A few clips say "file missing", today. Everything was fine, yesterday.

[Ally007]

Hi folks, I was putting the finishing touches to an elaborate project in TW12, yesterday. Today, when I opened the project, a few of the audio clips have "file missing" statements on them. What causes this? Is there a way to locate the missing files? Many thanks.

[Watchful]

The most obvious cause, of course, is any moving you may have done. If you deleted or moved any of the source files, Waveform will lose its link to them. Sometimes this can be quite subtle--rendering a comp and "deleting the source files" can cause the same clip in another track to disappear with this message.

I'd start analyzing which clips have the "file missing" statement and trying to figure out (a) what do they have in common with each other, if anything, and (b) did I do anything outside of Waveform with them?

An easy way to cause this is to move some seemingly unrelated folder of sound clips somewhere else, not realizing I used some of those clips in a project. Once Waveform loses track of the file, it won't find it easily again--you need to find what the missing file was and put a copy back in the original project folder to be safest.

Others will give you much better advice than I did. Let's see what they say.

[Jan Meyer]

Did you checked the file property of that clip by calling the "View Source Info" action?
This should give you some information about the missing file or a directory which is lost.
Maybe the requested file can be found in the trashcan of your OS.
Knowing the name and location of the missing file or directory should help you find the cause.

[Ally007]

The most obvious cause, of course, is any moving you may have done. If you deleted or moved any of the source files, Waveform will lose its link to them. Sometimes this can be quite subtle--rendering a comp and "deleting the source files" can cause the same clip in another track to disappear with this message.

I'd start analyzing which clips have the "file missing" statement and trying to figure out (a) what do they have in common with each other, if anything, and (b) did I do anything outside of Waveform with them?

An easy way to cause this is to move some seemingly unrelated folder of sound clips somewhere else, not realizing I used some of those clips in a project. Once Waveform loses track of the file, it won't find it easily again--you need to find what the missing file was and put a copy back in the original project folder to be safest.

Others will give you much better advice than I did. Let's see what they say.

Thanks for the reply, W. I haven't moved anything that could affect my TW project. The missing file clips are all new clips that I created on the previous day.

[Ally007]

Did you checked the file property of that clip by calling the "View Source Info" action?
This should give you some information about the missing file or a directory which is lost.
Maybe the requested file can be found in the trashcan of your OS.
Knowing the name and location of the missing file or directory should help you find the cause.

Thanks, Jan. Can you (or someone) clarify how to call the "View Source Info" action? I haven't been able to find this option..

[Jan Meyer]

After selecting the affected clip you have access to this function from this panel.

[pough]

Step #0 is, as always, open the Control Panel at the bottom to :Useful" mode.

[Ally007]

After selecting the affected clip you have access to this function from this panel.

Thanks kindly, Jan. I do not see that option on my system. I see "set source file" instead of "view source info".

[Ally007]

Step #0 is, as always, open the Control Panel at the bottom to :Useful" mode.

Thanks, @pough. Could you clarify how to do this? I don't see any option to select "useful mode".

[dysjoint]

Because Waveform has lost the path to the file, you have the 'set source file' option instead. If you can find where the missing file is you can manually point to it here, and Waveform will reinstate that file for all the clips in the project that shared the same source file.
I don't understand how you lost the file so quickly apart from accidentally deleting it or unplugging an external hard drive.
If you know where it is roughly, or even if you don't, Waveform has a good search function. Go to the projects page, and with the project (not the edit) highlighted you will see a find missing files (or similar) in the lower right options. You can search folders or whole drives from here. Success will depend on how you named the clip. If there all called 'recording x' or kick, or generic names, its a bit harder. This may work if Waveform has randomly rendered something to the wrong location, which it does sometimes.
I have repopulated entire old projects using this search function, over different PC's and new external hard drives, it's fantastic, as long as you actually kept all the files, and they had unique names.

[pough]

Thanks, @pough. Could you clarify how to do this? I don't see any option to select "useful mode".

Sorry to be confusing. Nothing is actually called "useful mode". I just call it that because it's incredibly useful and it's in compact mode by default. It's the Control Panel along the bottom. At the left is an arrow the opens it up, exposing many, man useful tools.

If Waveform can find the file, you would see "view source info". Because it can't find the file, you see "set source file".

It might be better to use the Projects tab. If the audio files are listed there you can select them and then down at the bottom it will show where it thinks the files should be.

[Ally007]

Thank you all very much for the help, folks. I think the problem was caused by a brief power cut in my area, while I was away from my PC - and I had probably not saved my work at that point. I've now re-recorded the missing clips.
UPDATE: I think I was wrong about this. It just happened again, and there haven't been any power cuts.

[Ally007]

It might be better to use the Projects tab. If the audio files are listed there you can select them and then down at the bottom it will show where it thinks the files should be.

Thank you. I tried this today, when the same thing happened again. I opened an extremely valuable project from 12 weeks ago. 14 of the audio clips therein say "file missing"! I really don't know how to locate the missing files - if they even exist any more. The "recorded audio" file names don't help... There is one track with several "file missing" clips. Although these are all on the same track, some of them have been saved with "Track 12" in the file name, while others have "Track 14, or some other track number. So it's not simply a case of looking at the track number containing the "file missing" clips and then checking the files with that track number in the file name. I looked in the folder on my HDD that seems to hold all the "recorded audio" files, and there are hundreds of them, mostly unwanted bad takes of parts of guitar passages. It would take hours to play through all of them, in the hope of finding the ones I need. But if they were in there, TW would have found them, no? TW doesn't give me any clue as to why a files is missing. It would be very diffult to re-record the missing clips so that they match the sound of the non-missing parts. I don't remember what guitar was used, or the effects settings. I don't undestand why this "missing file" thing keeps happening. It only seems to happen with projects that I haven't opened for a while. I haven't changed any folder names, or anything like that. I checked all my HDDs and SSDs for faults very recently, and none were found.

[pough]

I haven't got a clue what's happening or why. You're going to have to do some investigative work.

1. Note a file that Waveform can't find.
2. Find our where Waveform thinks it should be.
3. Find out what the name of the file should be.
4. Open the folder from #2.
5. See if the file is there.

If it's there, try to find out why Waveform claims it's not. If it's not there, find out where it actually is or if it's completely missing.

This doesn't seem to me to be a Waveform issue. it sounds like either...

A. Hardware failure issue
B. Some other software (eg. OneDrive or Dropbox) is messing with things
C. You're doing something so strange that none of the rest of us can even imagine it

Are the files there? Are they not there? Are they somewhere else? Are they in the trash? We can't really answer any of those questions for you.

[dysjoint]

Some things to take note of. When you record anything go into the clip properties and locate the folder that contains the recording, just to check if Waveform is recording into the project folder every time, is it possible that paths are getting muddled up sometimes? Rename every good take with a unique name (project name, instrument, take number etc) and set Waveform to also 'rename source file if it is in the project folder'. It is so much easier to find properly named files than just 'recording 1' or whatever.
Your problem sounds strange indeed though.