When I began my first Scrivener project, I somehow imported an audiofile to chapter one, somehow imported a character image into the inspector, and then began. I played the music whilst writing those first words, paragraphs, etc. because I wanted to capture and not lose the energy. [Night on Bald Mountain, if you’re curious.]
I wanted to use Quicktime to capture a demonstration of writing that first chapter for a video, but when I opened one of those old files [and it updated] the audiofile was no longer there. And I haven’t figured out how to replicate it.
Is that something we could to then but can’t now for some reason? If so, why? And does anybody have suggestions of how I can replicate it for QuickTime? Thanks!
Did you perhaps import the audio file as an alias (File > Import > Research Files as Aliases…)? This is essentially creating a shortcut to the file where it is located on your computer, instead of embedding it into the Scrivener project (the function is designed to keep the project size small so that the program performs effectively). If you import this way, any changes you make to the file on your computer, such as relocating, renaming, or deleting it, will cause the link between Scrivener and the file to break. Does that sound like a possibility?
If you’re asking how to import the audio file again, you can do this by drag and dropping the file from your Finder into your project’s Binder, or using the File > Import > Files… menu command.
From what I can tell, you can’t import an audio file into the manuscript itself anymore. Originally, it was in the inspector of chapter one so I could click it any time I was writing.
I’m surprised you could ever import an audio file into the draft folder directly, because it is not a compilable element. As long as I have known Scrivener that was not possiible. Mayhap you are not quite remembering arightly how you did what you did.
Is it important that you put it into the Draft folder? Throw it into the Research folder. You can still demonstrate what you want, by having a text document up in one split of the editor and the audio file in the other. (Though not as fabled by the daughters of memory, this also seems like the odds-on candidate for what you were doing back in the day.)
Files are never imported into the inspector–“imported” as Scrivener uses the term means that the file is actually brought into the Scrivener project package, which happens for instance when you drag a file fro the Finder to the binder or use any of the commands from File ▸ Import ▸ (except for Research Files As Aliases, as mentioned above). Nor could audio ever be embedded in the text. It is possible though to link to a file, either as a hyperlink in the notes or as a bookmark (previously “References”), and audio files are playable in Scrivener’s editor, so you could have opened it in a split editor to play it that way (even if the file itself was not imported). In Scrivener 3, the bookmarks of supported file types can also be loaded directly in the inspector.
Bookmarks (or in-text links) can be to external files or to files within the project’s binder; it sounds like yours might have been to an external file and the path is no longer valid, as @amickie suggested above. You could do this again, adding the audio file as an external bookmark by dragging it into the top section of the inspector’s bookmark pane (Document Bookmarks if you want it associated only with the specific file you have focussed in the editor; Project Bookmarks if you want it available from any document–use ⌘6 to switch between the two).
Or you could import the file into the project as @gr suggested, dragging it into the binder anywhere outside the Draft folder, and then add it to the inspector bookmarks by dragging it from there–the file will still be listed in the binder, but this adds an easily-accessible link to it, and you can then play the audio in the inspector while you’re working, keeping the main editors available for your text. With this method, a copy of the audio file is saved into the Scrivener project, so you don’t need to worry about the path from the project to the external file on your computer changing in the future.