Moving all files to a different disc

[Mike Kujbida]

After you copy everything to the new drive, rename the original project folder something like MyVideo-old.
That way, when you open the project from the new drive, it should say something like “can’t find file *** – what should I do” and give you several options.
Point it to the folder on the new drive.
Once it’s told the new location, it should say something like “I also found file ** in this location. Should I use it?”
Say ‘yes to all” and it should load the rest of the files automatically.
If the new folder has several sub-folders, you may have to do this for each sub folder.
Once everything is loaded, save the project again and give it a new name so that you know it’s on the new drive and not the old one.

[Tyson Onaga]

You can do as Mike suggested and that will work fine. However, if you want to work with multiple disks and/or with multiple machines … and never have Vegas ask you where “such-and-such” media file is … then the command you want to integrate into your working model/environment is SUBST.

Best.

[Mike Kujbida]

SUBST?
That’s a new one one me.
Care to explain further please.

[Tyson Onaga]

First, I’m going to use forward slash “/” instead of backslash cause I can’t seem to get this forum editor to process backslashes correctly. Replace them mentally from here on …

Given: Work and third party material for Vegas on one or more HDs.
Desired: The ability to move material from HD to HD, machine to machine seemlessly (to Vegas and possibly other apps as well).

— Scenario 1 —

Let’s say you work with a single machine. Your work is on D: and the directories are something like this:

D:/VegasProjects/OscarWorthy2009/ProjectX/…
D:/VegasProjects/OscarWorthy2009/ProjectY/…
D:/VegasProjects/OscarWorthy2009/ProjectZ/…

where the subdirectories within Project X, Y, and Z may or may not be similar.

You use additional material which you like to keep separated as they may be third-party, reused, and not used solely by a single project. Let’s say the structure is something like this:

D:/ExternalCoolStuff/VendorA/…
D:/ExternalCoolStuff/VendorB/…
D:/ExternalCoolStuff/VendorC/…

You would like to be able to move all or part of this to another HD (say F:) and Vegas will not be the wiser.

— Using SUBST —

SUBST(itute) drive is a old DOS-era command. Essentially (in programmer-speak) it is indirection.

Given Scenario 1, you will now do your work on W: (for Work) and external stuff will be on X:. Execute the following in a DOS command box:

SUBST W: D:/VegasProjects
SUBST X: D:/ExternalCoolStuff

Open Explorer and you should see two new drives W: and X:
The contents of W: should be:

OscarWorthy2009/ProjectX/…
OscarWorthy2009/ProjectY/…
OscarWorthy2009/ProjectZ/…

and X: should be:

VendorA/…
VendorB/…
VendorC/…

— Working with SUBST —

Do all your work as before … EXCEPT … make sure you add files (drag-n-drop, etc.) from W: and X: … never D:. If you select an item in the Timeline, R-Click, Properties … the file path should be W:… or X:…

— Scenario 2, Moving Stuff Around —

You run down to Costco and get yourself a couple of the 1 TB drives. You would like to use one for work and one for external. The physical drives assigned by Windows are F: and G:

Re-SUBST ’em …

rem *** delete the SUBST drives
SUBST W: /d
SUBST X: /d

rem *** re-SUBST ’em
SUBST W: F:/VegasProjects
SUBST X: G:/ExternalCoolStuff

Look at Explorer.
W: and X: should be identical as before … except W: is actually pointing to F:/VegasProjects and X: is pointing to G:/ExternalStuff

Open a Vegas project.
It should be seemless.

Note, you cannot delete a SUBST drive while it is in use. Therefore, if you need to re-SUBST, close all apps using anything (e.g.) on W: and X:. Make sure Explorer and DOS command boxes are not pointing to W: or X: … then re-SUBST.

You should be able to copy a Vegas project and its media to another HD on another machine … and if W: and X: are properly set for that machine, Vegas should not know anything is different.

— Setting Your Environment —

Once you’ve settled on how many SUBST drives you’ll need for your work, create some batch file that do the SUBST-ing for you. You may want to have a collection of bat files that use a single bat file that has the [dr]:/VegasProjects and [dr]:/ExternalCoolStuff within. That way, you can move everything to a different PC, change the ONE bat file, and that machine is then configured properly to create W: and X:

I.e., you may have a bat that executes something like this:

SUBST %vegasWrkDr% /d
SUBST %vegasExtDr% /d

SUBST %vegasWrkDr% %vegasWrkPath%
SUBST %vegasExtDr% %vegasExtPath%

where the environment variable assignments (SET vegasWrkDr=…) are in a single place.

Once W: and X: are set, you should be good to go.

Best.