Generator with Drop Zones Showing Up in Red (Media Missing) - What's up?

Question

Generator with Drop Zones Showing Up in Red (Media Missing) - What's up?

In Apple Final Cut Pro, I opened a long-shelved big project and found that a number of instances of a generator (with a number of drop zones) show up in red (media missing) even though the underlying pictures for those drop zones are in the project, and the Apple Motion files are all in the ~/Movies/Motion Templates/ folder. In fact I have 3 such generators with the same name, but with different "theme" names and 2/3 of such generators still present in the project are presenting their drop zones (with content) fine. When I try to create a new instance of this problematic generator/theme, it appears to work fine. Apart from simply redoing each instance of this theme (unfortunately, the bulk of the project), any suggestions on how to diagnose/solve such problem? Thank you.

Posted on Aug 23, 2025 08:29 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Aug 23, 2025 11:01 AM in response to Ariel y Rosana

First, there are several different red signs, and they mean different things.

A screenshot will clarify which one.

It seems that it may be a missing generator.

It is odd that you have several generators of the same name, and my suspicion is that you now see 3 but maybe at some point there was yet another, now missing.

What is the name of the generator?

Try this:

1) Duplicate the project

2) In the new copy, delete everything except one of the missing generators

3) Export xml

4) Open the xml file (*) in a text editor like TextMate, BBEdit or for lack of a better choice, TextEdit.

See what the path of the generator is.

It will look similar to this:

<effect id="r2" name="Late Drop Zone" uid="~/Generators.localized/tests/Late Drop Zone/Late Drop Zone.motn" src="file:///Users/lsequeir/Library/Containers/com.apple.FinalCut/Data/Movies/Motion%20Templates.localized/Generators.localized/tests/Late%20Drop%20Zone/Late%20Drop%20Zone.motn"/>

Notice the uid: ~ here means that it is inside your own Motion Templates folder; "tests" is the category, and it is not in a theme (otherwise there would be another folder in between "tests" and "Late Drop Zone").

What is in yours?

(*) The exported file has the extension .fcpxmld and is a bundle (a folder that Finder treats as a file).

To open the actual xml, first control-click on the .fcpxmld file and choose "Show Package Contents"; inside there is a file info.fcpxml; control-click and choose Open With->TextMate (or another text editing application).

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 24, 2025 04:21 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Luis -- much thanks for your xml export suggestion. I found out that the generator I thought the project was using (and was loaded into FCP) was not the one that the xml code revealed that it was using. I had inadvertently offloaded the correct Motion file, but thankfully had stored it in backup. I moved it back into the Motion Templates folder and, as the French would say, voila!

You have convinced me of the danger (at least in the current FCP architecture) of using same generator names for multiple themes.

Again, thanks for providing a useful debugging tool to my repertoire!

Reply