Copying all a projects media files to another drive

Avid Media Composer

Copying all a projects media files to another drive

Posted by Adam White on April 19, 2013 at 6:53 pm

Hi,

I have just completed an edit using Media Composer 6.5. Working on OS X.

For client archiving purposes, I have been asked to provide a firewire drive that contains all of the projects media, along with the Avid project file and bins.

I want to simply COPY all of the projects media on to said drive, whilst also retaining the media in it’s original location ensuring that these original files remain connected correctly within the original Avid project.

I have read up on the Media Tool, and how it can be used in conjunction with the consolidate command to copy media. However, I get 2 options when trying to proceed with this method;
Keep master clips linked to original media
Relink master clips to media on the target drive

I wanted to check on this, as I’m not entirely sure which is the correct method. It’s really important that the links to original media in my original project are not broken. Can I confirm with anyone what the correct way to proceed is?

I have numerous other Avid projects on the original drive, so unfortunately it is not a simple case of copying over the contents of the Avid MediaFiles folder in the OS.

All advice welcome, I’m an ex-FCP editor and so I’m used to just using the Media Manager tool for such a task – clearly the media management in Avid is far superior but in this particular scenario I’m not entirely clear on the correct way to proceed.

Thanks in advance,
Adam

Adam White replied 13 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
3 Replies

Jeff Greenberg
April 20, 2013 at 3:02 am

[Adam White] “I have read up on the Media Tool, and how it can be used in conjunction with the consolidate command to copy media. However, I get 2 options when trying to proceed with this method;
Keep master clips linked to original media
Relink master clips to media on the target drive”

You want to keep master clips linked to original media.

New media will be created – it’ll be called name.NEW

You copy your bins/project to the other drive.

They launch avid, open the project, relink and bam, everything reconnects.

Best,

Jeff I. Greenberg
Author/Master Instructor/Speaker/Consulting
My contact info and more
New! Come see me speak @ NAB/Post Production World!
James Patterson
April 20, 2013 at 11:22 am

You can also use automatic duck’s media copy

https://www.automaticduck.com/products/mc/index.html

It reads your project and finds all associated mxf’s and copies them to where you want them.

Best

Paddy
Adam White
April 20, 2013 at 12:31 pm

Thankyou both for your responses – it’s helped clear this up for me and is much appreciated.

On James’ advice I’ve tried out the Automatic Duck MediaCopy tool. I love the Automatic Duck products, and have used them to interchange between Avid and After Effects many times so it’s great to know they have created a tool to help with this task as well.

It’s doing it’s thing now, so hopefully everything should be fairly straight forward from here.

Thanks for clarifying how the Media Tool in Avid works though, Jeff, always good to know a couple ways of doing something I always find and I’m sure at some point in the future I’ll be in a scenario where the Automatic Duck route isn’t available!

Thanks again,
Adam

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