Check This:

Check This:

i tried the unhide thing you suggested john and those boexes WERE checked so i unchecked them....but my files didnt come back. they are nowhere to be found =(

amoung the causualties were 6 wedding videos that i now have to tell my client that i lost ..im screwed. thanks vegas....sighs

Your files are intact -- .sfk are peak files and if deleted, will be rebuilt the next time you open your media.

i did a drive wide search for .mpe and .mp4 and it came up with zero results....it ate them all

this is totally weird...

this is totally weird...

totally....ive been using vegas for years....always got sfk files but never had all the mp3 icons on my desktop tunr into sfk files and the original mp3s and mp4s gone...

None of this makes sense- how could Vegas delete files? MP3 doesn't turn into sfk. When Vegas loads an audio file it makes a SFK file in the same folder, so it's normal you'd see both on your desktop. The question is where did the MP3 go?

Do you have any backups you can restore from?

Anything in the recycle bin?

You might also try a media recovery app on the harddrive to find deleted files, but do this quickly before the data get overwritten.

i did a system restore hoping that would work but it didnt....all i know is my folder that was full of mp3s now contains 33 sfk files that used to be mp3s.....im scratching my head...and then i read online that this has happened to several people who use vegas right after rendering a movie =(

notonly that but it jumed to 2 of my external drives and changed all those mp3s and mp4s to sfk files too.....while leaving my other 4 hard drives alone.....total head scratcher

System restore just fixes the OS. Try using a program to find and repair lost/corrupted media.

Try using a program to find and repair lost/corrupted media.

One such program is https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

i still think it was vegas that did it because how could a folder containing 33 mp3's now only contain 33 sfk files all with the same names?

i still think it was vegas that did it ,,,

Regardless of how the deletion occurred, deleting a file from a folder doesn't actually remove that file from the drive. In general, what happens when deleting is that the indexing of that file is removed from visibility as a file in Windows Explorer, and Windows then allows that file to be overwritten by other files. But there are programs that can explore what is actually on the drive including files that have been deleted from indexing but are still sitting in the background on the drive assuming that they haven't been overwritten. This is why RogerS wrote:

You might also try a media recovery app on the harddrive to find deleted files, but do this quickly before the data get overwritten.

if you no longer have the original camera media (e.g. memory cards) or back ups on an external hard drive that hasn't been affected be the deletion problem, a media recovery app is probably your last chance of getting the media back.

For future productions, it might be a good idea to keep a copy of original project media on something like a portable external hard drive (they're fairly inexpensive these days) and store them elsewhere - and definitely not connected to the computer - as an emergency back up just in case something happens like a destructive power surge, or the extraordinary like what has occurred. Here's hoping that the media can be recovered. Good luck.

I did accidentally delete files by choosing this:

instead of this:

(gotta be careful there!) but you said it happened after the render, so hmmm...

You sure you didn't rename anything by accident? What are the file sizes of them .sfk files?

I did accidentally delete files by choosing this:

 

 

instead of this:

(gotta be careful there!) but you said it happened after the render, so hmmm...

You sure you didn't rename anything by accident? What are the file sizes of them .sfk files?

 

 

the project i was rendering only used one vid track and one audio track. i rendered it...next thing i know....all my mp3s and mp4s turned into sfk files across multiple hard drives.

how it managed to do that to files that were on serpate drives is beyond me

It's worth repeating the question posed by @adis-a3097

What are the file sizes of them .sfk files?

It's a very good question, and I assume that the thought behind it is - have the original media files really been deleted or has Vegas Pro somehow magically changed the extension name of the media file from .mp4 to .sfk?

As an example, a 15 seconds long .mp4 4K file I have is about 189,000 KB in size but the associated .sfk file is much much smaller at 23 KB.

So if the .sfk files you have are large in size, they may be the original media files with the extension inexplicably renamed. If this could be the case, the best way to find out is to change the extension name from .sfk to .mp4 or .mp3

@david-a8563vespertine Another three questions:

1. Was the render okay?
2. What happens when you try to open the project again
3. Were all the missing files on external hard drives.

That's what i was thinking, Vegas has back up files & can the project still be opened?

If the media files were in fact 'deleted' (which I doubt they were.. at least by VP), I assume the recycle bins were looked into as well as running a recovery app, like CCleaner's "Recuva".

In short, VEGAS did not "turn your files into sfk files" and VEGAS did not delete your original files (unless you told it to). Any time a file with audio is added, a secondary file - with an sfk extension and the same name as the original file - is created. So you will have TWO files with the same file name. The original files will still be there unless you do something with them. Here's an example on my machine. After adding all of these MP4 files, the secondary SFK files were created. BOTH files are still there.

It's worth repeating the question posed by @adis-a3097

What are the file sizes of them .sfk files?

It's a very good question, and I assume that the thought behind it is - have the original media files really been deleted or has Vegas Pro somehow magically changed the extension name of the media file from .mp4 to .sfk?

As an example, a 15 seconds long .mp4 4K file I have is about 189,000 KB in size but the associated .sfk file is much much smaller at 23 KB.

So if the .sfk files you have are large in size, they may be the original media files with the extension inexplicably renamed. If this could be the case, the best way to find out is to change the extension name from .sfk to .mp4 or .mp3

 

it changed them into sfk files is what it looks like.....all the icons are there for the mp3s withthe same names...the only difference is that now they are SFK files not .mp3 anymore and the size is wayyy smaller. where the original files went is anyones guess, but as i said before a driivewide search for .mp3 came up with none, and i used to have hundreds of mp3s now each of those...is an SFK file