Relinking Media Changes the Clips in Timeline back to the Beginning

[Jake Burgess]

I have 2 external hard drives with my full size media plugged into my PC. I have the proxies on the hard drive on my PC. I unplugged one of the external drives and continued to edit with the proxies. I plugged to drive back in to view the full sized media again, however when I link the footage, the clips that I had edited in the timeline revert back to the start of the clip. Now all my clips are just the start of the shot with the slate in it.

The full sized media and proxies have the same FPS. I don't have this issue with the footage on the external drive that I didn't unplug.

Why is this? How can I link it and keep the timeline in sync?

[Michael Grenadier]

do the full sized media and the proxies have identical timecode?  

[Jake Burgess]

I think so. The full sized media on the drive that I didn't unplug switches back and forth between proxies and full size just fine. I made the proxies the same way.

[salvo34]

I think it's basically an OS thing... not an adobe program thing.

Whenever you plug external devices into your computer the OS says hello to it and keeps it connected. When you disconnect and then re-connect, the OS is saying hello to a totally new device. This confuses the programs linked to that drive. Sorta like the prodigal son. Nice to see you, but who are you now ?

Instead of unplugging to shoot more stuff onto that disconnected drive, if you have enough ports, leave it and just use a different drive for locations etc. Transfer sources to your fixed external drives, and then disconnect the 'wandering' drive once you've transferred stuff to fixed drives cause now it's back to wandering status and who cares what it does ??

[Jake Burgess]

So what do I do about all the work I've done? Should I reset and just never unplug the drives?

[salvo34]

basically yes. Ideally you would use only internal drives and xfer stuff from portable to internal all the time. Since you can't do that maybe you can use a large enough external drive to just use that one external and the other one can be used just for transfers to the permanent external drive.

Or ELSE you just keep doing what you're doing ... re-link the stuff everytime you disconnect and reconnect.  Whatever works.

good luck

🙂