Recapture offline media

Andrew Lindsay wrote on 12/14/2006, 9:53 AM

Hi, not been using Vegas long, so apologies for the dumb question, but I can't find an answer that works in the manual or online help.

I had to reinstall windows and reformat my pc. Copied my project and media back on, and now I get 'Media Offline' where the video used to be on the timeline, though not the audio.

If I right click on the media in 'project media', 'recapture' is greyed out., though 'recapture all offline media' is available, but has no effect.

What 'should' I be doing to get my media back?

Thanks,
Andrew

Comments

BrianStanding wrote on 12/14/2006, 10:13 AM

Oh, dear. This is an area of Vegas' behavior that has always been a little unclear to me. A couple of questions that may help sort this out:

1. What version of Vegas are you using?

2. How did you originally capture your video? If it was DV video over firewire, did you use Vegas Video Capture? If so, did you save the file (it should have a ".sfvidcap" extension.)

3. Did you re-render any files on the timeline of the original project?

4. Are you using Media Manager?

Andrew Lindsay wrote on 12/14/2006, 1:29 PM

Hello Brian, thanks for the reply.

Actually, I'm confusing myself a bit more here. In fact the material is not captured, (I remember now) it's just imported - a few mpegs. So I guess in fact I want to reimport it. I found the mpegs in the explorer and did 'add to project media', this was just an intuition having found the 'media offline' message. The mpegs are now in 'all media'. What's strange to me is only their audio plays in the preview window, not the video. I wonder suddenly if it could be a codec thing, i.e. I haven't reinstalled all my codecs and the mpegs were made with one I don't currently have?

And to answer your questions

1 Vegas 7.0c

2 Not captured - imported mpegs from dvd

3 Not sure what you mean by 're'-render? I did render a couple of movies from the project

4 I am not using Media Manager, should I be? I was trying to recapture in the Project Manager

Thanks,
Andrew

BrianStanding wrote on 12/14/2006, 1:50 PM

O.K. this information helps.

In the Vegas offline media dialog, you'll get several options, including:

"Recapture offline media" this is specifically for events that were originally captured from a tape-based media (usually DV tape). If you didn't originally ingest the media this way, this will be grayed out. (You can't "recapture" what you never "captured" to begin with)

"Search for replacement media" Use this option if you have files stored somewhere on hard drives, or on removable disk-type media (removable hard drives, DVD-ROM, etc.).

You say the files you are working with are MPEG files. Are they MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 files? If they are MPEG-1, audio and video should be self-contained. However, if they are MPEG-2 files (like for a DVD), video and audio are often stored in separate files (.mpg for video, .ac3, AAC, or in some cases .WAV for audio), and remuxed into a file when they are printed to DVD. It's possible you brought over the audio file, but not the video file. What's the three-letter extension of the files you're working with?

Andrew Lindsay wrote on 12/14/2006, 3:11 PM

Well, I was wrong again, they are not mpeg, rather just .avi

Just for background, in case it's useful, the files are AVIs I made with Mpeg mediator, from ripped vobs from a DVD. I thought they were mpegs just because of Mpeg Mediator :¬] In fact they are uncompressed window video, reportedly

And I'm afraid I can't find 'Search for replacement media' where would that be?

Thanks again,
Andrew

mbryant wrote on 12/15/2006, 1:04 AM

When you open up a Vegas project, if some of the media can't be found it should pop up a window at that point, which contains the options:

- Search for missing file
- Specify a new location or replacement file
- Ignore missing file and leave it offline
- Ignore all missing files and leave them offline

Also if appropriate, "recapture media" and "recapture all offline media" are options.

If you've already chosen one of the "ignore" options, simply re-open the .veg file again, you should get the choices again.

Mark

Andrew Lindsay wrote on 12/15/2006, 3:38 AM

Thanks for the feedback Mark and Brian.

In the end it was the drivers. The offline media in the tracks did find the original media in the project media bins but would not display the video. Andt that's why I didn't get a 'Search for missing file' warning, which would otherwise have been expected.

I re-installed k-lite codec pack and all is well. Had to update to Windows Media Player 10 too, to get wmv to play in Media player.

Andrew