media storage is by clicking on the Library within FCPX, then doing CMD+4. At the bottom of the Inspector pane is "Storage Used for Media". If that is not solely referencing his expected disk locations, that's part of the issue.

The problem is we have incomplete information, and the description is conveyed by an apparently inexperienced person (him) through a 3rd party (you). In such cases it's difficult to diagnose what happened or how to fix it. If he still has the camera card maybe re-inserting that would help. However at this stage someone experienced needs to take over and continuously guide every step, else things may further degrade. If he has a Time Machine backup, I'd suggest preserving that in case it's needed.

It's odd he was able to complete the edit and only got the error when trying to export. Is it possible he used proxy files and only got the error when switching back to original media for the export? Do we even know what version of FCPX this is?

Hi,

getting rid of the camera backups from that volume seems to have done the trick as the client was able to then relink to the files previously consolidated in the media folder.

I realise that this was a sketchy demand as I had not witnessed the whole disaster but I did my best in conveying what had happened. Always difficult to understand what process peolple have used, specially when they are not used to fcp x and mke assumptions based on previous nle's.

Thanks for the help.

P.