Media isn't rendering previews and won't scrub (MacBook Pro, Big Sur)

[GabeRealMedina]

My entire project was working fine last week, 8/1/21. Some media files are on my desktop and others were imported from Apple Photos. Everything was linked and previewing/scrubbing correctly last week without anty playback issues or missing media.

Today, the playback is getting stuck at any media file with an alpha-numeric file name, like these:

• AEC5DB21-3E97-4EF2-9439-DBE767610BBC.jpeg
• DA554E3F-FDD8-4FB2-AE98-6A52E25AF705.mov

Any video files with these names are still working fine in the timeline:

• IMG_5078.MOV

None of the probelmatic media will render a preview, and the video playback stops when it comes across any of those files. None of these problematic media shows the Missing Media placeholder. I am not receiving any missing media error when I open up the project. I have tried opening prior versions from Google Drive and the same problem is happening with older files. I tried creating a blank project and importing all the media and copy/pasting my entire timeline, but that resulted in the same issue. I don't know how to fix this. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. I'm very frustrated, as I've spent weeks working on my nephew's 6th birthday video. 😞

Thank you.

Gabe

[GabeRealMedina]

Also, I tried clearing my Media Cache, and that didn't fix the problem.

[GabeRealMedina]

If I manually reveal each of the clips/images in Finder, and re-import each one manually, it seems to fix the issue..slowly. But my media has duplicates of each. The Link Media option is disabled, and I don't know of another way to "re-link" or wake up all these clips and images without selecting each clip. I'm really puzzled.

[Peru Bob]

 others were imported from Apple Photos

By @GabeRealMedina

Did you save them to your hard drive?

[GabeRealMedina]

Some were saved to my desktop and others were in my Photos Library, because I imported them. I had to reveal every single missing media in Finder to re-import it in order to finish my project. Lesson learned: always pull a copy of your media out of Photos Library so that you work with a stable, local folder that doesn't get the path broken.