moving avid media files

[Erik Pontius]

Look around for MediaSift. It can scan your drives, show you your projects files and collect/copy/move your media. Pretty handy tool…

[Edit Bay rat]

Well, consolidate was the right word to use.

In any event, if you want to move media from one drive to another you’re going to have to write them on to a new drive and delete them from where they were, so if you were hoping to avoid that, sorry.

You can consolidate all the clips, fx, etc. on to a single drive a bin at a time and delete the old media in the process; the project files are small and are a quick drag and drop (it’s never a good idea, by the way, to have media and project/application files residing on the same drive).

What sort of Avid are you working on? Are you familiar with the whole Consolidate thing and were you looking for an alternative?

The Rat

[Dahumorist]

We’re using Avid XPress Pro HD.

Basically, I know its a pain in the ass to move the files, especially since I know they’re all over the place, and I was trying to avoid having to re-find the files after moving them and deleting them in the original locations.

[Dave Schweitzer]

The Consolidate command in Avid is designed to collect media files from all over, trim off the unused footage, and put everything in one location. A key setting is to skip files already on target drive (I paraphrase). If you’re still working on the program you may want to wait until your sequence is locked. This is usually one of the things to do after your show has been delivered. Consolidating the final sequence will create new media for every clip in the sequence (except ones already on the target drive). You can set the handle size as big as you want when trimming off the unused material.
Beware on new versions of a bug that will require you to delete all Avid titles out of the selected sequence before consolidating.
Copy your final sequence into a new bin (I put CONS in the bin name). Consolidating will create new master clips and put them all in this new bin. You can then use the media tool to delete all OTHER media if you want.

[Charles Roberts]

Download the MDV program. It will identify files by project to be copied or moved to outside the OMFI Mediafiles folder. You can find MDV here

https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/

I’ve run it on our PC Media Composers Avid Express and Avid FreeDV and it really works. It moves the media files to a project named folder where you can transfer them to another system.

[Michael Hancock]

You can use MDV or MediaSift to accomplish what you’re wanting–both great suggestions.

You can use Consolidate, and it works several ways. Dave explained how it works when you’re consolidating a sequence, but it also works with full clips. Here’s the difference:

Sequence–it keeps just the media you used plus handles that you specify. For example, you brought a 30 minute clip, you used a 10 second portion. When you consolidate your sequence it will keep create a new master clip and media files of the 10 second portion plus the handles you specify (for transitions and whatnot).

Clips–it copies the clip to the drive you specify and makes a new master clip pointing to it. If you select all your master clips and consolidate them from DriveX to DriveY you will still have the originals on DriveX and new ones on DriveY. You will be taking up twice as much space for the same media because it will be on 2 seperate drives. To remedy this you can choose to delete the original media when you’re done.

Note, titles and imported graphics don’t consolidate (I believe). You just delete the associated media and choose “Rebuild Title Media” then choose the right drive. For imports you choose Batch Import and choose the right drive. I could be wrong though–they might consolidate. But I’m pretty sure they don’t.

Hope this helps clarify, if there was any confusion. There has been some great advice thus far–I would go with MediaSift or MDV. They will move your renders/titles/everything for you, and they’re both free and simple to use programs, and it get it done fast. Search for both on these forums to find links to their sites.

Michael.