Broken/missing Links

[They Said They Saw]

Hi everyone,

At the moment we get a warning message with a list of broken links which we need to screengrab,
because you won’t get back that info once you click the OK button,
and you need to click that button because you can’t do anything otherwise.

After that, the only visual indication that supports the warning is emptiness in the output window.

On the board there is actually nothing signalling which module has a missing link other than a subtle ‘missing’ suffix
at the end of the text string that appears when you hover the mouse over the videofile module for a second.

If the module with a missing link had different colour on the top, it would be very clear and very helpful.

On the other hand, to go through scenes to find each missing link can be quite time consuming and difficult too,
because the scenes may be open in tabs or collapsed into a folder to save space on the board.

What would be really helpful is to have a menu section that collects and list all the missing links,
then going to the menu we could see how many and where they are,
while clicking on the list it could open the target scene and highlight the module with the missing link.

On top of this, it would be super convenient to have an automated autolinking feature, searching at pointed folders and subfolders.
This would help massively organising these assets and avoid duplicates, if the archive then is changed in some manner,
running this feature would link all the assets in seconds.

Do you think it could be possible to add something like that? It would be a wet dream for me.

Thanks!

Miguel

[Sadler]

There's a few people who've asked for something like this...
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1353&p=6276

Eric said a while ago:

The issue of missing assets is definitely something I plan to address in depth, improving and fixing all the various things with it that users have brought up. Hopefully the "could not be loaded" message will at least be enough for users to work off of for now.

[They Said They Saw]

Nice one, thanks.

I like to know that I’m not the only one that is missing such features.

It would be interesting to know if Eric has any update about it.

Cheers!

Miguel

[Eric]

I don't have any update at the moment, but I will be sure to keep the issue in mind when considering upcoming features.

On top of this, it would be super convenient to have an automated autolinking feature, searching at pointed folders and subfolders.
This would help massively organising these assets and avoid duplicates, if the archive then is changed in some manner,
running this feature would link all the assets in seconds.

Something like that is the File > Collect Assets command. It will copy all your project files into one folder, and relink to them there, so that the possibility of broken links is highly minimized or eliminated.

[They Said They Saw]

I don't have any update at the moment, but I will be sure to keep the issue in mind when considering upcoming features.

Excellent, thanks.

The 'collect assets' feature is really fantastic for sharing or archiving projects but it actually goes in the opposite direction of what I am after

Collecting assets makes the project secure by duplicating assets and bringing them together, but with an autolinking sort of recursive folder scan it is possible to have a common folder for the media where the links are pointing to. That way we can create an archive for video and it would be even easier to archive projects as we won't need to pack some heavy files with them.

Cheers!

Miguel

[Eric]

Ok, interesting. I've never heard of such a thing before -- maybe because I can think of a lot of problems it might introduce . Can you give me an example of an app that has that feature?

[They Said They Saw]

Can you give me an example of an app that has that feature?

exactly like that, actually no, but that is why we are here in the forums.

Adobe has a relinking feature for Premiere and After Effects, that is ‘folder-relative’ based, when you link one asset it automatically checks for other missing assets looking if the relationship of the previous missing folder structure is the same in the pointed folder.

Visual Jockey (win) had a folder were to look for files that had a broken link, but it had to be without any other subfolders. To keep your folder structure and avoid duplicates you had to create symlinks using 3rd party software.

But a recursive folder scan would be something amazing as it would allow the archive to be developed overtime without the risk of data loss for old projects.

Adobe Bridge does have a recursive folder scan, but there is no linking involved, although I assume that reached that ponit it wouldn’t be difficult to parse a list of filenames to match any missing links detected.

I can think of a lot of problems it might introduce .

What kind of problems could create?


I must confess that Adobe Bridge used to be very temperamental, but I have no clue if there is any relationship with this feature. It seems to me that newer versions are more stable.


Cheers!

Miguel

[Eric]

What kind of problems could create?

Choosing the wrong file for example. And the program wouldn't know it's the wrong file. I think this would be worse than having the file be missing, because you wouldn't notice. I can easily imagine this happening to many users, and being very frustrating.

Also, as you indicated, recursive scans aren't common. You open up a can of worms when you recursively scan through a user's hard drive.

[They Said They Saw]

Choosing the wrong file for example. And the program wouldn't know it's the wrong file.

