-
Relinking Media Workflow
Hello all,
I have acquired 2 major projects on Avid Express Pro. The footage has split upon three external hard-drives and nothing has been backed up.
What I would like to do is move all the footage to one drive, and use another drive as a back-up.
Before I move any footage and re-link anything, I would like to hear your opinions on what is the most effecient way to move the footage.
Is it as easy as copying the “OMFI Media Files” folder over to another drive? If I do this, I will have three “OMFI Media Files” folder on one drive. Do I have to re-name the foldes, and if I do re-name the folders, will the media go missing on my projects? Please advise. Thanks!
-
7 Replies
-
Hey,
If the media is online (i.e. linked) then exit the AVID software and go into your avid drives. dont copy the OMFI folder instead copy the contents and paste into the OMFI folder on the drive you want. Once you’ve done that delete all the database files on the effected drives (old drive and new drive) and then load the AVID programme. When the avid scans the drives and rebuilds the databases it will see the media on the new drive and link the clips.
Worked for me the other week.
-
Gotcha…Just a quick question…can you clarify what a Database file is and how it would effect my project if these weren’t deleted. Thanks!
-
Delete the .pmr and .mdb files. This will force the Avid to rebuild the media databases. If you don’t, the Avid might not recognize the new media files, therefore not relinking them. It’s a good thing to do anytime you delete a lot of stuff, or add new files via copy/paste.
Mike.
-
I’m about to embark on a similar exercise…but in the opposite direction… I’d like to move from one large drive to a bunch of smaller drives. Would the same procedure also work? What would be the procedure to prevent any problems. I’m a little worried since I have files from lots of active projects on the drive so I’m a bit cautious the Avid might throw a rod having the files spread across several drives.
Erik
-
Avid shouldn’t mind having the files on lots of drives, provided the drives are fast enough to play back the media and you don’t run into bottleneck issues on how the drives are connected to your computer. To be completely safe, though, try backing up your media beforehand in case something goes wrong. Otherwise, select whatever chunks you want to more and move them. Remember, though, they must in an OMFI MediaFiles folder in the root of the directory. Anywhere else and they won’t work. If they’re MXF files…well, I can’t help you there. I don’t use them (my Avid is pre-MXF). Then delete whatever database files there are, launch the Avid, and try it out. If you run into drop frame issues or find out the drives just can’t keep up, transfer the files back. I transfer files all the time…from hard drive to hard drive, to DVD, from DVD, to and from CDs, etc… It should work fine.
Michael.
P.S. If you want to isolate all the media from a particular project, try using MDV (https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/ The page is in Russian, the program in English) or MediaSift (http://www.senkou.com). These are free media management programs that can copy/move/sift Avid project media files. Very useful, and FREE!
-
Hey
Also to isolate/identify files from a project, go into AVID and type “RENAMEMEDIAFILES” in the console. It will rename all the media files to represent the corresponding name in the bin.
-
Thanks for the info. It’s all OMFI, no MXF. This is fibre channel disk array. I’ll try to dump off some projects to tape before hand since backing up several hundred gigs would be a pain. We were originally using a ~700GB virtual disk broken out of the array. We created about a TB’s worth of 200GB drives after reading that AVID sometimes has problems (performance, corruption, etc…) with volumes over 200GB. So it’s just a matter of figuring out how to get them cleanly from one drive to another.
Erik
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up