I'm not quite sure what's happening. PDS files do not contain any media, so if you moved them to a new folder but kept the source clips in their original locations, PD should work normally. There is no caching of source clips; only temporary files created by PD during editing are cached.

If you move the media clips to a new location, PD will not be able to find the media clips when you reopen that prpject and it will ask you to ignore them or browse to where they currently are. Once you do that, save the project to update the media files' locations in the PDS file and everything should work as expected when you reopen PD.

As per earlier discussion in this forum, PD keeps track of projects and project-file locations in a sometimes unexpected way. I have learned that when you know how PD keeps track, its behavior is a bit less unexpected.
What I have seen is that:
- PD remembers (only) the projects it saved and it opened. It maintains a list in a file called c:\Users\%userid%\AppData\Roaming\Cyberlink\PowerDirector\19.0\UserConfigure\ExpressProjectList.ini
- Apparently all only those projects that are listed in the above .ini file and if they exist, are showed when you open the My Project Room
- note: the .ini file is updated when PD is closed, not earlier. So, if PD aborts, the file is not updated.
- note: you have some influence on what is listed in the My Projects Room: remove the project (project not visible anymore and removed from the .ini file), or hide project (project is not visible, but not removed from the .ini file and thus listed again the next time you restart PD and open the My Projects Room).
- note: when you save a project at a different location, PD will remember the new place the project (same name) has been saved to. It will not automatically remove the former project from the Room, so both can together exist in the My Projects Room. This of course can be a bit tricky if you want to work at the latest version of a project. So maybe it is good to remove the older version from the My Projects Room and remove or rename it on your disk?
- note: saving an empty project (nothing in the timeline and the media room) is recognized and the My projects Room and the above file are not updated.
- note: the recent projects list in the file menu is a separately maintained list and may contain projects not listed in the My Projects Room.
- During the opening of the My Projects Room, PD will check whether the files listed are indeed available. If not then it will remove them from the list. This is why you will miss projects in this room when you have moved the .PDS files to another place. Changing the entries in above mentioned file to make them point to the new location(s) may solve that problem. I did some testing and it works, but be careful to do that e.g. without typos.
- I have noticed that PD sometimes deletes .PDS files from my disk that are not listed in the .ini file. This is of course a deadly sin and both unexpected and undesired behavior. I have no hard evidence, as it is a bit tricky to test it, I have not done this yet.
- After you have opened the My Projects Room and PD has checked the existence/availability of the files, and you then change the name of a file and/or move it to another location, when you try to open the project, PD will give a message that the file is broken and …. then will abort or crash without any further notice! This is of course a bug the needs to be resolved.
- Opening a project file from its new location, is no problem for PD. The name and place will be recorded in the .ini file. When media files have been moved, PD askes you where to look for these files. When the project is saved again, (and only then!) PD will know where to look again. (as explained by Optodata too).
There are many more “cache files” maintained by PD. Likely all to give the user a better experience. But when this user is going to change folders and file locations this better expeience service goes astray. What I take away from this is, that I better make careful disk and location planning in advance and do not change that (too much). And when I do change, I kind of know what to expect.
My suggestion to Cyberlink is, to add some words in the PD user manual to explain

Quote As per earlier discussion in this forum, PD keeps track of projects and project-file locations in a sometimes unexpected way. I have learned that when you know how PD keeps track, its behavior is a bit less unexpected.
What I have seen is that:
- PD remembers (only) the projects it saved and it opened. It maintains a list in a file called c:\Users\%userid%\AppData\Roaming\Cyberlink\PowerDirector\19.0\UserConfigure\ExpressProjectList.ini
- Apparently all only those projects that are listed in the above .ini file and if they exist, are showed when you open the My Project Room
- note: the .ini file is updated when PD is closed, not earlier. So, if PD aborts, the file is not updated.
- note: you have some influence on what is listed in the My Projects Room: remove the project (project not visible anymore and removed from the .ini file), or hide project (project is not visible, but not removed from the .ini file and thus listed again the next time you restart PD and open the My Projects Room).
- note: when you save a project at a different location, PD will remember the new place the project (same name) has been saved to. It will not automatically remove the former project from the Room, so both can together exist in the My Projects Room. This of course can be a bit tricky if you want to work at the latest version of a project. So maybe it is good to remove the older version from the My Projects Room and remove or rename it on your disk?
- note: saving an empty project (nothing in the timeline and the media room) is recognized and the My projects Room and the above file are not updated.
- note: the recent projects list in the file menu is a separately maintained list and may contain projects not listed in the My Projects Room.
- During the opening of the My Projects Room, PD will check whether the files listed are indeed available. If not then it will remove them from the list. This is why you will miss projects in this room when you have moved the .PDS files to another place. Changing the entries in above mentioned file to make them point to the new location(s) may solve that problem. I did some testing and it works, but be careful to do that e.g. without typos.
- I have noticed that PD sometimes deletes .PDS files from my disk that are not listed in the .ini file. This is of course a deadly sin and both unexpected and undesired behavior. I have no hard evidence, as it is a bit tricky to test it, I have not done this yet.
- After you have opened the My Projects Room and PD has checked the existence/availability of the files, and you then change the name of a file and/or move it to another location, when you try to open the project, PD will give a message that the file is broken and …. then will abort or crash without any further notice! This is of course a bug the needs to be resolved.
- Opening a project file from its new location, is no problem for PD. The name and place will be recorded in the .ini file. When media files have been moved, PD askes you where to look for these files. When the project is saved again, (and only then!) PD will know where to look again. (as explained by Optodata too).
There are many more “cache files” maintained by PD. Likely all to give the user a better experience. But when this user is going to change folders and file locations this better expeience service goes astray. What I take away from this is, that I better make careful disk and location planning in advance and do not change that (too much). And when I do change, I kind of know what to expect.
My suggestion to Cyberlink is, to add some words in the PD user manual to explain

