Electrobel

When I want to load a specific song I'm working on, it gets this error:

'An error occured while reading the FLP file.
It may be corrupted, or some plugin caused an error while opening.'
(see attached image)

There's nothing wrong with the plugins, I only used vst's like vanguard and toxic and saxlab. They work in other songs so it's probably corrupted...

Now my questions:
1. how can this be? Don't think I did something special last time a was busy with that file.
2. Can I restore it? Are there maybe temporary files somewhere on my pc to restore it?

Thanks on fronthand! =)

TOO MUCH PORN ON THOU COMPUTER!

i really doubt if you can repair a corrupt file like from FLP (or live, reason, protools,...).
the only thing you can and need to do is not always just "save", but "save as", when you do a big change in your project. like that you can always return to an older version when the last version goes corrupt or when you saved when you shouldn't have (like accidently saving after accidently deleting everything... it do happen! ).

the reason for the corrup file could be an error while writing onto you HDD. if you are lucky, than FLP has an autobackup-function. backups are normally stored in the map of your project.

^^ nah srry , i would'nt know :p
good luck

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-8370.html

Maybe this helps..didn't try it so I don't know if it works... 

Nope doesn't work, same with the programming (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3577).

If I open the file in a hex editor there are only zero's.. Even though the file is about 1 Mb :s

Looks like I'm fucked. Foreplay was nice though. But thanks for the fast replies!

*bitchslap* There is NEVER - EVER - too much porn!

Quote:

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Originally posted by : omihoshbin

TOO MUCH PORN ON THOU COMPUTER!

---

I had that to few times with a reason file
I think it was caus I didn't close/save the program right..
And I also think there is no way to restore it... I lost few good ideas caus of that to
its crap 

Ah join the club, i had same thing yesterday with a remix i was working on for more then 3 weeks.

Anyway, FL makes automatically a backup (it's in the folder 'trash bin' in your fl folder), in case you didn't open a new project so far you can try the backup.
2nd chance is the fl recovery tool,

http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=781&lngWId=6

i heared people saying it saved their project.but i tried it, didn't work for me, too bad.

Best thing to do is from now on remember making backups every hour you work on a track, cause it is very depressing when you get this thing.

Rule nr. 1: Thou shall press ctrl+N at least every session.

I end  up with 20 flp files of 1 project.  I don't lose shit ;)

Quote:

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Originally posted by : transynth

Ah join the club, i had same thing yesterday with a remix i was working on for more then 3 weeks.

Anyway, FL makes automatically a backup (it's in the folder 'trash bin' in your fl folder), in case you didn't open a new project so far you can try the backup.
2nd chance is the fl recovery tool,

http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=781&lngWId=6

i heared people saying it saved their project.but i tried it, didn't work for me, too bad.

Best thing to do is from now on remember making backups every hour you work on a track, cause it is very depressing when you get this thing.

---

 

Also didn't work for me, thanks anyways.

And yeah, from now on I'll keep pressing CTRL + N 'till my nose and ears start to bleed. Serves me right too :(

I have 2747 projects in my project map. more then half of them are "save as new version files".
jsut a reflex u should have.

also I had a crash like that recently too, but I had previous 'save as new version files" so I opend one of them, then opend the last one again (the one that didnt work) and it worked again.

idem dito
had the same shit a couple of times
f.e.
i had to finish a track for a compilation, worked on it the whole night
the morning after when i tried opening it
the same error occured
now its, indeed, ctrl+n every time i add a big vst
or if i change anything crucial

we should've continued playing with our guitars only.. 

if the project can be "opened" but gives the corrupt message (ie all sequencer data gone but channels are there) you can save it as a zip & open from that zipfile. Worked for me a few times already.

*edit*

this might help aswell:

READ THIS FIRST:



If you came here from a google search on corrupt FL files and couldn't
be bothered to read the entire thread, at least read this part: I WILL
NOT FIX YOUR FILE FOR YOU. STOP ASKING. YOU MORON.



Now back to our regularly scheduled post.



EDIT: Steve Laboy has come up with a more elegant and (more
importantly) easier way to fix corrupted files here:
http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=245629&postcount=32



If that doesn't work for you and you don't mind getting your hands dirty, continue:



After working on a remix for about 30 hours, I tried to load a VST
effect which crashed FL Studio right after a save. I hit save again (FL
was still running, it just stopped making sound) to be sure everything
would be OK, and closed the program. When I restarted and tried to load
my song I got this:



"An error occured while reading the FLP file. It may be corrupted, or some plugin caused an error while opening."



