(This article was first written as an update to my book: Final Cut Pro X – Making the Transition. However, this update was never published.)
[ Updated: July, 2014, with new features from the 10.1.2 FCP X update
Dec. 21, 2014, with the new Locate behavior. ]
One of the biggest frustrations with the initial version of Final Cut Pro was that if you lost the connection with your media, you were out of luck, as you couldn’t reconnect to it. Now, with the 10.0.3 update, you can. Here’s how.
Sigh… You open Final Cut Pro and, suddenly, you’re seeing red in the Event Browser.
Or, you open a project and red indicators glare at you from the Timeline.
These red indicators (which flag clips that are “off-line”) can be caused by:
With the exception of accidentally switching to Proxy files – which you can fix by going back to Preferences > Editing and changing the preference setting back to Original/Optimized media – the rest of these problems can be solved by relinking.
NOTE: The key rule for working with media in Final Cut Pro X is that once you import media, don’t move it or rename it. Let FCP X (or Event Manager X, which is a separate utility) do all your media management.
In the case of moving a folder, quit Final Cut, move the folder back into the Final Cut Events folder and restart FCP. Everything is all good again. The key is to quit FCP X before moving folders.
However, sometimes missing media is caused by renaming folders, turning off a hard disk, deleting the wrong data, or a host of other calamities. In which case, you need to reconnect the links in Final Cut to the correct media. Here’s how.
In either the Event Browser or the Timeline, select the clips that are off-line (red). Then, choose File > Reconnect Project Files. (If the off-line files are in the Event Browser, select the clips and choose File > Reconnect Event Files. This menu is context-sensitive.)
The Relink window appears with the missing clips listed at the top. If you want to reconnect ALL the selected clips, click the All radio button at the top. This is a good choice if you totally messed up reconnecting your clips and want to try again.This will relink both missing and online clips.
Most of the time, though, you’ll want to just click the Missing radio button to just reconnect the clips that are missing.
Unlike FCP 7, which has an automatic search built into the Reconnect dialog, with FCP X you need to find the clips manually. So, click the Locate All button.
Look in the lower third of this window; you may need to stretch it wider to see everything. FCP displays the path and file name of the missing file. This not only shows the file name, but the path of folders that held the clip. For me, looking at this path helps me find exactly the file I need a whole lot easier and faster. Remember, you need to match the missing file exactly, not just indicate the folder it is in.
When you find the missing file, click Choose.
When a missing file is relinked, it is displayed at the bottom of the Relink window. If other missing files are in the same folder, they will all be linked at the same time and displayed in the lower portion of this window.
Click the twirl-down arrow to the left of the number of files found to reveal all linked files.
If you mistakenly linked to the wrong file, select the incorrect file in this list and press Delete. The selected file(s) are disconnected and the unlinked clip goes back up to the top of this window so you can relink it to the correct file.
To minimize files becoming unlinked in the the future, I recommend you check Copy files into Final Cut Events folder. This is a good idea for all linked files. The only downside to copying files is that they take more storage space.
When you have found all missing files, click Relink Files and everything is “all well better” again.
SIDEBAR: POTENTIAL LINK ERROR
Sometimes if you are working with multiple versions of the same media, you may see this error message. It means that the clip you selected for relinking doesn’t match the source clip.
Click OK, and look for the original file. If, for some reason, it no longer exists, you will need to replace the missing clip in the Timeline with a new clip. FCP X won’t allow you to relink clips that don’t match.
UPDATE – July 19, 2014
The 10.1.2 update to Final Cut adds additional robustness to relinking. For example, if you store media in folders within folders, you can now relink media by selecting just the top folder. All missing media contained in folders within that top folder will be relinked, without needing to navigate to them individually.
NOTE: It is always a good idea not to change the file names of media once it has been imported into Final Cut. However, the new symlinks that FCP X uses can often relink media even though the file name has changed.
UPDATE – Dec. 21, 2014
I learned this tip last week from Michael Wood, when I was teaching a Final Cut Pro X class to his team. I don’t know when Apple added this feature to the software, but this is new behavior, at least to me.
As we’ve learned, nothing causes more frustration than the dreaded red Unlinked Media icon. To relink media, select the clips you want to relink in either the Browser or the Timeline and choose File > Relink Files.
This displays the relink dialog. Either select a specific clip to relink and click Locate Selected, or leave everything unselected and click Locate All.
Here’s the cool part. Normally, I never pay attention to the message at the bottom of the file picker screen because, in the past, it simply said the file was missing. Since I already knew that I ignored it.
