Learn how Adobe After Effects handles missing media files and what steps to take when it cannot automatically reconnect to your project assets. This article explains why footage might go offline and how to efficiently relink missing files to avoid delays in your motion graphics workflow.
Key Insights
- After Effects projects are not backwards compatible—newer versions can open older files, but older versions cannot open projects created in newer releases.
- Missing media typically results from deleted, renamed, moved, or disconnected external files; moving files is the least problematic, as relinking one often restores all related assets.
- The command to relink media in After Effects is labeled “Replace Footage File,” which may be unintuitive compared to standard terms like “Relink” or “Locate Missing Media” used in other applications, and is covered in Noble Desktop’s forward section before Lesson 1A.
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So, I'm going to open, like I said, use your project. I'm going to open project, the starter one on page 25, ready for audio. So, if you ever want to just do one of the lessons in the book without having to do like the five ones before it, it'll tell you, hey, if you open this starter file, we've got everything done for you.
For the one on page 25, it's the ready for audio one. I double-click, it opens. Notice it immediately closed the other project, okay? If I had not saved the project, it would have prompted me to save it.
And if I ignore that, that's not the program's fault, that's my fault, okay? So, first, it scans the file. Is this file made in the current version of After Effects? Yes, it just opens. No, which is the answer now, I need to upgrade this to the current version of After Effects.
Why does it just do that automatically? It doesn't want to actually alter your original file. Because once this is done, the older version of the program will not be able to open it anymore. After Effects projects are not backwards compatible.
Newer versions can open older version files, no problem whatsoever, but older versions cannot open newer version files, okay? So, if I made a file in 2025, the version I'm using now, and you have After Effects 2023, you cannot open my project, okay? It's just not possible, okay? Okay. Then, it scans all of the files you imported, all the footage, and it reconnects to that. And in this case, it failed.
After Effects warning, seven files are missing since you last saved this project. How many files did we import? Seven, they're all missing. Okay, that's what happens.
This is the preview it gives you when it cannot reconnect automatically to your media files, to your footage files, okay? You'll see it here, and you'll see it there. Now, if you've got a lot of folders, you may not be able to see them right away here. So, there's a search option to show me the missing footage, and it will just show me the ones that are actually missing.
Anything that was intact would be hidden from this list, which, for the record, is everything. So, it's any of them. Now, I cannot… Technically, by the way, if that was animated, you'd see it physically moving as these pictures.
Not helpful at all, by the way, okay? You need the source files. You need the actual connection to work. So, why is it failing? I don't know.
It's looking for a file in a certain place, and it's not finding it. If the files are deleted, this would happen. If the files have been moved, this would happen.
If the files have been renamed, this would happen, okay? If your file's on an external hard drive that has not been reconnected, this would happen, okay? Now, of everything I just said, the least bad is moving them. It's still bad. It's just the least bad.
Because if you delete a file, I can't reconnect to it. If you rename a file, I have to manually reconnect each one. If I just move them, finding one usually finds them all.
Okay? But I gotta know where they are. So, I'm gonna pick one arbitrarily. I'll do four picks.
Right-click. Here's the next problem. None of those options look like they would let me relink to files.
I'm thinking of a command would be like relink, or reconnect, or locate missing media, something like that. That's what other programs call it, by the way. Not this one.
This one calls it replace footage file. By the way, there's a section before Lesson 1A starts in the forward section about doing this, locating missing files. Because it'll happen, unfortunately.
Replace footage file. I gotta find where I'm looking for. I'm looking for four picks right there.
So, it's in images. Four picks. I double-click on it.
I found one file. It found the six others. Okay.
All the files come back. Now, here's what's really annoying. Every time I do this demo, I don't know what's gonna happen.
Sometimes it finds all the files, like it did here. Other times, it has found all the images and not the audio file or the video file. Sometimes it's found everything but the video file.
I have no idea. And nothing was changed in those demos. It's just different places.
I have no idea. So, in this case, it did find everything and we're cool. Okay.
But if the files have been renamed, I'd have to know the new names and manually connect to it. So, that's what I did. Now, I'm just gonna save as and replace my other file.
Save as, save as. Try to organize your files well is what I gotta say about this. Try to keep them in the same place.
Try not to rename your source files after you've imported them, if at all possible. So, you can avoid problems like this.