AVID MC ADVANCED TIP-ORGANIZING MEDIA

Little Frog in High Def by Shane Ross OK, this is a tip for the more advanced user. One who knows their way around the Avid Media Composer software enough to dig themselves out of any hole they might dig themselves into. Or those who know a bit about how Avid MC operates under the hood. Although some if this is easy enough for the beginner. Just…be careful. If you edit with Avid Media Composer (MC), you may notice that Avid has a very specific way that it organizes media, and there’s not much you can do to change it. Avid media is ALWAYS stored in the following path: Hard Drive>Avid MediaFiles>MXF>1. Or other numbered folders, as there is a file size limit of about 5000 files. Get near that and Avid makes a number “2? folder, and so on. Avid MC will ONLY see media if it is in that very specific file structure. Any media outside of that, and it won’t be seen. Even if you have a “1? folder just on the root level of the hard drive, Avid won’t see it. And you can’t make specific folders and direct Avid MC to render/import/capture to those specific folders on the project level. Meaning you can’t have the 1 folder be for Project X, and the number 2 folder be for Project Y. Avid will always default to putting media into the 1 folder until it is full, then shift to folder 2. Because of this it makes it difficult to separate your media from one project into separate folders…like we did with Final Cut Pro Legacy (1-7). For those of us who are hyper organized, and like to do this on the finder level…it’s frustrating. See, Avid MC does all the organization inside the application. That’s where you access the media, copy the media…and sort the media. Want to delete the media for a specific project…then you need to open the Media Tool and search for media for that specific project, and delete it. Or if you want to move it, you use the same thing…Media Tool and then CONSOLIDATE. It can be a hassle read more...