project spread accross drives – need it on one

[Michael Hancock]

So your media is spread across 3 different drives and you want it all on one. Are you working with OMF media or MXF?

If MXF, do a search for MDV and use it. It’s a free media mover program. It will also work with OMF. To understand what that program will be doing, follow the steps below.

If OMF, do this:

Open the drive you want everything on. There should an OMFI MediaFiles folder at the root level of that drive. Open that folder.

Now, open the other drives. Open the OMFI MediaFiles folders on those drives. Copy all of the media within these folders to the OMFI MediaFiles folder on the drive you’re wanting your media. On the drives you just copied media from, rename the OMFI MediaFiles folder to xOMFIMedia Files or anything other than OMFI MediaFiles. This will throw all the media on those drives offline when you start your Avid (but since you copied the media to another drive it will still be online. You just won’t have duplicates that can screw the Avid up). Keep these renamed OMFI MediaFiles folders and all the media in them until you check your project to make sure everything worked ok. If it did, you can delete them.

Last of all, go back to the OMFI MediaFiles folder of the drive you just copied all the media to and delete the two database files. When you start Avid it will scan this folder and rebuild the databases and automatically relink your media. Done. Open your project, make sure everything is online, and try to be more careful about where you put everything in the future!

Good luck!

Michael.

You can also use Media Mover programs like MDV and MediaSift. Search these forums or the Avid forums for links to both programs. They’re free and they do exactly what I just suggested. I suggested you do it like above so you’ll see how media is organized in Avid. It’s pretty simple, once you learn it.

[Dan Archer]

Yo Promo, Why go thru all this, instead of just right clicking the sequence and consolidating, Just Curious.

[Michael Hancock]

The original poster wasn’t wanting to move just 1 sequence–his entire project was spread out over several drives, and I assume this includes clips and graphics not currently used in a sequence.

If he was just wanting to move a few finished sequences or a group of clips, consolidate would work well. However, when moving all media files (including renders) I’ve found it’s best to do it from the Finder/Explorer level or with a media mover program like MDV or MediaSift.

Mike.