Little Frog in High Def

Full drives can cause all kinds of strange issues, but there’s something else worth checking – the number of files your MXF folders. Before Avid adopted the MXF standard, I would get offline files if I had more than 10,000 files in my OMFI MediaFiles folder. It may have been a limitation of the OS (WindowsXP), but transferring a handful of media files to a separate OMFI MediaFiles folder on another drive often brought the offline media back online, or at least limited the likelihood of media corruption.

I’d go into your numbered folders of your media drive and see how many files are in each one. With MXF media, Avid is supposed to make a new numbered folder when you approach 5,000 files, but if you have more than that in any one folder now try making a new numbered folder and transferring half the media to it. It might help with the offline issue.

Moving them on the finder level is fine – in fact I think it’s the only way to do it. Avid doesn’t differentiate between folder 1 and 2 in the media tool, so there’s no way to move the files through the software.

Just shut down Avid, select a group of files, and move them to the 2 folder. When you restart Avid it will rebuild the media databases and relink the files. I don’t even think you have to keep the video and audio together – Avid will just index and track them in their respective folders. I periodically check my 1 folder to ensure it doesn’t have too many files and will cut/paste them into a different folder when it approaches 5,000. I’ve never paid attention to which files – I just select a bunch and move them. Never had a problem with it.

Just to be clear about the media we’re dealing with – you aren’t accessing these with AMA are you? The P2 files have been consolidated over, or transfered over via Import P2 – Clips to Bin than Import P2 – Media, right? If they’re still in the original P2 structure and you’re using AMA, definitely keep the folder structure intact. If it’s just MXF files and audio, move them however you want.