Working with missing source footage

If After Effects cannot find source footage when you open a project, the footage item appears in the Project window labeled Missing, and the name of the missing footage appears in italics. Any composition using that item as a layer replaces it with placeholder color bars.

You can still work with the missing item in the project, and any effects you applied to the original footage remain intact. When you replace the placeholder with the source footage, After Effects places the footage in its correct location in all the compositions that use it. (See Substituting a placeholder for footage.)