Guide

Missing or offline media

Drives unplug, folders move, here's how to bring your media back

Files go missing for boring reasons. A drive unmounts, a folder gets renamed, a teammate moves things around. Here's what it looks like and how to fix it.

What you'll see

Two symptoms, depending on where you are in the app:

  • In the Library: the tile shows a placeholder thumbnail with an "offline" badge in the corner. The clip is still in the index; it just can't be read right now.
  • In a Paper Edit: the row gets a red border with the message "Asset missing" and two buttons: Relink and Remove.

The rest of the project still works. Other clips play, the inspector still shows the missing clip's metadata, you just can't preview or export the file until it comes back.

A Paper Edit row with a red 'Asset missing' border and the Relink / Remove buttons.

Why it happened

Most likely, in order:

  • The drive unmounted. USB and external SSDs are the usual suspects.
  • The folder got moved or renamed outside ReelChest.
  • The file was deleted or renamed (by you or by Finder cleanup).
  • macOS revoked the source's security-scoped access. This is rare and usually happens after a major macOS update.

How to fix it

Try these in order, easiest first:

  1. Plug the drive back in. If it was an unmount, the offline badges clear themselves once the drive remounts. Quit and relaunch ReelChest if the badges linger.
  2. Re-add the source at the new path. If the folder moved, right-click the source in the sidebar, pick Remove, then Add Source again pointing at the new location. The index rebuilds and your transcripts reattach by file content.
  3. Relink in the Paper Edit. If only one clip is missing (file got moved or renamed), click Relink on that row and pick the new file.

For the macOS-revoked-access case, removing and re-adding the source is the fix. macOS will prompt for folder access again on the re-add.

A note on transcripts

Transcripts survive offline media. They live in ~/Library/Application Support/com.herbistry.ReelChest/transcripts/ and are tied to the asset's content, not the file path. So when the drive comes back, the words are still there.

The pattern that prevents most of this: keep your media on one drive, name your project folders before you start, and resist the urge to "reorganize" mid-project. Past you was right.