Final Cut Pro - Corrupt Projects - Data Recovery

[purplestorm123]

Hello,

I have been working on a documentary for the past few months and I had made backups to my laptop as well as external hard drive. The external hard drive contained the library content and the event and project files (keeping files in place) as the Macbook Pro has a small internal memory.

The hard drive crashed a few weeks ago and I have paid for a very expensive data recovery service to retrieve the data, most of the files were restored simple content files. But the main issue was the project files itself. As you know this is where all the manual work is stored and all those edits and framework of the past two months.

The project files seem to have been renamed and reformatted through the recovery process and I have no idea why or how to open them.

It has renamed them all to Current Version.fcpevent. When I try to open these files, FCP gives me a error "Final cut pro cannot ope files in the Finalcutproevent format.

I have tried to find a similar case but cannot. The external drives were formatted to exfat. The data recoverer recovered through his Windows system, could that have an affect?

I had older backups of the projects on my laptop, but when I opened these they are also not allowing me to relink all files without serious gaps. The only source of the library content itself was on the compromised drive, this was my biggest mistake...in hindsight

I am more a creative and not tech savy and so I am really crumbling at the feet of this almighty problem and facing being fired if I cannot deliver the project on time as promised. I do not have time to start it again.

If there is any advice that you could offer me, I would be eternally grateful for it!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Sorry to hear of your predicament. Because a lot of Final Cut Pro files are packages and/or linked to other files due to the non-destructive nature of its editing process, you definitely have an uphill battle. It is common to receive recovered files with very generic names and lost permalinks to other files. Some recovered files even lose part of their resource fork/metadata, which can prevent them from being recognized/opened by the original software.

Unfortunately, the best thing would be to recover from the most recent version and manually relink any files that you can. The work in the missing gaps will have to be redone. If the library content was only on the compromised drive and was not recovered, there isn't any other way of restoring it.

I am so sorry to be the bearer of more bad news and wish I had a better answer for you. Hopefully it is a lesson learned and that you will have multiple backups of important production data in the future, as it isn't a question of if, but when all drives will fail eventually.

I wish you the best and hope the client is understanding of the situation.

C

 

[purplestorm123]

Hi

Hello and welcome.

Sorry to hear of your predicament. Because a lot of Final Cut Pro files are packages and/or linked to other files due to the non-destructive nature of its editing process, you definitely have an uphill battle. It is common to receive recovered files with very generic names and lost permalinks to other files. Some recovered files even lose part of their resource fork/metadata, which can prevent them from being recognized/opened by the original software.

Unfortunately, the best thing would be to recover from the most recent version and manually relink any files that you can. The work in the missing gaps will have to be redone. If the library content was only on the compromised drive and was not recovered, there isn't any other way of restoring it.

I am so sorry to be the bearer of more bad news and wish I had a better answer for you. Hopefully it is a lesson learned and that you will have multiple backups of important production data in the future, as it isn't a question of if, but when all drives will fail eventually.

I wish you the best and hope the client is understanding of the situation.

C

Thank you Cory, yes I think that working on such a huge project on a mac book pro was risky. They are soooo limited on space, like a phone, it's ridiculous. I really miss the old versions with 2 usb ports as this was easy to back up things. My USB-C hub although it cost £100 will kick out the second hard drive and will only work with one at a time, making me sloppy with my backups. It is no excuse, this route has cost me 10 time what a new hub would have cost...but as my dad always said, I like to do things the hard way, ha! Thank you so much for your time.