"Ulead MediaStudio" project recovery - the raw file is partly readable.

The Challenge

I am re-editing our animated short "The House of Seville" using Adobe Premiere. It needs an extensive audio re-edit.

It was originally edited in Ulead MediaStudio 8 which is no longer available.

I can use the output video as a guide track for re-editing in Premiere. Reconstructing multitrack audio sequences is the biggest challenge.

 

The Solution

Open the MediaStudio Project file in a simple text editor. I use "WordPad".
The "project file" has an extension "dvp" eg "vedScene06_v12_QS.dvp"
A lot of the data appears as non-printing characters, but names of source files appear in uppercase plain text - like this:

And that gives us answers to IMO the most important recovery questions: which was the selected clip for a particular moment? and where do we find it? The old video then guides us as to where to position and how to cut.