FAQ: What do I do when I see diagonal lines on clip(s) after moving media?

[Kevin-Monahan]

When you have moved media from one computer or hard drive to another, one may see diagonal lines (sometimes referred to as "danger stripes") on clips in the Timeline.

What does this mean and how do you fix this issue? Hopefully, this FAQ will help you solve this issue.

• What do the diagonal lines mean?
  • This means that Premiere Pro cannot locate the the proper clip, even though the media exists on your hard drive.
  • The correct information that is required by Premiere Pro to identify the correct clip is on another computer or hard drive, and the application cannot find or reconcile it.
  • A different piece of media with the same clip name is substituted by Premiere Pro.
  • Stripes in a clip indicate the sections of the clip where no media can be found according to Timecode info.
    
    
• How did they get there?
  • When you see diagonal lines after moving media to another computer for a project, this means that clips are not carrying essential metadata from one machine to the next. 
  • If a clip does not have a unique name, Premiere Pro cannot locate the corresponding media if it does not contain other metadata that was associated with the clip on the original machine.
    
    
• How do I prevent this issue in the future?
  • Before the shoot: set any camera menus to shoot a "Series" of clips - so that each one is uniquely named.
    • Tip: Sony has this option in its current line of cameras, and most people having this issue are Sony owners.
  • If you didn't set up your menus accordingly, when it's time to edit, import clips via Media Browser and not File > Import.
    • It is the only way to ensure that the metadata is attached to identically named clips when moving from one hard drive or computer to another.
      
      
• Can't I just import clips from the folders containing clips?
  • You can, but the clips won't have the metadata associated with them that was captured during the shoot. Therefore, they can't be carried over from one computer without incidents like getting "danger stripes" if you need to move the media.
    
    
• How do I fix the issue?
  • If the clips have diagonal lines, you must relink or replace the offending danger stripes clip with the original clip.
  • To do so, please try to first make the "danger stripes" clip in the timeline offline by first locating it in the bin.
  • If the clip is in the Timeline, right click (WIN), Ctrl Click (macOS) > Reveal in Project.
  • After locating the clip do the following:
    
    

1. Select it, and then choose File > Make Offline (important: choose to allow media files to remain on disk).
2. Choose File > Link Media
3. Deselect "Align Timecode"
4. Click the Locate button and locate (find) the original file.
5. Select the proper file and click OK.
6. Media is now relinked to the proper file. Danger stripes should no longer appear.

• Note: this process can be tedious, as each clip will need to be addressed individually.

We will leave this FAQ unlocked for now so that the community can weigh in if these steps helped them reconnect media properly, especially when moving a project to a new system and experiencing this confusing anomaly.

Let us know if we need to add any more info to make these steps more clear.

Thank you!

[Sergio Izquirrdo]

Yes… so sad they are not paying attention to these… I´m paying for adobe but
will never update again :(… I am editing documentaries (1.5 hours)… imagine
an update????
________________________________________________

Fotógrafo y Cineasta

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sorry. Is it possible to move back to the previous version, Sergio?

Thanks,
Kevin

[Guest]

Hi all, I just came across the "danger line" issue on a timeline and found a solution. Sony FS7 footage. Media transfer between hard drives.

I found a solution to my specific issue that may help other Sony shooters or editors working with Sony footage on Premiere. When shooting with two cards, and when one card is nearly full, Sony cameras "split" the last clip in two parts, keeping the SAME CLIP NAME on both cards. This resulted in a card based confusion on Premiere and the infamous danger lines for me. I did the "offline-relink" trick a few times with no result, until I realized the problematic clip  was the last on card 1 (long interview). I then relinked with the first clip on Card 2, which has the exact same name. All danger lines disappeared.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Marc

[Kevin-Monahan]

Nice going, Marc. For your edification, It appears that Media Browser at ingest is no longer a requirement, so you should see this problem go away with v.22 and later. One hopes that this is the case and I'm crossing my fingers.

Regards,
Kevin

[jeneva]

I find the advice not to upgrade incredibly frustating. Especially because as you say, when a problem goes a way "with v.22" we're not supposed to upgrade to access that solution.

I have been working on a doc since 2015. Yes, that's too long and sad, but it's my reality. I have been forced to upgrade many times for a variety of reasons. I always postpone as long as possible and even partitioned my hard drive so that I could keep my old OS and older version of premiere.

But eventually I have to upgrade. I've also wanted to take advantage of things like the new captions, the essential graphics rather than the no-longer-supported legacy title tool, etc. Every time I've upgraded it's taken weeks of my time to deal with issues like the diagonal stripes, media getting unlinked, media getting corrupted, and premiere pro crashing, not exaggerating, every 5 minutes.

How about: when Adobe creates an upgrade, they test it so that it doesn't break things?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi jeneva,

Sorry about the pain points. 

I find the advice not to upgrade incredibly frustating. Especially because as you say, when a problem goes a way "with v.22" we're not supposed to upgrade to access that solution. I have been working on a doc since 2015. Yes, that's too long and sad, but it's my reality.

Sorry that my advice is really only meant for general users. And I'm giving advice to you as an editor. I'm not a dev on the Premiere Pro team. I was an editor for a long, long time and only trying to help. You have been working on a project for a long while and that puts you into a unique category where nothing is quite as smooth as with those working on many smaller projects. 

What I would suggest for people in your situation is to have a separate drive with CC2015 on it with the OS that it goes with and work on that project there. You do have to be very careful to avoid having Adobe erase your older versions of applications to stay atop that strategy. I have collected every version going back to CS6, personally.

But eventually I have to upgrade.

