FCE Losing Render Files After Project is Copied

I've been having a vexing problem that's been costing me a lot of time. FCE keeps losing the render files for my projects, or more accurately, it is overwriting them or otherwise making them disappear. More background:
I have a large master project that is quite lengthy. I am also breaking that project into smaller videos (it's a concert and I want to have individual song videos as well). I render the large file and get it edited the way I like it. I do a "save as" to the project and create a working copy to clip into songs. However, once I start modifying the copy, if I reopen the original, I am told that the render files have gone offline, and even when I do a manual search i can not find them.
Shouldn't a copy of a project get its own set of renders? Or am I doing something wrong?

First, welcome to the Final Cut Express forum!
Questions
What exactly do you mean by +large master project+ and +quite lengthy?+
What do you mean by +manual search?+ In the reconnect dialog? in the Finder? Somewhere else?
What kind of video are you working with - DV, HDV, AVCHD, something else?
Did your source media clips (video) come directly from your camcorder or some other source? If a camcorder, what make & model?
What are your sequence settings?
_Possible explanation_
Render files are associated with a project name, and no two projects use the same render files. What I suspect is going on is that when you do your +Save As+ and give the project a +new name,+ FCE is carrying the render files forward +associated with the name of the new project.+ That would explain why they are no longer available to the first project.
Suggestion
If you are basically using the same source media clips for your complete concert plus individual songs, imho it would be much better to confine your work to _one FCE project._
In that single project, create your _master sequence_ (the whole concert, as you have already done) and then just create a new sequence for each individual song video that you want to create. This is a much more efficient workflow than creating +separate projects+ to accomplish what you appear to be doing.

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See if you can play the material using Opt-P without
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Look in the capture scratch folder in
column view and see if there are preview windows for
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Hello,
I'm working on a half hour piece in FCP in a 23.98 ProRes 1080p timeline and I'm having a problem with my render bars popping up when they shouldn't be. It seems like it almost random but suddenly all or part of the timeline will require a render for no reason. Since it takes over 2 hours to render it's killing my ability to move forward on this project.
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FCP (7.0.3) continually losing render files

MacPro build 5,1; dual 2.66 6-core Xeons, 16 gig RAM, OS 10.6.8.
This is more a request for speculation and enlightenment than a cry for help. I have my opinions as to why its happening, but I'd appreciate any suggestions the greater minds in this forum could provide...
At one of my major client's facilities, their FCP system is what I would describe as "not set up according to best practice". By that, I mean they have an internal RAID5 with 4 1TB drives (2.61 useful capacity), upon which both the applications and the media reside.
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Im confused how your Mac Pro is set up
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the system boot drive containing the OS, applications and your FCP project files.
the internal Raid which is a separate physical drive from the boot drive containing the scratch disc folder
see the Edit Smarter web page on how best to configure FCP here:
Edit Smarter
I would suggest deleting FCP preferences as per Digital Rebellions Preference Manager
I would further suggest buying and running Disc Warrior on all your drives regularly:
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Thanks for the help but yes we have tried this approach.
Interestingly, one change that was made from the original project
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Everything appears OK, even the truecode references the template.
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Prevening Project Render file creation and backup

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... same for Event Transcoded Media and Render files. I know how to prevent them from being created but don't know how to prevent them from clogging up my TimeMachine drive.
Thanks!

What are the "rules" regarding render files?

OK...one PO-ed user here, wondering *** is going on...
I've always said that FCP is about as weak as an early version of Media 100 when it comes to render files. You can search my posts (not that you'd want to...), and find that I've been complaining about every system I regularly work on losing render files like a 6 year old loses mittens.
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Anyway, this past Tuesday I dilligently rendered my composite sequence, and the broadcast output sequence, and then exported the broadcast sequence for feed. All was well.
Today, I opened up the project so I could make final archives and web exports of the individual segments...and guess what? Gee, Wally, the entire sequence was, you guessed it, unrendered. Where did those pesky render files go? Well, I figured I'd try something I never try, and that was to reconnect them. Hopeless, right?
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So to get to the heart of the matter...what process is tossing render files? Why are they disappearing from my hard drive?
I have folders from projects from 2 months ago that have some render files in them, but I don't have the render files my system (supposedly) created on Tuesday!
Anyone got any ideas?

