Recovering Timeline

ADI2000 wrote on 9/25/2003, 7:41 PM
Hello,

I have recently experienced a total hard drive crash (external fire-wire H/D). I had literally hundreds of multimedia and graphic files stored on this drive, many of which were linked to a VV3 time-line for a lengthy and complex project.
Much to my relief, my local computer repair shop was able to recover the data on the drive. However, as a result of contracting a worm virus, (we think this is the cause of the crash) my fat tables were erased, and the retrieval software used had renamed all of my original files chronologically during recovery. Instead of my files exhibiting their original names (e.g. “seminar video clip1”) they now appear as lettered and numbered file names (i.e. “A001”) – though the file extensions remain correct (.avi, .mpg. etc.).
I know how to do a search for a missing file within Vegas when said file is relocated. Is there a known method to re-link time-line files by properties or attributes (i.e. clip length, file size, etc.)? I suspect manually locating each clip in an hour plus long training video will be a nightmare at best. Can anyone help??

Thanks in advance!!

Steve M

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 9/25/2003, 8:26 PM
What in the heck kind of software did the repair shop use? Good recovery software NEVER renames or rewrites the original data! NEVER! Maybe the worm renamed the files, if it was a worm. There is all kinds of good software that can read a hard drive sector by sector and rebuilt the structure that way. The only downside is its a long process. With large drives can takes days of constant running to complete and of course you can't use the computer for anything else.

The problem of course is the damage is already done. This isn't a job for Vegas. What may be of help is to just work through the list and generate thumbnails in Windows Explorer, at least seeing the starting frame of each clip may give you a clue what it's original name was.

I don't think Vegas keeps track of what you're looking for at least not is a form the end user can access. Maybe one of the Sony techs has a trick or two.