Panic set in for a moment as I stared at the error message. I tried restarting the software, hoping it was just a minor glitch, but when I reopened the project, half of my timeline was missing. My heart sank. Hours of editing seemed to have disappeared. I took a deep breath and reminded myself to stay calm. First, I checked the autosave folder, hoping the software had backed up my progress. Luckily, there was a version from about 15 minutes before the crash. It wasn’t perfect, but at least I hadn’t lost everything. I immediately saved a duplicate copy of the project in case anything else went wrong. After restoring what I could, I tried exporting again, but the render still wouldn’t complete. I suspected a corrupted file might be causing the issue, so I carefully scanned the timeline for any clips that looked off. Sure enough, one of the video files refused to play properly. I replaced it with a backup version, adjusted the edits, and tried rendering again. This time, the progres...