However, here, it is saying that the file does not exist anywhere in the selected path: “/Volumes/OWC RAID (Fast)/Training Media/Jim Walker Underwater/” Hmm…
But! I know that that file is somewhere on that hard disk, so on the left in the Sidebar, I clicked the name of the hard disk and – poof! – FCP X found the file. I had moved it into a different folder on the same hard disk.
All I need to do is click Continue to relink to the file.
Here you can see the file was successfully relinked. Click the Relink Files button in the lower right corner of this dialog and you are done.
SUMMARY
Rather than require us to figure out where the file is, all we need to do now is select the drive or folder that probably contains the file and – if it is there – Final Cut will find it and allow us to link to it. (However, this technique won’t help at all if you’ve deleted the missing file because then it is actually missing.)
Very cool and MUCH faster than navigating to a file manually.
148 Responses to FCP X: Relinking Media [u]
← Older Comments Newer Comments →-
Els VdV says:
January 30, 2013 at 11:16 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
January 31, 2013 at 8:58 am
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Els VdV says:
March 6, 2013 at 5:24 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
March 6, 2013 at 10:17 pm
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Andy says:
June 14, 2013 at 4:57 pm
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Giorgio says:
June 30, 2013 at 3:00 pm
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Curry says:
February 8, 2013 at 10:23 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
February 8, 2013 at 10:32 pm
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Bas says:
February 15, 2013 at 8:02 am
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Larry Jordan says:
February 15, 2013 at 9:20 am
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New Features in FCPX 10.0.6 | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor says:
February 23, 2013 at 11:22 am
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Robert says:
March 1, 2013 at 9:53 am
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Josh says:
April 8, 2013 at 8:13 am
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sal says:
April 17, 2013 at 4:54 am
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Max says:
April 17, 2013 at 7:27 am
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Larry Jordan says:
April 17, 2013 at 8:54 am
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sal says:
April 17, 2013 at 9:04 am
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GA says:
June 4, 2013 at 5:05 pm
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Katie says:
June 16, 2013 at 12:08 pm
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Larry Jordan says:
June 16, 2013 at 1:16 pm
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Max Shuppert says:
June 16, 2013 at 1:48 pm
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Rory says:
July 4, 2013 at 7:58 am
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Hi Larry
I might not have explained well. A year ago my Effects folder looked like this:
[ Home Directory ] > Movies > Motion Templates> Effects > Els > name_effect
Now I’ve renamed “Els” to the name of our “Company”.
All effect are missing.
Does that ring a bell?
Cheers
Els
The Els folder is what Apple calls a “Theme” or category. This is a way to group your effects in any manner you choose. If you look in the FCP X Effects broswers, you’ll see a new Theme called Company and all your effects will be in there.
Larry
Correct. Now the issue is: I have several work stations and I want the same settings for all stations.
Unfortunately when I open old projects (made with the old settings) I get “missing links” (missing effects) and lots of red blocks in my timeline 🙂 Is there a way to “reconnect” effects?
Thanks Larry!
Els:
I don’t know any way to reconnect effects.
Larry
I am in the same boat as this guy.
I have the same problem. Only solution is to recreate the old file-folder structure in the Motion Templates folder, at least for the missing effect (you can copy, you don’t have to move the file – so it stays in the other folder as well).
IMHO there should be a better way to organize the effects in FCP X. With all the effects available now, I often get lost searching for a plugin.
Giorgio
Hi Larry, I’m having some serious problems relinking some footage.
I’m working on a big job that I wanted to bring home for the weekend to work off my personal machine. I copied my event and project folders as well as a folder containing all raw footage on to a raid and brought it home.
The Event has 5D, gopro and Red Epic footage being used. When I started the Event on the computer at work, I chose not to import the files into the FCPX event, i let FCPX reference a folder containing all raw footage.
When I got home, plugged in the raid and opened the event, expectedly I had to relink all the footage files. Everything from the 5Ds and go pros reconnected perfectly but NONE of the Red Epic files will reconnect. I get the ” The original file had audio, but the new file doesn’t.” error.
This doesn’t make sense, I copied the entire Raw footage folder over as is as well as the Event and project folders. Even the proxies for the RED footage reconnect fine. The RED footage never had audio so I have no idea why its telling me that.
Any insight would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
Curry
Curry:
Hmmm… I would expect FCP X to create intermediate media from your Red RAW footage, and store that in the Event folder during import. However, you said you copied the Event folder to your RAID before you took it home.
