There is a Blue exclamation point in the preview window of Studio

Missing Content

The cause of this problem in most cases that the project assets have been moved or missing.

Here are some examples of missing assets:

Still image files like JPG and BMP files
Video clips
Custom titles or Menus

Any of these items will cause this problem if they were in one location on the hard drive and moved to another. Studio will search for missing media whenever a project is opened. So if you have missing media, close the project and open it again.

If closing and opening the project does not help, please try and move the files back to the original location.

In some cases it may be caused by a removable drive coming back with another drive letter. If you cannot change the drive letter back or do not know what the letter was then follow the steps below.

1. Delete any part of the project that has the blue exclamation point.
2. Copy the whole project on the time line.
3. Go to File, then new project.
4. Now paste your project into the new project
5. Now add the images and titles you had to remove in the old project.

Settings Changes

Go to Setup > Video and audio preferences.

• Enable background rendering.
• Enable full resolution preview
• Enable / disable hardware acceleration (try the opposite of what this setting is currently set to)
• In the background rendering section check Use this codec for background rendering and then select MPEG-2: best for output to disc.)
• Go to Files > Delete Auxiliary Files and delete the Auxiliary files for the current project.

Once these changeshave been made, wait for background rendering to fully complete before attempting to preview the project.


If these steps do not help, see the information below.
Moved or missing assets is the main cause of this problem but it can also on rare occasions be caused by the following problems:

• Read errors on the hard drive the assets are stored. In most cases like this the read errors indicated a problem with the hard drive or Storage media.
• The clips in Menus in a AVCHD project will have this problem if they have not yet been transcoded to MPEG.
• The Project may have become corrupt.
• The Studio install may be corrupt.

To test for Read errors either run Check disk, the Windows disk checking tool or download one from the internet. If the drive is having read errors contact the drive maker for further advice.

For issues with the AVCHD menus, let the menus finish Transcoding.

If your project has become corrupt, you will have to start the project over.

If Studio installation hasbecome corrupt, reinstall the Studio Software.