Missing files mystery can you assist?

I am in a project working in proxies.

Strangely when I select "optimised media" in order to switch out and then render I am seeing the red missing files on a number of portions of the video.

It seems I may have inadvertently deleted somehow the sections of video that are missing, the proxies however are obviously still there and visible strangely.

1 Section is just a collection of clips on the time line.

2.Another section is a compound clip edited to show within a shape ( a plug in from FX Factory

I am assuming that if I re download and re link the media fc will recognise the media and drop it back in right? Or have I got to re build the whole thing again.?

Yes, this indicates you deleted some of your original media. If you re-download the media, and if it has the same filenames you should be able to relink to that, preserving your full-res edits.

FCPX does not show the pathname of each file used in a library. The 3rd-party tool Final Cut Library Manager has an add-on option "Export to CSV" which will make a spreadsheet of all file paths in a given library. This can make it easier to locate your physical media in cases like this, plus may avoid accidentally deleting it in the first place: www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

Thanks added.
Having downloaded the original file again.
My issue now is the media has dropped back in and is visbile in the time line - i.e. the same file name - however the clips as they were are completely all messed up.. is this the result of whats happened or is there a way to find them again in the exact clip order and section that they were in?

Cameron Jake wrote: Having downloaded the original file again.
My issue now is the media has dropped back in and is visbile in the time line - i.e. the same file name - however the clips as they were are completely all messed up.. is this the result of whats happened or is there a way to find them again in the exact clip order and section that they were in?

If the newly-downloaded clips on disk are truly the original clips, any edits in FCPX should show the same as before. At least that is the current FCPX behavior. What version of FCPX and MacOS? Is all media on an HFS+ volume, not ExFAT or a NAS?

FCPX does many internal checks before relinking files, so if manual relink is successful they usually display in FCPX correctly. Some have argued the internal checks are too rigorous and sometimes it refuses to relink even when the file is valid.

If by chance you imported camera media, then created optimized and proxy media, then deleted some optimized files, and then re-downloaded the original camera files, maybe that would cause it. Even in that case it should relink OK and display properly in FCPX, just trying to think why it would behave this way.

The FCPX auto backups are by default in /Movies/Final Cut Backups. You might copy those to another drive to safeguard them, backup you current library, then you could try loading some of the backup libraries and see if they work better.

If the media was imported with "leave files in place" or if you created optimized media external to the library (by FCPX library inspector>Storage Locations>Modify Settings>Media) then the library will contain symlinks to the media files.

Given a red "missing media" situation you often want to know "what drive and pathname is FCPX looking for? Unfortunately if the media is not present there is no way in Finder or any other GUI tool to display the symlink pointer. However this can easily and safely be done using the Terminal command line utility.

E.g for a red missing clip for file AdrianaTestEdit3.mp4, given the FCPX library is named TestLib1, located in /Movies, and the event name is 5-9-20. You'd type the below in terminal. Note for file/folder names containing spaces you must put that in double quotes:

ls -l /Users/josephmarler/Movies/TestLib1.fcpbundle/5-9-20/"Original Media"/AdrianaTestEdit3.mp4

Returns: -> /Volumes/SamsungT5_8/AdrianaTestEdit3.mp4

That by itself will not fix anything but it indicates where FCPX expects the file to be. This verifies what filename it's looking for and on what drive. This may allow searching for the current file and verifying the location and file extension.

Oddly I had to remake that segment of the project

Nothing worked at all.

I re downloaded the placed the newly downloaded clips into the external drive where they were before but FCP did not re assign the place of them in the timeline, only the clip itself, i.e. not the specific cuts.

Never mind... Lesson learned!