I see, that may be the reason behind Visual Jockey doing it on a folder without subfolders. It would force everyclip to have a unique name.

I guess it could be possible to add extra layers of security, like ensuring has same date or size file, but I have no idea how difficult to implement it is of how long it would take each time.

And a relink feature similar to Premiere and After Effects? There it is very effective.

All my comps are video based, I start the project ussualy on the network and before moving it into a laptop I do compile the project for performing.
This works perfect as temporary solution because it loses the original folder structure (I may create assets in AE or Photoshop).

During the performance it is very likely that I polished the project on the spot, but if I want to add it back to its original folder structure I had to relink manually every asset, which so far rank from 5 to 20 per work, and with this situation I cannot risk to produce works with over 50 or 100 assets (if laptop can cope ) because it would be kamikaze in case of broken links.

Then the archiving of the project becomes another issue because each time I play with a different version of the set, the zip file has to include all the assets, so the archive keeps inflating.

Knowing that relinking may not be possible I do have to create a new workflow within magic if I want to create very complex visuals.

Cheers!

Miguel

[rdorsche]

Of course here I am with a show in less than a week and I've hit a snag. That sounds like it belongs in this string.

Over the last few years, I've built new project files simply by modifying old MV project files, deleting unused scenes, and doing a Save As.
Tonight I did a Collect Assets to a new folder, and saved the new project file there as it asks you if you want to do.

I've seen three problems happening now. On OSX 10.12.6
1) It's copying assets that are NOT used in my current project file. In fact it's copying assets from at least the last two projects that this current project file probably evolved from. Why?

2) It's copying the assets okay... built the copied asset files now have new creation dates. This will wreak total havoc on my metadata in the future. Can you make it so the creation/modified date remains the same?

3) I manually deleted all of the assets (mainly 1080p mp4 videos) that are not used in my current project as it is a huge waste of SSD space. I am not referencing these assets in my project, anywhere at all. Next time I open the newly saved project file, it lists all of those deleted video assets. I'm not using them. What gives?

[rdorsche]

OKAY I solved the additional assets issue. "Show Folder Panel"
I must have missed that feature. I've cleared those unused scenes out now.

But I still have the issue of the Date Created/Modified left over.

[Eric]

How exactly does the date affect your metadata?

[rdorsche]

How exactly does the date affect your metadata?

The file creation date is changed. I recycle some video elements. And in some cases I make edits at the video level ahead of time, and change the name. However I rely on creation dates to tell me which is the more recent file, and sometimes I forget to change the name, so I rely on creation dates as law.

SCENARIO:
So I go searching in my data archive drives (using a 3rd party file utility) and search, for example, for "puppy juming.mov"
and suddenly the collected asset "puppy jumping.mov" I've used in a recent project now has a newer creation date than it's original self.
Fast forward four months in the future.
The version I was looking for is 20 seconds long and not the edited 13 seconds long version... but can't remember which project has the correct version.
Can't rely on creation dates any more, since the collect assets command has changed that.

Abelton Live also has a Collect Assets-like function, as does Logic Pro. Neither change the date of the copied files. Makes for clean metadata and easy future use.

[Eric]

Ok, I'll see what I can do.

[mysticalchemist]

Very much need this feature.

My project file has over 1000 scenes. The list of missing links has grown over the years!

S.O.S

[They Said They Saw]

I hear your pain, the broken/missing links is a cumbersome issue, because it creates a bottleneck on creativity when using magic with videos.

You have to either minimise the amount of clips or to adapt your workflow to the interface, which is a bit of a paradox, since the interface itself aims to be as non intrusive as possible.

the stuff I do is video based, so this issue is capping the amount of videos I'm risking to get into a project. Collecting assets is only good for certain type of archiving, but pretty useless in scenarios when you are working with assets that still on development, or working on team over a network. Not to mention that duplicating gigas of data rather than linking them to a source, when you have to archive different versions of a project, it is very impractical.

The above issues mean that both animators and graphic designers will have a hard time bringing their work into Magic as it is not 'file' friendly. To my university students I always have to warn about this problem, as it can hinder their workflow and limits the design they can use.

In another post, Eric mentioned that a recursive folder search could add the problem of linking a wrong file, but in my humble opinion, I rather have a couple of wrong files due to poor filename convention, than a 100 missing clips with absolutely no support from the software.

[media]