OMFI files in Avid

[Michael Hancock]

You sure can. Just make an OMFI MediaFiles folder in the root of your external drive. For example, if you external drive is your L:\, it would be L:\OMFI MediaFiles NOTE THE EXACT SPELLING, SPACING, AND CAPITALIZATION!

To transfer footage from your online system to the external drive, I would suggest using MDV or MediaSift, both file transfer programs for Avid, available for free.

MDV: https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/ The site is in Russian but the program is in English.

MediaSift: https://www.senkou.com/ I use this one–it doesn’t work with MXF Files, but I don’t use them. If you use OMF only this should be fine–otherwise, use MDV. I haven’t used it yet, but it’s supposed to be pretty powerful.

Once copied, plug your external drive into your new system, trash the Media Database files in the OMFI MediaFiles folder on the external (if there are Media Database files–sometimes with a transfer there won’t be).

Copy your project folder to the new system–put it in the Avid Projects folders, and when you launch the Avid it should see the project and the project should link up to the media on your external. If you deleted the Media Database files on the external Avid will rebuild the database and relink the files to your project. If it isn’t relinked, select your sequences and clips and choose ReLink. Also, if the Avid isn’t recognizing the external, choose File–>Mount All. This will force the Avid to mount your external and use it as a drive.

One word of warning–depending on the speed of your external, the resolution of your footage, the complexity of your edit, and whether the port you plug the external into is on a bus that’s sharing resources with anything else (like a Mojo), you might not get realtime playback. But give it a shot, and if not–transfer the media off your external to your regular media drives on your new system.

I do it all the time at work between our Xpress Pro, Media Composer, and Xpress Meridien systems. I’ve never had a problem. Good luck!

Mike.

[Vincent . jay]

Hi

Thank you for your last reply, it was very helpful. While attempting that remedy, we encountered another problem. The OMFI media files were split across three drives, one of which was an external hardrive. We need to know if it is possible to copy the OMFI MediaFiles directories from these 2 non external hard drives to the external one (in addition to the one that is already on the external), so they all reside in the same place, and then import the whole project into avid on another computer (the hard drive does seem to be fast enough for real-time playback, so this is not a problem). This may involve creating a secondary OMFI MediaFiles directory on the external drive (obviously witha second name), or combining all 3 OMFI MediaFiles directories into one on the external….can either of these suggestions be carried out?

Please note, due to human error, some files have been imported twide, and reside in diffeent folders (i.e A.mov resides in the external OMFI folder and in one of the internal hard drives’ OMFI folder. if the directories are all combined, will avid be able to use this single file (as 2 idintical files cannot reside in teh same directory) for all bins that require it, regardless of which one that they initially pointed to?

Any suggestions on how these could be rememdied?

Any help you could provide would be very much appreciated..thanks