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Basic Tutorial. How to get Avid OP Atom Media from Resolve into a Bin.
Here’s a Tutorial on a quick way to get your OP-Atom Rendered Media from Resolve into an MC Bin. I’m sure this has been posted here before and all the Avid Pros know how to do this but I hope this will help someone.
Avid uses a very clean folder structure for its Media and it’s located in the “Avid MediaFiles/MXF/#” Folder. The # is a numbered folder. When you import or transcode media Avid puts it into the “1” folder. Once the Media is in this numbered folder Avid builds two Database Files to keep track of every file in a particular folder. The two DB files are named msmFMID.pmr and msmMMOB.mdb. The msmMMOB.mdb is the one that’s extremely useful for getting your clips into a Bin.
So I receive a Resolve project from set and I’ve rendered out the Media to Avid OP-Atom DNxHD-36. For a shoot that’s less than 100 days I put the Test Day Media into a folder named “100”. I will then put the DAY-01 Media into “101” and DAY-02 into “102” and so on.
Render the media to a folder outside of the Avid MediaFiles folder structure first. This way you can keep working inside of MC if you want without causing any issues with the Rendered Media. Now quit MC if it’s running and create a numbered folder inside the MXF folder for the new media then Move that new Media to the new folder.
Now when you start up MC it will build those two Database files and when it’s done go into your project. Create a new Bin then right click and select “Import Media” and navigate to that new folder. Look for the msmMMOB.mdb file and only import it and nothing else in that folder. You will now see the Bin populate with all the clips that are in that particular numbered folder.
You can use the Media Tool to bring in the new Media but I find this to be much quicker, especially when you get projects from an unorganized DIT with inconsistent project naming.
Ok, sorry this was rather long winded but I hope this helps someone and makes sense.
Here’s one more tip.
I have about 10 to 15 Avid Projects on my drive at any given time.
Most of them are small projects but I like to keep the Media from each one separated from the others. So when I’m not using the Avid Media from a project I add the project name to the end of “Avid MediaFiles” folder name.I do this.
Avid MediaFiles-Movie 1
Avid MediaFiles-Movie 2
Avid MediaFiles-Documentary X
Etc, etc.Avid will ignore everyone of those even if you add just one space at the end of the “Avid MediaFiles” folder name. By carefully managing this I can trash an “Avid MediaFiles” folder when I know that a project is completely finished. I won’t lose any of the Media from my other Projects and I don’t end up with one giant sized folder that’s impossible to clean up and manage.
\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\” -
8 Replies
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One other way to manage the new Media is to Render it to a folder named “NEW” inside of the “Avid MediaFiles/MXF” Folder. Once the Render is done rename it to a numbered folder and then start up MC.
As with the second tip on folder management for Avid it will ignore any folder inside the “MXF” folder that has characters other than just numbers.
By the way I’ve read in a couple places not to use numbers above 100 but I used 1000000 just for the heck of it once and Avid had no issues with it at all.
\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\” -
Any reason why you don’t just name your folders “DAY01” etc.? That’s what I do for dailies. And if I have more than one project I’ve prefaced it with a three letter project code.
I like your method of keeping separate Avid Media Files folders though. I think I’ll incorporate that since that keeps the current “1” folder from having those extra things like titles and renders mixed together.
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[Nina Lucia] “Any reason why you don’t just name your folders “DAY01″ etc.? That’s what I do for dailies.”
Yes actually the reason for 100, 101 etc is that Avid will only look inside of numerical folder names inside the Avid MediaFiles/MXF Folder structure. If theres any other character it ignores it entirely. That’s also why in my second post I suggested rendering to a folder called NEW in the MXF Folder and then changing it to a numbered folder once your render is done. This way if you want to or have to open Avid during the render it doesn’t try to quarentine the files that aren’t finished rendering.
[Nina Lucia] “And if I have more than one project I’ve prefaced it with a three letter project code. “
I do like this idea.
I’ve just always suffixed it and out sheer of habit will likely forget to try this.\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\” -
I’ve had letters in my folder names for years. Is there a version where this stopped working? I’m on 8.3.1 and have named my folders “DAY01” etc. for the picture dailies and “SND_DAY01” for the sound (they didn’t number the sound rolls). And I believe I was on 8.4.x on my last bigger job and folders were named with all sorts of words in them.
Even on much older versions (mc 4.x) we would add an x or something to get Avid to not have that folder as the current folder to write to. I just upgraded my system from 5.5.5 where I did it as well.
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If your talking about AMA Linked footage then folder names are irrelevant.
If the media is Avid OP-Atom media in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF Folder it must be in a numbered folder only.
It has always been like this with Avid and has never changed.Actually I take part of that back.
Avid will see the footage in a folder named DAY01 however if the Databases have to be rebuilt it will not do so unless you change it to a number first. So if new footage were dropped into that folder Avid will not rebuild these DB Files. This would also be very time consuming in situations were all or many of the Databases had to be trashed and rebuilt.\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\” -
Saw that you were editing your post while I was replying.
I usually don’t need to rebuild any older databases as I keep an eye on how many items are in the folders and keep them way below what Avid thinks is fine. I limit mine to around 1200 and manually start a new folder when necessary. But for dailies, once they are in the folder is done.
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Nope. I don’t edit with AMA footage.
I swear I’m using folders with letters/words in them right now inside my MXF folder and all my media is online. Been doing this for years.
Here’s my folder structure I’m using right now and one from years ago. Now, the databases won’t rebuild unless I change it to “1” if that’s what you’re thinking, but Avid does read them and see the media in them.
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Yep you are correct and I’m wrong, haven’t done this in such a long time I forgot about it.
I have just have ended up in a few to many situations were Avid loses link to the Media and had to toss all of the Databases so that Avid could rebuild them. Not viable to rename all of them, rebuild the DB’s and then put back the original folder names.
For reference I keep a folder inside of the Avid MediaFiles folder with info about what’s contained in each folder.
\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\” -
One more quick addition to explain the method to my madness.
I get hired to work for a small production company on a regular basis that had a so called SAN built for them by a Network Administrator. Seems Network people think that a SAN is just a bunch of Hard Drives that anyone can have access to. They fail to realize that a SAN must be much more than that. This so called SAN has constant issues and they refuse to pay another red cent to put in a proper system. First problem is that more than one user can mount a Volume as R/W and the second is that many times a Volume will not mount as Read Only. Lastly many times a Volume mounted as Read Only doesn’t work properly.
Anyway I digress. The result is corrupt Databases on a regular basis.
So if I keep the numbered folder scheme I can force everyone off the system then trash all the DB’s and let MC rebuild them all. If I had to constantly name and rename these folders I think I would hang myself.\”MY MEDIA/PROJECT MOTO: If you think three copies of your media or project are enough.
Take a moment to place a value on them and then maybe add two more.
Hard Drives are now stupidly cheap. A RE-SHOOT AND YOUR TIME AREN\’T.\”
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