can't move clips around the timeline

[spressman]

While working on a project in PE7, I've suddenly lost the ability to drag and move clips around the timeline. When I click on a clip and try to drag it, I get a small black circle with a slash through it, and the clip won't budget.

Any thoughts on how best to return to normalcy? I've closed the program and restarted both my computer and the software, but still experiencing the same problem.

thanks,
steve

[Chuck Engels]

I have seen this a few times Steve, very annoying.

Try doing a Save As, then open the saved project. That should clear it up for you.
Not sure what causes this, I hate it when that happens. If you ever figure out what causes it please let us know.

[spressman]

Thanks, Chuck. That seems to have done the trick. Now, I'm unable to save rendering. That is, I'll render the timeline, and when I close the project and open it back up, the rendering is lost. Hmm, it's one of those buggy days!

best,
steve

[spressman]

Whoops, I spoke too soon. Now, I can't move clips around in the new Saved as version of the project. And I'm also getting some of those annoying multi-lingual "media offline" messages. I have moved the location of some clips, but thought I had since synced them all up with the clips in the project.

This is getting annoying.

steve

[Chuck Engels]

I was sure that would solved your problem Steve, I know how those days can be.
Hope things start going better. You may have to open a saved project.

[Chuck Engels]

Hey Steve, It just happened to me again right in the middle of a pretty huge project.
Just happens to be something my daughter and I are working on for the president of the company I work for.
He had some 16mm movies from the 50's transferred to VHS a while ago and we are putting them on DVD.
Anyway...

I restored the workspace and everything seems to be fine now. From the main menu, Window/Restore Workspace.
Well, that solved part of the problem, I still can't move everything around

I'll let you know if anything else works ...

[Chuck Engels]

I did the Restore Workspace a few times and it let me move more clips but still end up with the crazy O with a / through it and a little white box that won't let me move everything I want to. And once that happens you can't move anything anymore.
Still trying to find a way to fix it.

[Chuck Engels]

I figured out that I can move stuff around in Sceneline Mode, but that doesn't really help me much.
Even after I move a few thing around in Sceneline Mode I still can't move anything on the Timeline.

This is ridiculous !!!!!

[Chuck Engels]

I also figured out that while this is all happening you can no longer add clips to the timeline either.
It does seem to have something to do with the audio however. If I delete the Narration track audio everything starts working again.

[Chuck Engels]

I'm pretty sure this has something to do with music clips on the narration track, at least in my case.
Do you have anything on the Narration track Steve?

When I removed all of the clips from the Narration track and restored the workspace everything starts working fine again.

[Chuck Engels]

By the way, I deleted all of the render files and everything else that I could find.
Even cleared the cache and preferences and nothing did any good until I deleted what was on the narration track.
Hope that helps you too.

[Chuck Engels]

Well it happened again, nothing on the Narration track this time.
I might have to do this all over again in Premiere Pro or Premiere Elements 3

[Chuck Engels]

Deleted the Audio, did a Save As a new name, closed Premiere Elements and opened the new project.
I can edit again for now. It could be just one corrupt audio file, I'm keeping track and adding all of the audio one clip at a time.

[Briantho]

This was one of the main reasons why, in the middle of the year, I switched to an iMac with FCE. Then there's the other weird thing with the timeline just running away with itself. And all of this started in PE4. All I could do was to keep cutting the project down into smaller and smaller bits (a few minutes at a time) and join all those AVIs together at the end. It worked in the end but what a pain. It shouldn't have to be like that!

[Chuck Engels]

It shouldn't have to be like that!

I agree Brian, what a pain this was. This is the longest project I've worked on in a long time so it probably does have to do with the length or something like that.

In the end I added the audio clips one at a time, added audio transitions between them and when I got them all on the timeline I exported the audio. right after I exported the audio the timeline locked up again, and it also started doing the runaway thing as well

This time I had the audio in one big clip all set to replace the original anyway so no time lost.
After replacing all of the audio clips with the one big clip everything was fine for the rest of the edit and burning.
I am burning 10 copies now and haven't had a problem since replacing the audio. Still not sure what the exact problem is but I have figured out how to get around it to some degree. Restoring the workspace must do some kind of project reset that helps. But it doesn't fix everything, just gives a little extra time before it happens again. But restoring the workspace gave me what I needed to be able to delete the audio and start over.