mistakenly moved folder holding all my videos and images for a Project

Ralph_S wrote on 11/21/2020, 11:06 AM

Without thinking, I mistakenly moved the folder, together with its subfolders, that holds all my videos and images for a Project. The directory structure within that folder was not changed. Now when I try to load the Project it cannot find the required files. It is PAINFULLY slow trying to point to the new location for each video or image. In fact, it has not finished after 12+ hours, and seems like it has started the loading process automatically a second time requesting the location of the videos and images again!

Is there a better workaround to point to a new location for the Project files?

Comments

browj2 wrote on 11/21/2020, 11:47 AM

@Ralph_S

Hi,

Well, the obvious solution would have been to just move the main folder back to where it was before doing anything.

Since it's taking so long, I presume that you have videos and photos from many, many subfolders, correct?

Otherwise, once you point to the location of one video or photo, MEP should automatically find the others that are in that folder/subfolder, so it's not clip by clip. However, if you have several movies in the project, then the process has to be repeated for each movie. And, if you have several projects, then...

It should not take you 12+ hours unless you have the files in many dozens of subfolders.

This is why I always say in my tutorials to not move anything from its original location.

One thing that you could try, is to copy the main folder and put it in its original position. Then MEP should find everything.

If you were smart and saved the project with a new filename after searching for the files, then you can simply use the previous version after having put the main folder back in the correct location. Before doing anything tricky, you should always do a Save as and append a revision code so that you can always go back. Of course, there are always the backup project files so long as they didn't get overwritten, but in your case, they probably have been.

If you haven't saved the project after the 12+ hours, do a save as, exit. Copy the folders to the correct locations and open the previous version and go from there.

John CB

Ralph_S wrote on 11/21/2020, 7:24 PM

John,

Thanks for the reply. But for reasons too complicated to go into here, I was not able to do that. Yes, I had many subfolders organized by dates. But the good news is after about 16-18 hrs, including automatically repeating the process, it seems to have located the right files! Phew, now I can get back to editing the project!

I'm still perplexed why it takes so long!(?) I can now see the value in allowing VPX to make duplicates in a project folder, but I did not want to commit that much disc storage space for duplicated files.

browj2 wrote on 11/21/2020, 8:21 PM

@Ralph_S

Glad you have it sorted out.

How many objects (video clips and photos) do you have on the timeline? How many movies?

It shouldn't take that long unless your files are in hundreds of different folders.

John CB

Ralph_S wrote on 11/21/2020, 8:51 PM

724 files, 12 folders, and almost 20 GB. That's what is in my Project directory, but I estimate that I used about 1/3 to a half of them for the final video.