can't open a file from external hard drive

F

Future Seasons

Member
Please help! This is an embarassing post-production 101 question but I am trying to figure this stuff out on my own, handling the shooting side of things a bit better but the vegas side is killing me because I'm dumb.

I captured a bunch of clips to vegas on my pc. I titled them "lightning bugs 001, lightning bugs 002," and so on. I then saved the project to my external hard drive- I didn't put anything on the timeline, just captured, and saved the project called, you guessed it, "lighting bugs film"

I tried to open the project onto my friend's laptop (which I loaded vegas on). I plugged my external hard drive into the laptop (which on the laptop became the F drive), found "lightning bugs film," clicked on it, vegas then opened, and a window came up that said

"The following file could not be found in the specified location: C:\Users\Shawn(my name)\Documents\Lightning Bugs- clip 001 .avi"

I suspect there is a simple solution but I have no experience with the computer side of things, and I would really appreciate any suggestions anyone has. Thank you!!!!!
 
I suspect the clips were flagged as being project media even though they weren't in the final timeline saved - Vegas tends to flag any file used during the edit session by default.

Not a problem - just accept the error message (I suspect you'll get the same for each clip), then go to the project media tab (where i expect you'll see all the clips) and press the Refresh icon - that will remove from this tab all clips not used in the current timeline.

If however you mean the clips are on your timeline (or you want them to be), from that same error message you can redirect to point to the file's new location. But then you'll have the same problem all over again when you move back to your own computer, as the drive is appearing as different drive letters on each computer. If you seriously need to edit the project from either computer, there's a Windows trick you can use to fix a drive's letter (e.g. force it to be V:), you'd probably need to do so on both computers once and then therafter that drve would appear as the same drive letter on both computers and I think you'd have no more problems.
 
An external drive with named "C"? With "\Users\<username>\Documents" on it? Somehow I doubt it.
 
Good point, that does suggest that Future Seasons is accidentally capturing clips to his/her computer's C: drive (either this is the default location or is leftover from a previous project), even if the project is correctly stored on the external drive.

Future Seasons, it's worth finding out how to change your Capture location, if you're planning on using external drives. Although footage can be moved around later, it's much simpler to capture directly to the correct location in the first place, it avoids file location problems like you've been getting.
 
Thank you so much! Yes, that makes perfect sense. As I said, I'm learning as I go. Thank you for taking the time to help me, it is kind of you.
 
I have had the same issue, just move the clips to a folder on the C drive, when your done with editing store them on the external drive, I also use other internal drives, no problem until I use external, they cause problems for Vegas, Vegas does not like it
 
If the folder you saved to your external is identical to the one your C: drive, you just need to redirect Vegas to the external drive. When the message first appears for that first file, direct it to the file on the external, and then it should detect the rest and ask you if you want to redirect.
 
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