I have no idea on this – I don’t work with Red very much at all. I’d go over to the RedUser forum and see what they say. I’d be very interested in learning what you find out.
Sorry,
Larry
Thanks Larry, very effective. I don’t know why my files went off line though. I did not do anything, really Larry! I was not even in the room when it happened. What I do know is that Carbon Copy Cloner was backing up from the raid to the back-up raid that I take home every night. So could it be that that was the cause of the disappearance?
Thanks,
Bas
Bas:
From this distance, it is impossible to figure out why your files went off-line. I’m glad you were able to relink them.
Larry
[…] Jordan also has a useful post on what to do with offline media in FCPX and how to relink your media so it shows up as it […]
I have a very large project that I have ben working on, there are a total of 38-15 to 20 minute presentations. I had to work on these on my laptop but now that I am finished editing I want to move everything to my Mac Pro so I can use the Matrox Compress HD card for my final output. All of my files are on two external hard drives. When I move the drives to the Mac Pro I get the yellow exclamation point on the Event, no media seems to be missing. I did notice that one generator and two audio presets were missing. I then copied over those items to the Mac Pro. But I still get the yellow triangle on the Event. What else do I need to move to make sure my projects will work on the Mac Pro?
I have an event with the “!” badge indicating that there are files that need to be re-linked. The files it wants me to find are old files that I deleted, that I no longer need, and that are not being used in any projects anywhere. I can not re-link them because they no longer exist, and I don’t want to re-link them. Is there no way to tell Final Cut “no, just ignore these?” The only fix I can think of is to re-export the video and name it the same thing as the old file was called, then re-link them, and then delete them… but that seems like a stupid thing to have to do. Any other way around this you can think of? That ! badge is bugging me, otherwise I wouldn’t care
Larry I’m really confused with the problem I’m having. I tried to move an event from my local HD to an external drive for storage because I have to work on new projects (I use the OWC data doubler so I use an SSD only to launch applications and a 2nd drive on the macbook for storing the events and projects). However my computer crashed while I was moving the project. I restarted and the event had moved correctly but the project opened up in the internal HD as opposed to the external one. I tried to physically move it but now everything apparently was working fine except for the compound clips. A lot of my project was based on that and I’d have to re do a lot of finishing touches / edits that I had done via compound clips. All the files have been relinked and there are no missing files but where are the compound clips? I’ve yet to find an answer in various forums. I’ve tried opening them up via the timeline but no luck… and on the timeline the message I get when skimming through the compound clips is:
“missing event””
I really do need help, been up all night trying to find these compound clips… I’d really apprecciate some advice. thanks!
Sal:
I’ve experienced the exact circumstance as you and have only been able to reconstruct the compound clips by manually reinserting the original clips into each of the components. Though it has been a couple of months, I recall having been able to identify the in/out points in the inspector by clicking each individual compound clip component.
It’s a total PIA and something for which Apple ought to place right at the top on their ToDo list, but it worked for me – far better than starting over altogether.
I’ve learned the hardest way possible that the only way to relocate/archive FCPX events/projects is via FCPX. Every time I’ve done anything via the Finder I’ve had nothing but trouble. Otherwise, I’m enjoying the new app and looking forward to its continuing maturation.
Good luck.
Sal:
I don’t have a solution. System crashes generally tend to trash files as well. If Max’s suggestion (below) doesn’t work, its time to call Apple tech support and see if they can help.
Larry
Thanks a lot to both of you. Fortunately the way I set up my timeline, the compound clips were merely for color correction. Layer upon layer for filters and such. No cuts were lost of the project, but I had already exported a version with the colors that were wanted. Gonna have to re do it. Just wish me luck in remembering the exact color info!
But thanks a lot to both of you, Max and Larry…
Sal
Thank you Larry. This helped me!
Hi Larry,
I’m having a problem relinking my files too. I stupidly moved my final cut events folder and unlinked all the files. I’ve sorted out that problem and have been reimporting the original media files. My project is complete and during my edit I renamed my clips by their takes, camera number etc. Now my imported clips don’t have the same name as my clips on my timeline. Any idea how to solve this?
Katie
Katie:
Hmmm… that’s tricky. I don’t have an instant solution that comes to mind. Hopefully another reader will have a solution.
Larry
Larry:
The only thread of logic I can offer is the backup of the project file. Other than that, moving forward on to new projects don’t rename clips in FCP but use the notes area instead if you need to ID clips in a way not foreseen upon import.
Good luck. Katie, if you discover some means of reconstituting your clip names, please do share!
Thanks Larry! It worked! Grateful for the time you take to share these tips.