Hey, Shane, as soon as I saw you posted I began to get deja vu all over again, as we had a discussion about losing render files which, yes, caused me to stop nesting...for the most part. So yes, here we again have evidence that the "nesting behavior" coding team took off early the day they were supposed to be bug-fixing...but i digress.
I nest only when necessary...generally, we edit "packages" (your acts) and then I get em, do whatever audio and color correction time allows, and copy and past them into my complete program sequence.
However, when all is well, good, revised and approved, I "edit" that complete 22:10 sequence into my "BS" sequence (you might guess, Broadcast Safe), which has the bars n tone requested by the broadcast mothership, and where I apply a light Broadcast Safe filter and a touch of compression to the audio. So I guess my only question here it...are you suggesting that I just splat-A my edited sequence and apply the filters to the gazillion-odd clips individually?

Ok to Delete the Contents of the Render Files Folder?

Hello Hello
I remember from using various PC Video Editing programs that each program established for itself a 'Render Folder', or sometimes called an 'Auxiliary Folder'.
This folder contained the contents of the previously rendered files as they related to a particular DVD burned project. Once rendered, the files were there to sort of help reduce the process time, (render time), required to burn another DVD disc.
In FCE HD, there is also a folder called 'Render Files', and also another folder called 'Audio Render Files'. Naturally the contents of these folders could easily amount to 2 gigs or more depending upon the project size.
Well - (aside from increasing Re-Rendering Time in regard to a new DVD burn), is it safe to delete the contents of the 'Render Folder' in an effort to free up hard drive space?
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Hi Mike,
You may have a couple of things mixed up.
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If you export to a QT Self-Contained movie, all the media for the movie you export (including rendered video & audio) is incorporated into the resulting QT movie file. Assuming a successful export, you no longer need the FCE render files.
However, if you export to a QT Reference movie, you need to keep the FCE render files available when you import your project into iDVD and build your DVD structure. When iDVD encodes & multiplexes to burn your DVD, it will use the QT Reference movie, which in turn uses the FCE render files (and your original media).
In iDVD, after you burn your DVD, you have the option of keeping the 'rendered assets'; these are iDVD render files and are inside your iDVD project file; they are not the FCE render files.
If you really want to save time burning subsequent DVDs, in iDVD you should Save As Disk Image (instead of Burn DVD), which gives you a completely finished, fully encoded & formatted DVD disk image. You can then use the Finder, Disk Utility or Toast to burn additional DVDs for only the burn time, you won't have to go through iDVD's menus & re-rendering just to burn an additional DVD.

Can I reconnect old Render Files?

Couldn't find a posting directly addressing this. I apologize in advance if it has been covered a thousand times. Here's my post.
I've opened a FCP 6.0.3 project that has a sequence edited with the AJA 10bit uncompressed codec. Because I did not have this codec on my computer I changed the sequence codec to BlackMagic 8bit. The worse part is I accidentily saved the project. THAT'S when I realized that I could have installed the AJA codec and then been able to use the Render Files associated with that sequence. So, now I can open the sequence just fine, but of course I have to re-render the entire sequence.
*Is it not possible to reconnect previous render files (after saving the project)?*

Because what FCP typically does is throw the unreferenced render files into the trash. So they are most likely gone.
Shane

Chance of losing all files ?

What is the chance of losing all files from backup partition on Mac ?
I have internal SSD drive only on MBP Retina with two partitions so I backed up all my files on 2nd partition.
I am about to download and install clean Mac OS X Maverick.
I don't have any other solution to backup my files because my LaCie USB Key Drive is only 16 GBs and I have around 200GB of files for backup.
I hope the chance of losing all files after cleaning main partition only is 0%. Please lemme know.

ERTW wrote:
Ya i took it to apple today...turns out my hard drive failed. I didnt back up any files either so i've lost everything. Thankfully i still had 14 days left on my 1 year warranty so i get a new hard drive for free. This made me realize how important backing up files is...
Thanks for the help.
Yeah hopefully it only take one time of Losing everything you have on a computer to make you realise that you need backups.
It happened to me 18+ year ago and will never happen again.
Glad you got it fixed for free and good luck.

CC 2014 trial. MPEG MOVIE clips flickering on my time line! after render, and after export. tried all kinds of sequence settings,taking out transitions and effects ,even the audio tracks.....still flickering. They play fine outa the project files!? HELLL

CC 2014 trial. MPEG MOVIE clips flickering on my time line! after render, and after export. tried all kinds of sequence settings,taking out transitions and effects ,even the audio tracks.....still flickering. They play fine outa the project files!? HELLLLLPPPPP!!!!

