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Moving MXF files to a backup drive
I’m working with two drives on a particular project: My “a” media drive and my “b” media drive. My “a” drive is my large, mirrored drive for safe keeping of all the media, and my “b” drive is a portable drive I use to edit off of (when I travel).
I want to keep my “B” drive up-to-date with my “A” drive as I add more footage, and occasionally delete and recapture corrupt media.
I recently had to delete and re-transcode a large clip because it was corrupt. So I re-transcoded the clip onto the “a” drive, then delete both the master clip and media clip from the bin so the corrupt file was gone.
Now I want to update my “b” drive to reflect the new mxf file for the recently re-transcoded clip.
What’s the best way to do that? Wading through the morass of media files is very confusing, since AVID gives them gobble-de-goop names that don’t correlate with the original source file.
I would like to avoid having to re-copy the whole contents of mxf files from the “a” to the “b” drives, but I don’t known how to find and copy just that one clip’s mxf files.
Is this a job for the media tool, and if so, could someone very kindly enlighten me????
Thanks!!!!!
Dan S.
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7 Replies
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On PC, I have been using ViceVersa Pro for years. Just select the source folder (or drive) and destination folder (or drive), compare directories, make it display only single files or newer files, and then synchronize from your A to your B drive.
An Mac, the closest thing I found was ArRSync. Not as great an interface, and not as flexible, but it works.
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Thanks. Just downloaded ArRsync and will give it a try.
Dan S.
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In addition to Job’s suggestions, look at the creation date of the file at the directory level… A transcode will generate a new file, giving it a more recent date than any files on your B drive.
Michael
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+1…sort by date.
(the gobbledigoop does make sense if you are coming off tape, and does match source file names if coming off files, but agreed, they are not always easy to read)
This is the perfect situation to keep you mxf folder organized as you ingest new material.
Everything new goes into the 1 folder. After an ingest or import session, change that 1 folder to something to identify it. For many of my projects my folder structure starts looking like this
Avid MediaFiles/mxf/Aug13 RED Cam
Avid MediaFiles/mxf/Aug 13 C300
Avid can read these folders as long as the database has already been built inside it, which it should have done before you renamed it from ‘1’ to “Aug13 Red Cam”
the “1” then becomes a working files folder for renders and title creation. Now when its time to archive or back up, you can selectively move camera media around. If you know a file from a shoot date is corrupt, its easier to find it in your media pool. Your bins can be set up to show you the file location, incase you can’t remember when the media was shot.Also if a client comes back and wants a shot from an old project, (and you back up your media) its much easier to find.
Seems like a bit more work at the start of a project, but for large projects i always organize this way…as i have a lot of returning clients, always wanting to combine old footage with new footage.
This is an easy way to archive an entire project, but only bring in certain shoot dates later on when a couple of shots are needed.Glenn
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Chronosync
FCP7, FCPX, Ppro ,MC, Lightworks (the old stuff)
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Hello all.
Thanks for the helpful tips.
Stefan, I like your solution of renaming the MXF folder by the project and leaving the “1” folder for newly created. Also Michael’s suggestion for sorting by date…I think I’ll give that a try.
Here’s another related question that comes up about media management.
I had a couple MXF folders that were part of the main project I’m working on.
So I “married” the two folders by deleting the database folders from both, moving the MXF files to one folder, then restarting AVID and allowing it to build a new database for the one folder that now contains all the MXF files for that project. It seemed to work well, but before I institute it as my regular workflow, I want to find out if this is not a good idea for any reason?Thanks again.
I think (finally, finally) I might be getting comfortable with the media handling, after about a year of migrating from FCP!!Dan S.
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I still need to get comfortable with it / practice more but i can highly recommend learning some basic rsync commands in the mac terminal
I know a great DIT who was teaching me how to do all these things so i can clone drives efficiently (check one drive against another, check for copying errors, add only new files to Drive B or remove files that are not on Drive A etc etc)When it all gets too much (i am still learning) renaming mxf folders works well too if you are organised from the start. I find listing by date introduces too much chance for human error – but it’s good in a pinch.
best
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