Firewire down -- have to recapture -- vegas help

[thejessicastar1]

My promax 400 200gb firewire drive isn't allowing itself to be read anymore (and it's making a lot of funny noises). I talked to tech support and they said they can try to repair it, and if it can't be repaired, they'd replace it (all for free under warranty). The problem is they said they'd "try" to save my data, but it will "probably be lost." So far, I have 160gb of footage and some rendered files on there. He said that I should backup my files if I can get it to come back up, but, I mean, how am I going to backup 160gb of data without buying another firewire drive? I mean, that's why I bought the drive in the first place -- because I didn't have anywhere to put that kind of data. At least they're willing to replace the drive itself.

Anyway, so my question is: If if have to recapture the 20 hours or so of footage I've lost (my vegas project is saved in multiple places and I've already edited about an hour and 20 minutes of footage and done a preliminary audio mix), when I recapture the footage, will the vegas file be able to (I don't know what the right word would be -- reconnect, maybe?) all my edit marks with the newly captured footage? Is there something I need to do when I recapture the footage so that vegas can find the source clips again? I think a good thing is that I originally captured whole tapes at a time (no batch capture) because I was using my camera for capture and didn't want to wear down the heads with excessive stopping and starting (I realize that I'm still wearing down the heads by using the camera to capture anyway, but I can't afford an external deck or cheaper camera to capture with).

Hopefully this makes sense, and I pray to God that someone can help me b/c I can't imagine having to re-edit an hour and twenty minutes of stuff.

I appreciate any advice.
Nathan

[GenJerDan]

Never mind. See Scharky's answers. :)
Dan

[scharky]

It should be not problem to lose the captured footage. The vegas file contains all of the clip information for each clip. IF the clip is gone, you can simply right click on the clip and press, recapture. Insert the original tape that you captured from and it will find the in and outpoints of the original clip and recapture it. It will already have all of the edits and any effects that you used. I do it all the time. Just make sure that you only delete the media files, and no others, and back up any file that cannot be recaptured.

[scharky]

If you don't know how it works do a simple test. Start a new project, capture a clip, insert it into the timeline, make some edits, do some CC and then save the project. NOw minimize vegas, go into the place where you captured the clip, delete it, and then maximize vegas again (you may need to close vegas all the way to do this). WHen you reopen your project it will tell you that it can't find the file. Click, leave files offline. Now when it opens you will see a temp blank file in your timline. Find the file in your project manager and right click it. select, recapture clip, or select multiple clips and press "batch recapture". IT will then ask you to insert the tape "name" and it will then recapture that clip and place it back in the timeline.

[thejessicastar1]

Thank you so much. After you mentioned it, I remembered seeing the option to recapture footage when I was messing around with it when I first got it. I've never had to use it, so I never really took notice of it. Even though it's going to take me some 18 hours or whatever to recapture everything, it's better than having to re-edit a whole movie from scratch.

What does it do for a rendered file? What I mean is, the actual .avi files are on the drive too, but the rendered file will be in my timeline still. If I lose the .avi file, and since it's not something where I can just recapture raw footage, what will I be left with? Can it re-render with the same settings or something? Fortunately, I had only rendered a couple of small pieces on the timeline, so even if I have to redo that, it won't be too bad.

Once again, thank you so much for your help. This community has been a fantastic resource.

Nathan

[scharky]

No, rendered files do not retain metadata that says the rendered settings. If you did use other vegas files to create these rendered files then those vegas files will retain the settings and you can recapture those clips, render them with the vegas file, and name the file the same as the old one. you might want to make a list of things that you have to recapture, and things that you have to re render.