I would like to move the media files for a project I have already started onto a different HDD. If I re-import the files, will the timeline find them? Or would I have to re-do the timeline?
Thanks,
Mick Berg.

To: Mick Berg


I haven't really tried this yet but I think you need to redo the time line. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To: mithcd


I decided that I would almost certainly have to redo it, so I went ahead and deleted the project and started again.
Thanks anyway,
Mick Berg.

To: Mick Berg

Hello,

It is strongly recommended not to change the location of the media files used in your project while working on it, because a .vep file (Video Editor Project file) doesn't contain the files but it contains information about the effects applied.
As for the effects and other information on the video clips and your actions, it will not be lost if you remove the files used in the project.
Here are more detailed guidelines on working with projects.

Best regards

I also am having problems since moving my video data to a new computer. I have not changed the video programs on the original hard drive, which is now a secondary drive on the new computer. When I try to open the saved project, the program asks me for a video source file that I don't recognize. The only choice I have is to tell it to ignore finding it and the program then loads the timeline with the video and titles. The problem is that although the titles seem to be intact,
the video still refers to this unknown source and will not display the video in the timeline.

Is there any way to examine the .vep saved file to see where the editor expects to find all the sources? Just like Mick Berg, I may have to discard all the editing I did before moving the files, and start all over again.

To: sherwindu

Hello,

AVS Video Editor is not able to change the files you use in the project, because the directories have been changed since movig the files to the new PC.
The only way to help the program find the files is to try browsing them after you open the project in AVS Video Editor or moving them to exact same directory (as on the previous PC) on the new PC.
Here are more detailed guidelines on working with projects.

Best regards

Here's one option (use it at your own risk, I'd recommend doing this on a copy of the project file):

The project file seems to be a XML-like document so you can open it in a text editor and do a simple search and replace of the video/image file paths. So, say, your files were kept in a location like C:\Videos\ you could search for that and replace it with D:\Videos\ or, if you have the old hard drive as a second drive just replace all instances of C:\ with D:\ (or whatever drive letter your second drive is). Seemed to work here.

I'm attaching an image of the process in my editor of choice, but regular Windows Notepad should work as well. If you have many project files there are programs that support batch search and replace within multiple files so you could google that as well.

Besides moving the source video to the original directories, there is another approach. In my case, I was attempting to recover a vep file that was on my old computer and get it to run on a new one. I had removed the C drive from the old computer and put it in the new computer as drive H. I simply had to edit the vep file and change all drive references from C to H. That worked for me.

JI should credit 'Somebody' for his tip. It really helped me get through this problem.

To: sherwindu

No problem, glad to have helped someone.

Actually I'm looking into making a utility that does this - finds filenames inside the project file and if the files are present in the same directory rewrites the links inside. We'll see how that works out.

Boy, I could really use that utility you are writing, or some miracle.

I added some files to my project with distinctive names like 0015.m2ts, but I cannot find them in my vep project file. I would like to know where the
software is putting the references to these additional files.

To: sherwindu

There seem to be two types of file references and only one type is stored within a project file - direct links to the files in use - these are easy to find and replace. And then there are the files in the Media Library which aren't saved in the file itself, but rather in a global MediaLibrary file which is stored in your user data folder, like:

C:\Users\Somebody\AppData\Roaming\AVS4YOU\AVSVideoEditor\Data and the file is MediaLibrary.vec

I noticed this bit just now after building a simple utility to automate the find and replace actions. The utility is made using WinAutomation (you can get a 30 day trial) and is rather basic - it expects to have the necessary files in the same folder as the project file, if that is the case it will replace the stored file paths to there and show a notification:



Then save a New file. This works for me, hope it can be useful to someone as well - you can find attached a WinAutomation project file. I used WinAutomation because it is simple (well, after a little practice and learning regular expressions) and also lets people see the code and not worry about downloading unknown executive files.

If I find the time I might look into relinking the files stored within the global Media Library, but that seems rather tricky. The more logical thing would be to store all file references within the project files themselves, but that's up to AVS.

To: Somebody

Thank you a lot for the information and for helping us in resolving the issue with project files.

Actually when the files used in the project (or loaded to media library) are removed, AVS Video Editor will offer to browse for them and find the new path for the needed files, thus you will not need to use a third party software.

To: sherwindu

sherwindu:

I added some files to my project with distinctive names like 0015.m2ts, but I cannot find them in my vep project file.

Please specify if you have removed the files on your hard drive after your saved the project. If so try to browse for them once again: when opening a project with a missing file press the Browse button - see the screenshot attached. Inform about the result.

Thank you for cooperation.

Kind regards

To: Nat

Nat:

Actually when the files used in the project (or loaded to media library) are removed, AVS Video Editor will offer to browse for them and find the new path for the needed files, thus you will not need to use a third party software.

Well, yeah, but if you have like 10 or 20 files that you are sure about it can be easier to just automatically replace them. Actually a built-in functionality for this would be neat - if the files aren't in the default location then look for them in the same folder as the project.

To: Somebody

We greatly appreciate your suggestion, I will surely pass it to our development team.

Fow now it is possible to save the High Definition files used in AVS Video Editor to a permanent cache folder on your hard drive: press the Edit button on the top toolbar of AVS Video Editor - choose Settings - Environment - check the option 'Permanent Cache' - see the attached file. On the same window it is possible to choose the Temp Directory folder.

Kind regards