Long story short, it was a corrupt file (verified by trying to open the
FLP on another computer). A google search found nothing other than
forum messages like "you're fucked. Start over."



But it turns out every FLP file has this in the first 32 bytes of its header:





46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C

64 74 B1 77 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10



The text side looks like this:



FLhd........`.FL

dt±w..Ç.5.0.1.È.





The first line is exactly the same in every FLP I looked at. The second
line is similar, but the last half contains the FL Studio version
number (5.01 in my case, as seen on the second text line above).
Additionally, the first two bytes of the second line (64 74; bytes 17
and 18 of the header) are exactly the same in all files, but the third
and fourth (B1 77 above) are not consistent even in files saved from
the same version of FL. My corrupt file had nulls in the 19th and 20th
bytes of its header, so I overwrote them with data from another FLP
header.



Edit: it turns out those two bytes are a pointer to an address 22 bytes
from the end of the file, consistent among all files I looked at. I
believe this is due to the really sloppy way FL handles files...instead
of putting a pointer to various sections (i.e., "go to this address for
instrument data; this one for pattern info; etc.), FL just crams
information in and the program has to scan for headers to find various
sections. With such small files it works, I guess, it's just weird. So
what happened in my case was that the pointer to the "end" of the file
was really pointing to the very first byte, before the start of data. I
imagine that confused FL. :)



Edit 2: to get the correct pointer address (see Edit 1), look at the
end of the file. There should be several repetitions of "1" with other
characters (if not, the end of your file is hosed and this probably
won't work). Look at the last byte of your file. That's byte #1 for our
purposes. Let's say the end of your file looks like this:





0000a150h: 00 00 81 1F 00 31 5C 44 00 00 00 00 00 00 82 1F ; ..?..1D......‚.

0000a160h: 00 31 5C 44 00 00 85 04 01 00 00 ; .1D..…....





Starting with the last byte and counting backwards, find byte #22 from
the end of the file. In the example, that's the "31" in the first line.
This is where you need to point. Now look at the address of that line:
0000a150h (the "h" stands for Hexadecimal). The byte "31" occurs in the
fifth position of that line (counting bytes from the left, like so):





0 1 2 3 4 5

00 00 81 1F 00 31





Note that there are 16 bytes per line, and this is in hex, so if the
byte you're interested in happens to be the last one on a line, its
"number" is F.



OK. "31" is byte 5 on that line. Add that to the line's address to get
0000a155. The last four characters (representing two bytes) are the
address we want: A1 55. I don't remember my assembly programming enough
to recall why, but these need to be reversed for pointer purposes (EDIT
3: it's because Little-endian systems (e.g. microcomputers) store the
least-significant byte of addresses first in memory). So now we have
the byte string "55 A1". Go back to the top of the file. The second
line (which is always address 00000010h) Must begin with "64 74" on the
left (corresponding to "dt" on the text side). The next two bytes are
the address pointer you just got. Overwrite whatever two bytes come
after "64 74" to get "64 74 55 A1" as the first four bytes of the
second line in the file. Congratulations. If it still doesn't work,
you're fucked. Start over. :)



BEFORE:



46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C ; FLhd........`.FL

64 74 00 00 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10 ; dt....Ç.5.0.1.È.





AFTER:



46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C ; FLhd........`.FL

64 74 B1 77 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10 ; dt±w..Ç.5.0.1.È.



This brought back all of my instruments with intact settings, and all
of the patterns I had written. Unfortunately, the Playlist pattern data
(how you build different patterns together--don't know the right
terminology) was lost, but all the parts are there and all my pattern
labels were still on the playlist. In any event I'm happy it will only
take me a few hours to rebuild the playlist data instead of having to
start from scratch.



So if you have a corrupt FLP that has data in it (i.e., you don't have
a 0-byte file), this will at least let you open the damn thing. I don't
know if it will work on FL 6.



I'll keep comparing FLPs and post anything else I learn about the
format, but at this point I'm just happy I got my shit working again.
So I'll probably get lazy.



EDIT: Amazing file structure analysis here:
http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=258055&postcount=34.
You people are way too brilliant for me. Bah!



-steve

Yeah Hecticcc I found that too on the web but it doesn't work for me, + nothing shows up, not even the channels.