disappearing images

[hilere]

I noticed it before, and just noticed it again. Sometimes (actually way too often) images disappear, just leaving a digital glitch in frame. I heard already from someone else that "this is something that happens in TVP". But I do not like this (of course).

Is this a known issue? And is there a solution to get the images back, or are they lost in cyberspace?

[Elodie]

??? Images that disappear ???

What do you mean ? Are you sure you are not doing something wrong ?

[hilere]

I am sure I don't do anything wrong. When I save the images are there. When I open they are gone. It leaves however a digital glitch where the image was + a part of the image. Let's say about 5% of the image is still visible. The rest is empty + a small digital glitch. Corrupted.

I my current project I lost already 3 drawings this way. Fortunately I save very often under different name, so usually I find them back in a previous save.

[Fabrice]

please can you post some screenshots ? It never happened in 10 years ...

[hilere]

here's the most recent. Luckily I had a previous save. Although it would not have been rocket science to redo this drawing.

[malcooning]

images never disappeared for me in +5 years of using TVP.
Check that the timeline cursor hasn't moved to another frame. It could be that your bottom layer is an IMAGE layer (therefore it will be seen regardless of which frame your cursor is on) and that your top layer, the one which "disappeared" is an ANIM layer, which will not be visible if your cursor is placed on another frame on the timeline (or if the Anim layer is set to "Hold"). This mistake can happen by simply incidentally pressing the right/left arrow keys.

[slowtiger]

Add me too: whatever I do in TVP, no matter how large the file gets (over 10 GB!), it never had lost or corrupted a single drawing. Now that's reliable!

[ematecki]

The only time we know of this happened was a bad hard drive.
A lot of files, not only TVPAs, where corrupted by that hard drive.
Do a full disk check (*with* bad block scan) of your drive. Warning, this will take all night with the size of current disks :)

[hilere]

Thanks for the harddrive suggestion. I 'll do a disk check tonight. It is however a brand new La Cie Quadra harddrive which should be pretty reliable...but you never know.

I also have the problem of TVP bugging during opening the file (causing TVP to forced close down), especially when using the link through the TVP File quickstart list. It seems more reliable starting up the file using the Windows file structure.
Could this problem also have to do with the harddrive?

[ematecki]

Yes.
Once a file gets corrupted, some parts of it contain totally random values, and it is just impossible to check for everything that can happen in a corrupted file.
So sometimes a corrupted file can crash TVPA.

You're using a brand new drive without "burn-in" ? That's looking for trouble !
A new drive should be put thru a very hard use for a week, obviously with data you COPY from somewhere else.
Make several copies TO that drive at the same time. Don't give it a chance to cool down.

A new drive will fail either in the first 100 or so hours, or after several years.
So give it a good workout when you buy it before trusting it !

If it has bad blocks and it is still under waranty, get it exchanged for a new one.
This can't be repaired, so don't believe the seller who will "send it back for repair, come back in three weeks".
And start over the burn-in with the new one !

[hilere]

So is there a way to get the file "uncorrupted" again? Because this is the file I am building an 8 minute movie on. There's already about 1 minute of animation done, which I don't want to throw away. Can I move the elements needed to a new file to get rid of the corruption?

[ematecki]

Well, what's gone is gone, it has never been stored on the disk, for whatever reason.

The best thing to do is to load your file and save it immediately onto another drive.
Fix what has to be fixed in your project. You seem to have multiple backups, manually merge what you can.
Use that other drive for a while to see if corruption happens again. I bet no :)

Also, use Edit>Preferences>Auto Backup, to have TVPA save each time into a new file, see the inline help for this option.

[hilere]

Thanks for the input.

I think I know where things might go wrong. The LaCie is an external disk connected with esata. This cable does not fit very well. Probably the problem is to be found in a bad connection of this esata cable. I will connect it usb. Do the check you suggested. save my file on another disk. And if the check tells the disk is OK I'll move the data back over to it, but stay away from the bad esata connection.

[ematecki]

That's very likely !
A bad cable can drive some technicians crazy before they find it :)

Good luck, and keep us informed.

[hilere]

Did what I had to do. Everything runs stable now. Thanks!!!
I assume it was the defective cable that gave bad contact causing images to go crazy. So
I'm connected through usb now, which works a bit slower when opening and saving, but at least it works more stable.

Thanks again.