We can not see your computer, your settings or even know what your source files are because we are not in the same room as you are!
We cant see what you are doing wrong ...so you will have to tell us a lot more and show us some screen grabs of your settings.

Missing render file/project will not render

I'm new to using FCE - just got my iMac with FCE pre-installed a few weeks ago - and have run into a big problem with current project. When I open the program, it tells me one render file is offline and I can reconnect or continue. I have no idea where the file could possibly have gone, so I select 'continue'. But now the project will not render. I have four sequences open in the project file, and have tried everything - locking and unlocking tracks, selecting various combinations of render both, render all, render selection, rendering only audio or video, etc. All the appropriate render selections are checked in every option. But still, the project won't render any of the sequences; the render box comes up for a split second and goes away faster than the eye can follow. I've tried setting the scratch disk; that didn't help. I tried saving the project, closing and opening the project, etc. Nothing helps. It just won't render. Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this problem?

When I say it won't render, I literally mean nothing happens when I hit the render command. I see the red timeline render bars. However, I see them only when I go to export the video as something else - a mov, dv stream, etc. In the project while working, there's nothing indicating render is required.
To try and solve this problem of the missing audio clip, I opened a new project and imported the .mov file I was working with initially, which theoretically should have all its parts intact. I made the necessary modifications to the file (essentially starting all over) and then attempted to render. It still won't render. Nothing happens at all when I click any of the render options, even after I've made modifications to the video that would clearly require render - changing the aspect ratio and applying a widescreen video filter. So the program should recognize the changes and render, but nothing happens, whether I choose render from the menu or hit the keyboard shortcut.
I'm a little hesitant to try scrapping the preferences as suggested above, but I am totally perplexed.

Render files missing-after duplication and also after moving

I have to replace a drive, which is still working well, so i went ahead and tried to move libraries with all its content (Events,projects,reneder files), which doesnt exist as an option... as far as i was able to figure this out....
then i went ahead to move events, where as one in 5 was movable the others would only have copy as an option.
which strikes me as oddity already...
after this was done i compared the content of libraries between the 2 drives, and was in shock.
the render files were all missing, needless to state here, that i wil NOT re-render weeks of work again...LOL
so i went and googled this, and came to thousands of answers on how to move or copy events to a different location , but always on the same HD.
there was absolutely nothing about moving Libraries with the Events and Projects and render Files all together explained ,.... ANYWHERE!
is there anyone out there who knows how to do this, so the render files actually move over to a new HD and ,...of course,...are reconnected there propperly and usable?
manually moving these render folders will NOT reconnect them to the projects,.... just as a FYI ...
why is there no instructions in the FCPX help menu on moving " Everything "..??
but thousands of article on how to move only parts and pieces .....

using disk utility to do a clone of the old drive to a brandnew drive... would this have done the trick?
you know the restore to destination trick....
or would have these renderd files still not connect since the drive might have a unique manufacturer id number...
yes ...the new drive would have been called the very same as the old drive...
the old drive has a clicking noice so seagate replaced it...
and i am in a challenge to move all stuff over now...to the new drive...

I need to copy audio files and projects from logic to an external hard as my MBPis nearly full and my external hard drive has packed up with all my files on it, any suggestions on how do I copy 200GB from my MBP to a new external HD

I Use logic and back my audio file and projects on an external HD ,this has now packed up . I have all the files in the MBP , but need to copy them to a new external HD, I have only 10GB left on my machine , how do I copy 200GB from my machine to a new External HD.
any helpful full advice would be appreciated.
angus

Yes, just drag and drop them into the drive..
How long will it take? Hard to say without knowing the type and speed of the drives in question.. and even then it's hard to estimate... but does time really matter?
The fact you only have 10 Gigs left will/may slow the process down but it wont/shouldn't stop it...
If needed.. just drag and drop some of the files at a time.. not all of them.
Remember that copying files doesn't delete them from the original drive... You will still need to delete them yourself after they are copied over and empty the trash....
However....
When you saved these projects in Logic (Pro X?) did you save them using the include audio files option?
If not, then when you move the audio files used in these projects... Logic will not know where they are to reload them........ and that will cause you issues.
So.. if you didn't...
I would use this method instead...
Logic Pro X: Move, copy, and convert audio files

FCE Losing Render Files After Project is Copied

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