Hi guys. While working on a short film for a festival, that I have to turn in TOMORROW, during an autosave (I think), I get a random error message, to the effect of "unable to perform the operation because of file of that name already exists". I click it away, and try to save the project manually, since I hadn't done so for a good five minutes.

Then I get an error message--I don't remember the details--but whatever it was , when I clicked out of it Vegas shut down. I opened Vegas again, and tried to open my project again, but now I get a message saying:

"an error occurred while loading the project file [file name here--not important for our purposes] .veg

The file could not be created. Another file with that name exists."

Now, whenever do a project in Vegas, 'cause of past experiences, I always make a duplicate file of whatever I'm working on and call it "[filename]bu" (bu stands for backup--so I have one file called "blah" and called "blah bu"). I always save them both at the same time, saving whichever one I'm actually working on, and then doing a "Save as" to save the other file.

So I go to open my bu file, and it says "the item cannot be found". I go to look in the directory in the C drive where it's stored, and it sure as heck can be found! I'm looking at it! But Vegas doesn't care!

So I go searching my C drive for any files with the words from my project title, and find, in addition to the original file and the "bu" file, two .bak files with .veg extensions instead .bak or .veg.bak or whatever it's supposed to be. I try opening these, and get the same error message. So I try moving the .bak files to a different drive, and then attempting to open the original files again, one after another, with the same messages, even though, in regards to the original file, there is NOT another file with that same name, and in regards to the "bu", it CAN be found 'cause I'm looking at it.

Now you're thinking "whatabout the autosaved/restored files"? Well, guess which restored file tells me there's already a file with the same name every time I open it? that's right! the one I need! The only restored files that work are from waaaaay back from two days ago or whatever when I was halfway through the movie.

In summary, every project file I know of that would allow me to continue working on this damn movie will not open, and I think I'm f#@!.

I was hoping just maybe someone here knew something I didn't. I just don't see how not one but BOTH my project files could be corrupted, since I was only working on one of them at the time.

HELP!

What version of Vegas are you using? This sounds very similar to the error you could get when two bins were named the same in the Media Pool.

It's version 4.0, whatever the most recent letter was.

What's this about bins? Is it fixable? All I've found that works is an older autosave that's gonna cost me about 5 hours of work to get back to where I was.

D!@#. . .d!@# d!@# d!@# a$%.

I think that's what I did. I think I had two bins called "sound FX" 'cause I didn't see the first one when I was looking through the bins, and made another one. That would explain why every single file (.veg, .bak, autosaved, restored) from that part of the edit won't open.

Ok, keep calm and keep the language clean. You should be able to fix this.

First of all, make sure you have a COPY of the VEG file as a back up. The best bet would be to use a hex editor but something like notepad or wordpad may work as well. Open the file and change one letter in the name of one of those bins. Then save the modified version and try to open it.

You will notice that a LOT of the information is unreadable but the bin names should be readable as plain text. You just need to change the name of one of them.

If memory serves, this problem was fixed with later versions of Vegas 5 so upgrading to Vegas 6 would eliminate this potential problem for you as well.

I'm about to search for free hex editors for PC. In the meantime--where is this info located in the giant file? I searched it using the "find" function for the word "sound", and got nothing.

UPDATE:

Okay, I downloaded this "hackman hex editor." Now I open the file, and I see endless columns of numbers on the left and then gibberish on the right. Haven't seen any coherent text yet. I'm a little out of my element here.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Ok. . .I see the column on the right is actually words with the letters spaced
v e r y f a r apart, like that. Good Lord. . .it might take me as long to find the right text as to just re-edit.

Mixed in the gibberish on the right, you should see some readable text. For example, you may see something like:

D . : . \ . V . m . e . d . i . a

The above would represent a path found in the VEG file. Scan down the right side looking for "SoundFX" and see if you find it multiple times. Then you need to change one of the letters in one of them (i.e. maybe "FoundFX"). I cannot tell you precisely where to look in the file but do know it should be in there.

Thanks. I guess I was hoping there was a search fucntion or something that could find the text. Or some way to arrange it into a more readable looking dealy.

Here's some references:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=309060

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=363140

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=329176


It appears the problem was fixed in Vegas 5.0d.

Whoa. . .I just had a few thoughts.

How much does it cost to upgrade from 4 to 6? Surely not the full $500?

Otherwise. . .I could download the free v6 trial and open the project in there, since, according to one of those threads, you can open these problematic projects in the later versions of Vegas. So I open it in v6, and if that works, I can copy the entire contents of the timeline, and paste that into my version 4, rename the bin, and save! That oughtta work, no?

The update price depends on whether you get Vegas or Vegas + DVD and whether or not you have Vegas 4 or Vegas4+DVD. The full list is here:
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/shopping/category.asp?id=111&PRCat=30

As for opening it in Vegas 6, that should work fine. Copying from Vegas 6 to paste back into 4 *might* work but I don't guarantee it. All you can do is try it. I don't happen to have 4 installed on this machine and the one it IS installed on isn't turned on right now.

Just an FYI, I believe that opening a V4 project in V6 keeps it from being opened in V4 (or5) for ever more. Now that may not apply to pasting, but it definitely does to whole .vegs.

Thanks, I figured that, that's why I didn't suggest saving the project in version 6 and then opening it in 4.

Can you still download the upgrades, or do you have to mail order it?

Pasting doesn't seem to work, unless I'm doing something wrong. Anyone? I've done it with two instances of version 4 open, but it may not work from version to version, for some reason.

Just an FYI, I believe that opening a V4 project in V6 keeps it from being opened in V4 (or5) for ever more. Now that may not apply to pasting, but it definitely does to whole .vegs.

I just tried it and, as long as you don't save it, there was no problem just opening a V4 project in V6 and then re-opening it in V4.
Like most programs, Vegas can open older version files but it doesn't work the other way around.

Too bad Vegas doesn't have a "save as older version x" option :-(

Can you still download the upgrades...

Sure can. And it's only $200 to go to version 6 from any older version.
http://tinyurl.com/dq7q9 for the details.

Yeah. I guess I have a month to decide whether I want to buy 6, redo the work I did IN 6, or send the veg files to Sony via email for them to fix, as one can apparently do.