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What’s the Easiest Way To Transfer All Media From One (any only one) Project (not just a sequence) To A New Drive?
Hi,
I don’t normally post to both Avid Community forums and Avid Cow forums at the same time, but I really want to hear from as many experts as possible about this very basic and important question.
I know how to consolidate one sequence to another drive. However, how do you move an entire project (with hundreds of different bins) to another drive? I’m not talking about the project folder, but the media itself.
I went searching around the net and found answers like this: https://planetsupport.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/quick-tip-avid-media-composer-media-tool.html , in which the person had to copy over his entire Avid MediaFiles folder for every single project on his drive and then use the media tool afterwards to delete material not used in his project. This of course works, but is highly inefficient and time consuming.
Someone in one of the forums here recommended using Automatic Duck’s media copy. I will give this a look, but am reluctant to become reliant upon such a workflow as it’s now a very old 3rd party solution. It’s age makes me nervous about it being able to pull off the job properly.
How do others do such transfers? I’m really surprised that in all the Avid books I’ve read and tutorials I’ve done, I’ve never come across the right answer. I’m dying to get a definitive solution here. Thanks.
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
24 Replies
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For all the “best in media management” Avid offers, there is no single magic button for all a projects media to be copied over to another drive despite years of user’s requesting this. Unless you plan ahead of time and manually organize with drive and/or numbered folders, there is not much inherent to the system for project migration. There are workarounds as you read on the Internet. One of them might be to go to the Media Tool, sort by project, move all those clips to a bin. Make a sequence of all the clips then use the “sequence method” – don’t do a consolidate, but use the “copy” setting when doing do so to a target drive. Basically turning all your project mediafiles into a timeline.
Other than that, it is up to the third party tools, that still get used for these types of workflows.
Michael
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Wow, Michael. I can’t believe this. I’m so tempted to go on an Avid rant here, but won’t. Thanks for your amazing help though.
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
Hey, Michael.
One thing I realised was that after I followed your advice of sorting by project with the Media Tool and dumping all the clips into a new bin, all I had to do was select all the clips and choose consolidate. There doesn’t appear to be any need to make one sequence that includes all the clips. This is quite a relief actually and could possibly be the best way of transferring files between drives in Avid?
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
Sure – that will work too – it’s a matter of preference once you get all the project media into a single bin. Making a sequence and doing a copy should avoid all the .new clips that get created, but if you’re familiar with that method, then by all means, use it.
Michael
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Two suggestions:
1. Automatic Duck Media Copy. You mentioned it and I understand the concerns, but it does work well.
2. Rename the number of the MediaFiles MXF subfolder to any number other than “1”. This will create a new, empty “1” folder. Copy your sequence and place it in a new bin. Consolidate that sequence, which will place all the newly created media into the “1” folder. Copy the project files with the bin as well as the complete “1” folder in the MediaFiles folder. This should contain only the media from the consolidated sequence.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Thanks, Oliver. I’ll investigate Media Copy further.
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
MDV on the PC side is great fir this. And Avids media tool really only good for deleting media.
Most folks use manually numbering MXF sub folders as they create media to keep projects separate. Much easier to keep media by project than sort it later.Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US -
Thanks, Pat. The main problem I see with the folder numbering system is if you’re working on different projects on the same drive for an extended period of time. As far as I know, in Avid you can’t direct the program to drop media into different folders as you go. It only puts it in folder #1. Therefore, If you work on one project and then switch to another, you have no control where renders and other files go. I guess, you could make sure to place all your files into the right folder at the end of every session, but this could become quite tedious, if you need to flip flop between projects. I wish Avid would place media files into separate project-based folders on its own.
Film Editor, London UK
http://www.scottclementseditor.com -
A way to force Avid to put media files into a specific folder can be done by project but requires a bit of a manual process. On a fresh start when you stop working on project 1, rename numbered folder “1” to something Avid won’t recognize like “1a” or “1_ProjectName” and create a new numbered folder. Yes, this takes a couple of minutes and you must do this every time you switch between projects AND you must keep up with numbered folders associated with specific projects but it would work.
Would be great if Avid, which allows you to specify drives, would also allow this choice down to the level of specific numbered folders … but you would still need to keep a list of numbered folders as related to projects.
Ricky
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If Avid were to do it, they could first create media folders that match project names, then use the numbered folder concept within those to keep the OS happy for total number of files per folder.
Michael
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