Import stuck or failed
If your import stalls, shows a wildly wrong time estimate, or some of your files never show up in the project, here's what's happening and what to do.
Import taking forever or showing a huge time estimate
If the upload progress shows something like "400+ hours remaining," that's almost always a bad estimate from a stalled or crawling transfer — not a real forecast. Most imports finish in minutes. If the estimate keeps climbing instead of coming down, treat it as stuck rather than trusting the number.
What to try:
- Refresh the project and check
list_sources(or the Sources panel) to see what has actually landed. - Re-check your network connection — large multicam uploads are sensitive to unstable connections.
- If it's genuinely stuck, cancel and retry the import rather than waiting out the estimate.
Some files are missing after import
Sometimes you upload multiple files (extra camera angles, a separate audio file, etc.) but only some of them show up as sources in the project — the rest never arrive, and they're not sitting anywhere as A-roll, B-roll, or ungrouped.
This means the upload for those specific files didn't complete — Eddie can only work with files that actually finished landing as sources. There's currently no way to "recover" a file that never made it in; you'll need to re-upload the missing ones.
Eddie now tells you when this happens rather than counting the missing files as progress: the project-ready email lists any files that did not make it into the project, by name.
If this happens to you:
- Check
list_sources(or the Sources panel) to see exactly which files are present, or the ready email's missing-files list. - Re-attempt the upload for anything missing — don't assume a support fix alone will make skipped files reappear; you usually need to re-import after a fix is applied.
- If credits were charged for a failed import, they should be refunded automatically — check your credit history.
Separate recorder audio (WAV) didn't come in from the desktop app
If your cameras imported but the separate audio files from a field recorder (Sound Devices, Zoom, Tascam and similar) show as failed or missing — the message reads "never reached Eddie" or "stopped before it was uploaded" — the desktop app stopped those files on your machine before they were uploaded. Your originals are untouched. Import them again first. If the same files fail a second time, the file itself is what's stopping the app: in your recorder's software or your NLE, export each one as a stereo mixdown WAV (a multi-track "poly" WAV holds every microphone as its own channel) and import those copies instead. The camera angles and their timecode sync are unaffected either way — the transcript comes from camera audio until the recorder files are in.
When the whole import fails
A failed import keeps its card on your dashboard until you dismiss it, with the actual reason it failed — including whether the fault was on our side (your footage was fine) or with the media itself — and a Retry. Anything charged is refunded automatically. One specific case worth knowing: a file whose container carries no duration at all (some in-browser screen recordings used to do this) is now either measured and imported normally or, if it's genuinely unreadable, fails right away with a message asking you to re-export that file — not hours later.
If files still won't come through after retrying, contact support with the project name and which filenames are missing.