Losing face, after a great loss.

[zabuza220]

Hello all, I'm sorry if this is in the wrong category. If it is, I hope a moderator will move this thread rather than lock it.

A few months ago I needed to reformat my drive, however foolishly I forgot to back up my protect or at least keep the little piece of work I had done. I didn't think too much of it at first, I simply shrugged it off and started new projects. I then realized how much I loved my lost project, it was tormenting me! I couldn't help but consider it my "masterpiece". All of my hours spent on that video were gone, along with any trace of it. All I'm left with is a sweet memory of what could have been. I decided to try and resurrect my project by starting over.. that wasn't a good move. lol. I just end up getting really, REALLY agitated at what comes out. It's so similar to my original (from what I can remember), however it lacks emotion. The video is somewhat robotic and very formula now.

I can't even find the drive to pay close attention to the details of the video. I'm currently on three projects and I realize that none are living up to what I believe I can do. When I edit now, I tend to just carelessly put things on the timeline, I never try and make it "perfect". Ever since my great loss, I haven't been able to care enough when I edit a video. When I get the drive to continue my lost project, it's simply me being emo and wanting to recreate what I thought was something special. I'm like super sad when I edit, lol.

Since I joined this site back in 2003-04 (forgot my screen name, two accounts) I've been editing. I never had the means to upload my video (horrid 56k connection back then), and I never got a chance to put any of my creations on the net. Now I finally was close to being finished on my "masterpiece" and it's lost like the others.

I've pretty much lost all of my videos, except the ones that I sloppily threw together.

I'm sure we've all experienced a crash in the middle of a project, then had to recreate an hours worth of lost work.. but, how many here have lost their entire masterpiece? How do you comeback from that? lol, I feel raped. Haha... this is kinda like a curse for me. It feels like until I can get past this, whether by forgetting the video or recreating it, I will never be able to edit again. All my work will be forever garbage.

So what should I do? Move past this video, or complete it and rid myself of the demons? I got a pencil ready, and I'm anxious to take notes about your experiences. lol. How can I get my god damn focus back?

Thank you
Dchan~

[Pas]

how many here have lost their entire masterpiece?

I've never created anything worthy of being called a "masterpiece" to even lose in the first place.

Hell, I haven't made jack shit really...

[zabuza220]

how many here have lost their entire masterpiece?

I've never created anything worthy of being called a "masterpiece" to even lose in the first place.

Hell, I haven't made jack shit really...

Aww that's too bad, you should try a lil' harder. lol. oooh fine print, eh? lol

[JaddziaDax]

I think the most i ever lost was like an hour of work when my cat stepped on the power strip and turned my computer off >:[

but that was like in 2005 when I didn't really care about video quality so i kinda stuck a beta on the timeline to cover it :/

it sounds like you have lost motivation more so than anything, what i would do is try to see if you can find a project that actually inspires you, something you can't wait to work on.

[-MD]

*thinks* Hmm...nope no masterpiece yet...not even close...fanart wise...yea I was close to losing one of them @.@ I would have gone insane to The only thing I've lost to the computer while editing would be half of an Iron Chef edit...the half that took me the most time doing...yes I was very angry...I got over it....

Wait actually yes I have lost a big project file...I was pissed I remade half of it and then said I hold onto the idea till the middle of this year (start AE) and then edit it again...because I am positive it will look alot better then what I would have done with the idea last year...

[Knowname]

I gave up on one of my amvs before... I mostly just made it so I could put a transition into the middle of a clip.. I was a genius (this was before piano keys...)

In fact I can see many instances when corny transitions in the middle of clips could be used... maybe I should revisit that idea.

[Castor Troy]

Back in 2005, I almost lost the majority of my VG3 files and Naruto Ball Z stuff in a hard drive failure, but luckily I was able to recover it all with a disk recovery program and ended up buying a new hard drive.

Luckily it was a "had a stroke, but lived" syndrome. I've fully replaced all the old hard drives, including the computer I used since then.

[Koopiskeva]

Hmmm..

It's been some kind of tradition that something fails on my computer soon after I finish a video I've worked on for several months. After I finished my Skittles video, I had backed up everything from the project onto my external HDD so I could reformat my computer. Once my computer was reformatted however, my external HDD died and I could not access any of the backed up files. Sad times. |:

[Full Metal Sempai]

I never made any masterpieces(not even close) so whatever the loss,I could suffer it.^^
Still,back in December 2005 when I was in an editing frenzy(I was using Movie Maker back then) I suffered a codec problem in my pc which made WMM crash immediately after I opened it.It also messed up the colors in my pc and add to it a virus problem,I had to format my pc.
After I got it to function properly once again,the WMM would never respond and so I had to change editing program.Therefore,2006 was pretty much a lost year for me(concerning editing) given that I had a lot of amv ideas but no means to bring them to life.I was just checking new editing programs.However,the positive part was that I found Vegas 6 back then which is my current editing program.100 times better than WMM and it helped me make better amvs during 2007.

So,maybe this accident turned out for the better...

[SQ]

It almost seems like every tiem I feel like I'm making something awesome, something happens to the video, and I lose it all.
Except by some dumb luck, I have a beta floating around.

Of course me, being a lazy ass, only makes wmv betas. So there's no possible way I could use the beta to work off with any hope of it looking decent. I'd have to start over.

To be honest, when it's happened, I drop the whole project.
I mean, there was one project that I had "finished". I just needed to tune up a few timing issues and ifnish the ending. I just put that up on the .org the way it was.
I also made a pretty coold Linkin Park video mixing a fuckton of stuff. I never finished it and lost everything, but put it on the .org and said "Yeah, I'm not going to finish this. Ever."

I have a few more projects (mostly live action) that I REALLY like. I don't know what happened to them(I probablya ccidentally deleted my project file or something), but I might remake them and start them again later, because they were my first live-action videos that were actually worth something.

There were three music videos I had started only using webcomics and animated the stills by hand(never do that in Premiere 6, by the way). I was having a horrible time because Premiere kept crappign out on me. I somehow lost everything there. If I ever have time, I'll try again, but I probably won't.

The first video I probably ever lost was an Evangelion video. I had set aside some time to make some epic eva video that no one had ever made before, because I was tired of seeing Eva videos (lol irony). I had started it and got about 2 minutes in, and I'm not quite sure what happened. I think I reformatted, so intentionally saved a huffy of how far in I was. Event hough I still have the files, I've never continued the damn thing.
There are things in the beginning I want to change but can't because it's a huffy, so I just said fuck it.
I think this was the correct decision, since now the AMV is about 3 years old and I still haven't touched it. Heh.

So I guess, in a nutshell, I've never really recovered from a loss like that.
But good luck with recovering from yours.

I mean, I've lost a ton of stuff, and although I may give up that particular video, I start new and keep making music videos. I don't think my editing in general has ever suffered from losing one video I was working on.