Remove Unused Media

robwood wrote on 4/22/2008, 7:55 AM
i give up. how is this accomplished in DVD-Architect? There is no "clean project media" as in Vegas, the Optimize DVD indicates only the new files I brought to replace the old ones. I deleted the playlist that had contained pointers to the cips.

I tried to get rid of them by reloading and swhen the dialogue box said "hey where's this file?" i pointed to the new one but because it's in 24p rather than the original 29.97 it won't accept it, even tho it's same encoding format.

What subtle point am I missing here? I have 2.5 gigs worth of m2v's and I cannot create a disc because it believes it has 5 gigs worth of files and wants the 70+ "offline" files reconnecting.

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 4/22/2008, 12:43 PM
To my knowledge, DVDA does not have the same issue as Vegas when it comes to "offline" files. In Vegas, you can put files into the project but not actually use them on the timeline. By contrast, in DVDA, the only way to have the files in the project is to put them into the project list on the left side of the screen. While they may not be linked to anything, they are definitely in the project.

If you suspect you have files that are in your project, but are not being linked to, and you want to get rid of these, one "trick" is to begin to prepare the project. As you know, when you do that, DVDA does some housekeeping and gives you reports on warnings and errors. One of the warnings it can issue is if it finds a file that is marooned somewhere and not linked in any way. So, start the prepare process and make note of any warnings like this. Stop the prepare before it actually starts building files and then, with the information you just wrote down, go back and delete the files from your project list.

cbrillow wrote on 4/22/2008, 2:50 PM
Quite by coincidence, I was looking for this same function just yesterday.

I was modifying an existing project, wishing to use the same introductory media and menu background files, but substituting new "movie files" for the old. Towards this end, I successfully used the "Replace" function to change the Track Media. I also changed the Button Style from Text and Image to Text Only, and made the rest of the changes necessary to complete the project.

Upon starting the Prepare process, I was presented with error messages informing me that the ORIGINAL Track Media files -- the ones that I'd replaced -- were Offline! Well, geez - why was DVDA looking for files that had been replaced by new ones? Worse, even though this seemed like an innocuous error, the only active button in the bottom of the Prepare dialog box was "Back", so I had to find out why this was happening.

When the project was used in the first incarnation, it used animated thumbnails as Buttons. Even though I had changed the buttons to "Text Only", it still retained the old track media files as the Thumbnail Media under Thumbnail Properties. Since I was no longer using them for animated buttons, these choices were 'greyed out', but the file names were still there and DVDA wanted to know where they were before proceeding.

To fix it, I had to set the Button Style back to Text and Image for all the buttons, then go back into the Thumbnail Media field and remove the filename from that field. Then the Button Style had to be set back to Text Only. Removing these phantom entries from fields that were no longer used is what it took for DVDA to successfully complete the Prepare process.

Weird...

bStro wrote on 4/22/2008, 4:58 PM
Even though I had changed the buttons to "Text Only", it still retained the old track media files as the Thumbnail Media under Thumbnail Properties.

Nice find. People have been having this trouble for quite some time -- DVDA complaining about missing files after the user has tried to replace a piece of media. This may be the key to most of those past problems.

Rob
johnmeyer wrote on 4/22/2008, 8:22 PM
Yeah, that's a really good catch. It can get you in various ways when using DVDA, namely that many people use their media assets to create thumbnails (animated or still) for their buttons.

One of the BIG mistakes many people make -= as long as we are on this subject -- is using the ENTIRE media file for the button. Even though the video is rendered at lower resolution and bitrate, it can cause a project to balloon. Always make sure to limit the duration of the video for the buttons.
robwood wrote on 4/22/2008, 9:41 PM
Hmm... yeh maybe that's what happened, I don't know.

The moment I brought the files in, I change them to text-only, so I'm not sure if that's the problem. I should probably find the setting to default DVD-A to text-only I guess.

thx for the replies
rob
jpoorman wrote on 5/19/2008, 6:14 AM
I have a similar problem. I completely deleted an mpeg 2 file that I was using for a background graphic on a menu. I created a new and different file that I am now using. When I go to prepare the information for burning it let's me know that it cannot find this file, and, therefore, cannot continue the prepare process. It also looks for this deleted file upon opening of the project. I choose to "ignore and leave offline", but obviously it does not ignore it. It does not show up in the Project Media List so I am confused as to how to get rid of it from the project. Is this the same problem you were having?
MPM wrote on 5/19/2008, 10:07 AM
When you make changes to a project the saved DVDA file can get garbaged up. I've only had a few cases, but others have reported it here as well. On something complicated I'll usually save the project with a new version number every so often, & restarting from that point isn't as bad as re-starting from scratch. I've had some success deleting the extra, non-project files DVDA can create, & I've had some success using a dummy file with the old, deleted file name. And at the risk of too many files making things confusing, I normally won't delete files I remove from a project unless absolutely necessary - not just because of DVDA, but because on rare occasions I've gone back and found them useful.
jpoorman wrote on 5/19/2008, 10:25 AM
That is a great idea. I will just create a new, very small, dummy mpeg 2 with same name as the deleted file. In the future I will not delete files and save my .dar projects as different versions. Thanks for the advice.