I have "only" copied my .pds files and not changed the media location. In my system PD actually delete the files form the new location (files that I have copied to here)
I'm afraid that I have ended up in a mixed scenario. PDS Files on the old location and new ones in the new location. ?
I have also tried to open and old PDS from the old location, and the saved it again in the new location, this seems also to delete the file in the new location
Thanks for your answers

This sort of confirms my earlier observation that PD may delete project files on its own accord. I have tried to replay what you describe, but cannot see anything wrong in the behavior of PD.
When you write, it seems to delete the file in the new location”, what does that mean? Is the file gone when you try to locate it with (e.g.) the Windows file explorer, or does it vanish from the My Projects Room?
It would be good to understand what you encounter and maybe share it that via a screen recording?

The issue of the project files can be easily fixed. Open the old pds file, make any changes on the timeline or none at all. Do a Save as, not a Save and enter the new save location for the pds file and add say an “n” at the end of the filename to distinguish between the pds file at the old location and the pds file at the new location. This is the correct way to move the pds files as I have to open projects in previous versions of PD and also work on them in newer versions of PD to answer users' project issues on this forum.

Do the above for all the projects. You can now delete or move all the old pds files and only the new renamed ones will be accessible.

Quote This sort of confirms my earlier observation that PD may delete project files on its own accord. I have tried to replay what you describe, but cannot see anything wrong in the behavior of PD.
When you write, it seems to delete the file in the new location”, what does that mean? Is the file gone when you try to locate it with (e.g.) the Windows file explorer, or does it vanish from the My Projects Room?
It would be good to understand what you encounter and maybe share it that via a screen recording?

Yes, the file is gone in Windows exporer

Quote The issue of the project files can be easily fixed. Open the old pds file, make any changes on the timeline or none at all. Do a Save as, not a Save and enter the new save location for the pds file and add say an “n” at the end of the filename to distinguish between the pds file at the old location and the pds file at the new location. This is the correct way to move the pds files as I have to open projects in previous versions of PD and also work on them in newer versions of PD to answer users' project issues on this forum.

Do the above for all the projects. You can now delete or move all the old pds files and only the new renamed ones will be accessible.

Thanks Thomas
I have tried this, but I have several 100's project files

I've not encountered PD deleting any PDS files with one possible (and still unexplained) OneDrive incident in 10 years.

I'm not sure why you want to move hundreds of project files from one drive to another, but it seems like you may want to copy all of them to a USB flash drive so that you'll always have an offline backup copy, and then paste copies of the projects in the new location.

If PD is deleting the moved project files somehow, you can at least restore them from your backup.

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Quote I've not encountered PD deleting any PDS files with one possible (and still unexplained) OneDrive incident in 10 years.

I'm not sure why you want to move hundreds of project files from one drive to another, but it seems like you may want to copy all of them to a USB flash drive so that you'll always have an offline backup copy, and then paste copies of the projects in the new location.

If PD is deleting the moved project files somehow, you can at least restore them from your backup.

The simple answes are that i want to be able to use the same project on two pc's that share the same media pool. a workstation and a laptop

Quote I have PD19, and it seems to work just fine. But I have changed the location of my project files (pds) from the document location on my "C-drive to another disk. I have copied the pds files from the old location to the new and changed the setting to point to the new location.
So for so good... With at fresh copy of the files from the old to new location PD can open the project (and show all the files). But after a restart of PD, the new location does only contain the files that originaly was save here, and not the files I'we copied ???? (Shows only the files that saved here)
This is really strange ?? Are the some kind of caching or ?

What setting and where did you change to "point to the new location"?

Any chance your shared media pool between workstation and a laptop is using a shared \\ UNC path in the address? I've seen that do some strange things with PD.

Jeff

Quote

What setting and where did you change to "point to the new location"?

Any chance your shared media pool between workstation and a laptop is using a shared \\ UNC path in the address? I've seen that do some strange things with PD.

Jeff

I changed the "project settings" in the setup menu, and then copied all the files to the new location.
But, strangly enough the setting did change back to the original location and the files in the new location dissapered ??

The Media pool are on a removeable USB3 drive. My idea was to have the project files settings on the same drive

Quote

What setting and where did you change to "point to the new location"?

Any chance your shared media pool between workstation and a laptop is using a shared \\ UNC path in the address? I've seen that do some strange things with PD.

Jeff

I changed the "project settings" in the setup menu, and then copied all the files to the new location.
But, strangly enough the setting did change back to the original location and the files in the new location dissapered ??

The Media pool are on a removeable USB3 drive. My idea was to have the project files settings on the same drive

Quote I changed the "project settings" in the setup menu, and then copied all the files to the new location.
But, strangly enough the setting did change back to the original location and the files in the new location dissapered ??

The Media pool are on a removeable USB3 drive. My idea was to have the project files settings on the same drive

If by "project settings" you mean pref > Project and then the autosave location. Yes that area has caused several forum users to lose files. Several tried using it as a working path for editing and PD does auto delete files at that location at some interval or trigger.

Jeff