I know that Murch didn't update FCP during Cold Mountain across at least a few major versions, or something. There is some lore like that. I learned to never update a project back in the 90s, personally. Sorry this happened, but you can go all hardcore: maintain and have multiple versions installed, many do. Have one version reserved for the latest and greatest and for tests if you want to migrate a duplicate of your movie project and see how it works out ahead of time.

and even partitioned my hard drive so that I could keep my old OS and older version of premiere.

Whoa, OK then. Exactly what I just said. Sorry that didn't work.

I've also wanted to take advantage of things like the new captions, the essential graphics rather than the no-longer-supported legacy title tool, etc.

However, you do have a project file you need to protect that is now getting older. So, foregoing certain sexy features is sometimes what you have to do. It's painful as you pay for the subscription, while working on the old version, as well.

If you need to update the project file, you can, just do so with duplicates in hand. Do not directly update the project, instead, import the necessary elements into a new project, leaving any chaff behind. It can be done successfully if you have some strategies in play. For example, you can now take the pressure off project files by creating multiple project files in a "Production" for say, said chaff, like B-roll, audio, SFX, graphics, sequence versions that are out of date, etc., in addition to your working sequence.

Every time I've upgraded it's taken weeks of my time to deal with issues like the diagonal stripes, media getting unlinked, media getting corrupted, and premiere pro crashing, not exaggerating, every 5 minutes.

It's native card based media that's giving you trouble, sounds like. At some point, conforming all this card based media to single editing codec might save you some trouble. You could probably media manage all of it into a neater bundle and have an easier time. It also sounds like your project is corrupt and needs to be overhauled by incorporating it into a Production. That could help.

How about: when Adobe creates an upgrade, they test it so that it doesn't break things?

It's not that simple, I'm afraid. We have a beta version available for testing. Feel free to test it in advance of updating. With a system and projects that are running lean and mean, I don't really have too many issues like this and I hope you get your projects to this point, honestly, I do.

Let me know if I can help you with this project.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Michael Grenadier]

No one's suggesting you wait years to upgrade... (at least I'm not) but you shouldn't update immediately and you should monitor this board to see what problems are occuring.  I do...  Updates often require better hardware and that's a fact we have to deal with.  And if you do an update, you need to give yourself at least a couple of days testing stuff in your project before starting editing in the latest update...   And as Kevin says, it's unrealistic to expect Adobe to be able to test updates on every possible combination of hardware (not to mention 3rd party plug-ins and other software installed on the system which may cause problems).  Back in the day, Avid Media Composer was a turnkey system.  Avid provided everything, down to the cables and even then, some people would have problems with an update...    

[L4urine]

I have also had this issue with rushes I had synchronized through the software Tentacle, and the issue couldn't be solved with the tips in this discussion. The source of my problem was that the Synchronized Tentacle XML sequence I had exported was in 50fps while my footage was in 25fps. I had to export my Synchronization again from Tentacle in 25fps and the problem was solved. It won't work if you just change your sequence settings in Premiere Pro from 50fps to 25fps, which is a shame as I lost a lot of work.

Hope this can help someone facing the same issue, as I found absolutely no previous answer to my problem.

[BestEditorOfYoutube]

Does this get rid of the edits I did on the clips before it got danger stripes on them?

[Averdahl]

Does this get rid of the edits I did on the clips before it got danger stripes on them?

By @BestEditorOfYoutube

No, all edits are untouched.

[acestrares]

If anyone still has this problem, this is the solution. Select the clip in the timeline (make sure that your playhead is at the beggining of the clip, you can use the arrow keys), select match frame option, than right click on the clip and replace with clip from source monitor, match frame. Problem solved!

[eliturner]

This is the way.  Thank YOU!

[Renoir30926897ez0f]

Thanks a lot .

[Syl-Mtl]

yes, I forgot to say, that I tried this also: to relink clips (common issue with the diagonales lines), but even that dose'nt bring back the sounds.

[Paige33039473dcn2]

Something that helped in my specific circumstance was with a proxy- I was editing using proxy files, and instead of re-linking the media, I had to go to the proxy tab and hit "attach proxies" and re-link that way. Thankfully solved my issue, not sure if it'll solve OP's issue, but maybe it'll help someone else on this thread

[Michael Grenadier]

Paige33039473dcn2,  thanks for posting your workaround.   This is the sort of post that makes this forum so valuable.

[Michael Grenadier]

and just curious, did the diagonal lines disappear if you toggled the proxies off?  

[Winder Graphic]

Hi thought I'd post what worked for me as EVERYTHING that was suggested didn't work. After trying everything in this thread and nothing worked I started to assume the problem could be whats usually ALWAYS the culprit for me-my external hardrive. The clip that had the zebra lines played back fine when selected it in the hardrive so assuming yours does that and therefore isn't corrupt all I did was copy over the specific MP4 file to my desktop (avoiding ext hardrives just to be safe here).  Then I simply made the zebra clip offline in the timeline and relinked to the copy on my desktop and it worked. I think all the advice here works if its an Adobe issue but if nothings working start suspecting your hardrive!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Thanks for sharing, @Winder Graphic. Sounds very frustrating, but I'm glad you figured it out. I would check to see if that drive needs its permissions adjusted. Let the community know if you need help with that.

Cheers,
Kevin

[jimt77736275]

• The unlink/re-link method didn't work for me.
• The re-interpret method also did not work.

What did work, was to go into auto-save and just start re-loading from newest to oldest auto-saves. Eventually got it on the 3rd newest one.

My affected clip only had danger stripes on the last third of the clip, so weird.