Failed To Load Project Files

[Jerome]

Hello Forum, this is my first post & I was wondering if anyone has ever had a Fail To Load Project Files pop up?
I was downloading some footage when I saw 2 green boxes after I split the footage. I tried to open them and they wouldn't play. I then tried to delete them and that is when I got this message.

[jimmeeker]

Yes, this happened to me just last week, but after re-booting a couple of times, it loaded the project files and all was ok after that. It sure scared me at first though.

[Jerome]

Jim, mine is still not loading. Is there anything else I can try?

[BobNaughton]

Jerome,
I would try just downloading your footage again, perhaps into a different project. Just in case that project has some glitch issues. If that does not work, you might try transferring your source material onto another tape. There might be a corrupt portion on that tape you are downlooading from. Making a copy of it onto fresh tape should correct the problem.

[Jerome]

Bob I can't load into a different project. There are no projects to load into. I lost them (1-30) all. My hard drive is showing over 80% in the used Capacity. I just can't find the projects. I had met Tim & Chet, here in Orlando and have spoken with Jim about his get together and how great this forum is and was just hoping that one of you long time members could be of help before I deleted everything when I reload the OS. Thanks anyway.

Jerome

[jimmeeker]

Hello Jerome,

I would try an upgrade of the software ( Not a distructive full install ) this might fill in the missing instructions to load the project files in the OS without losing your projects. It wouldn't hurt anything and might just fix the problem.

I'm beginning to think that this is a software issue and that the OS gets confused and doesn't load the project files, which I assume are the pointers that lead the editor to the beginning of each project on the hard drive. The information is still there i'm sure, but the list doesn't load properly and without it, the machine has no idea where to look for each project.

I think, and no one of any authority has ever mentioned that this problem exists, so my guess is that if you shut it off for a little longer time, and then re-boot, it will eventually load the pointer listings for all the projects. That is what I did when I received the message: "Failed to load project files" It took four or five re-boots after long down times, to get them to load however.

Doing the update and not the full install might cure the problem without you losing all your work.....because all Operating Systems eventually get corrupted and often don't do what they are supposed to do.

One small piece of evidence that I witnessed myself in a different event.......was that my hard drive was nearly full ( at 90% ) and I had received a couple of "Hard Drive Too Slow" messages and then the next day the entire contents of my one terribyte hard drive in the S-4000 dissappeared and could not be found. I didn't think about the slow hard drive messages at the time and was enraged at the apparrent loss of everything on the HD, so rather than waiting for the unit to catch up with itself and re-populate the system, I shut it off and just assumed that everything was gone.

When I turned it back on....it was all gone.....but appearred to be working OK when I tried all the edit controls. The reading on the Hard Drive was now down to 0% used.... telling me that the whole thing was lost now.

I believe that if I had waited for it to catch up to itself by letting it run all night, it might have come out of it OK. This is just a guess on my part, there is no evidence from anyone else that any of these ideas are correct or even possible.

[TimKennelly]

Hi Jerome,

Could you go into a bit more detail.

It sounds like you are saying it is giving you that message and not going to the normal Menu where you select Projects, etc.

Is that the case?

On the other hand you mention the drive is 80% full, is that from your memory or does the unit come up to the Menu screen that shows that?

[Jerome]

Guys thank you for all your support. I tried a upgrade and that didn't work, so I just did a full installation and that worked for now. I am just sorry I lost my footage of my deceased mother n law. I was doing her life story and had went thru alot of tapes to pick out her best and lost everything. That is why I reached out to you all in desperation as a last resort. I had just bought 3 used hard drives and had did a full installation on them and was ready to take on this task when this happened. Now I have to start all over.

Thanks again guys for all you do.

Jerome

[TimKennelly]

Jerome,

All you can do is practice incremental backing up your project by the various means available to minimize such losses.

It bit me today as I dedicated the entire day to working on a wedding video and had left the unit batch Rendering the last of lot of intense IP Effects.

After leaving it perking along for the last three hours I came back and scrolled to one of the rendered Scenes to view it with the intent to start the HD Backup process after viewing this to protect the work and the system crashed.

It came back with that damn irritating scold about improperly powered off and then much, much worse with the dreaded "backed up from an earlier. . .".

Yep, lost every bit of the entire day's editing.

This despite repeated going to the Record screen, switching Projects and manually powering down (correctly, I might add) which makes it very, very irritating to lose so much time and effort.

I wish MSDE would make these system "restore" points something we could manually set as it is incredibly frustrating to lose so much work after doing everything within my power to prevent it.

I use HD Backup as another way to save work, but due to the time the process takes it isn't practical to use it incrementally throughout the day any more than going out to HDV tape is.

[CKNewman]

Jerome, I'm sorry you ran into this problem. When I perform a destructive install of the OS I do this twice - something that was suggested a long time ago to insure that the hard drive was wiped clean. I can tell you that when you re-create that project it will go much faster because you will recognize the footage you had intended to use as you re-scan the tapes.

I wonder if there is a "safe" number of effects that can be batch rendered without running into problems, and also if there are certain effects that when batch rendered are more likely to cause problems.