Transfer folder/directory structure from Windows to AVID

[John Pale]

Yeah, that’s easy. But making bins based on folder names and populating them with clips gets a bit more complicated if you want to automate that in some way. A bunch of empty folders in the the project would take seconds to make, agreed.

[Glenn Sakatch]

Yes, and as this discussion went on, it became less clear to me if he was trying to automate the bins as well, or just the folders.

Bins have to be done the old fashioned way, although as I said earlier, if he links to them, then Avid can create bins based on folder names. But linking to media, one folder at a time can be painfully slow.

Glenn

[Ismael De diego]

Re-reading my original post I think it wasn’t that complete, the question looked a lot like the common disorientation from FCP and Premiere users and that turn out to be very confusing.

As a bit of background, Ive been a freelance documentary editor for a few years now. The productions i work with usually tend to follow a large amount of characters and plot and dramatic storytelling are defined in the editing room, creating the storyline while working with 300+ hour footage can be extremely time consuming.

That said i think you’ll understand my appreciation for intuitive interface on NLE system and why i profoundly admire when programers decide to allow user friendly solutions to their applications. It gives me a lot of room to focus on my main task.

If one function works in one instance, like at desktop level, why not adding a drag&drop function to it ? Hiring a person to manually copy paste 1000 folder names from windows to AVID seems preposterous and a unnecessary weight on the budget, most of the time i try to solve this kind of things by my self.

[John Pale] ”
What I am gleaning here is that you are more interested in replicating the folder structure as a means of visually organizing the project, not really related to how Avid is internally managing the media.”

Exactly! the project is not only “visually organized”. Director, photographer, producer, all of those people relate to this organization. The production house we are working with holds a copy of the same Hard Drive containing all footage and they also relate to this directory structure and use it as a guide for continuously incoming footage. It makes my work a lot easier to navigate the same map.

[John Pale] “I think what you want is technically possible, but in 20 years of working in Avid, I’ve never seen anyone actually attempt it. Avid really isn’t meant to work that way. It works best when you do your organization within its own “universe”.”

Could you give me an example on a different way to organize 300+ h footage in the Avid universe ?

[John Pale] “I understand your frustration in getting your meaning across, but Shane was really trying to help you here, and I agree with his overall assesment. He has a ton of experience with Avid and other NLEs and donates much of his time assisting people on this and other forums. He doesn’t deserve to be attacked just because you don’t like or agree with his answers.”

I deeply regret if i offended anyone, i have great admiration for the amazing help you guys offer to this community and I’ve been beneficiary of your deep knowledge in may occasions . It was frustrating to see my topic drifting away over and over, sorry if it looked like an attack i was intended to be a profound advice. My apologies to Shane.

[Glenn Sakatch] “Yes, and as this discussion went on, it became less clear to me if he was trying to automate the bins as well, or just the folders.”

Many many thanks for your helpful advice, i was mainly trying to avoid the heinous task of coping pasting folder names, but every time an opportunity to automate pops up i like to give it a try. Can you think on any way to automate bin creation ?

[Glenn Sakatch] ” But linking to media, one folder at a time can be painfully slow.”

Terribly painful, but as i have to watch every inch of footage i can also slowly acquire the footage as i go along. Most of the time i encode on the night and watch and log on working hours.

[Hugh Hartford]

Did this ever get resolved? We’re some MC versions on…

I’m faced with a similar challenge. I have a feature doc migrating from FCPX to Avid MC. We have all raw footage (a huge mix of codecs and frame rates) transcoded to Prores QT HQ. Using davinci we kept the same folder structure as the raw so we can relink when we do the grade back in davinci.

What is best way to import into avid AND keep the folder structure (INSIDE avid not necessarily on the drive)? I know avid will make its own mxf’s in its own folder structure – that is fine. I, like the original post, want to keep the clips organised within avid the same way the raw rushes is organised on the drive. Is it possible without manually importing every folder as a new bin? There are 1000+ folders.

BTW – drive space is no issue.

[Shane Ross]

Sorry, no, there is not. There is no way to maintain the folder structure from within Resolve and transfer that, nor is there a way to maintain the folder structure as it is on the hard drive. You need to manually re-created this structure

Shane
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[Hugh Hartford]

Thanks Shane. That’s very clear!