Backing up a project

[Carlos_E._Martinez]

Which would be the best way to backup all files belonging on same project on a single HDD in Avid Xpress Pro?

I mean putting all files: original captured files, effects, titles, etc.

Which export routine should I pick?

[krestofre]

A program called MediaSift will help with this, but please read the manual before doing anything as this program is working with your media files.

Windows - http://www.senkou.com/

Mac - http://www.belle-nuit.com/macmediasift/index.html

[Carlos_E._Martinez]

A program called MediaSift will help with this, but please read the manual before doing anything as this program is working with your media files.

What I meant is how I should proceed from within Avid itself, in order to clean up a specific HDD where a project should be kept as backup. This HDD should hold all the media files and the editing files done in the Xpress.

Someone suggested I should go into Xpress' Media Tools, delete all Precompute files and render everything again in this HDD.

I would like to know the way to delete everything that is no longer necessary, all housed on same HDD which I can then take out from my PC.

[krestofre]

Yeah, I know what you meant. MediaSift will help you with this.

It's a program that scans your media then let you pull it out on a per-project level. So you can pull all of the media, then back it up.

"Deleting everything that's no longer necessary." is a complex concept inside of Avid. How much of a back up are you wanting? Potentially reediting material? Just wanting to bring it online again? Avid doesn't provide a good way to pick and choose what you keep in media. Even deleting precomputes might come back to bite you. Titles, for example, are saved as precomputes, so if you had a title you created and deleted all precomputes, there goes your title. The best thing you could do is to Consolidate the sequence to another hard drive, and then that would be bypassing anything that MediaSift is designed to do.

Does that help?

[Carlos_E._Martinez]

Of course it does help.

The idea is to keep the media files that were actually used, the titles and all the effects in one same HDD for the project. I have seen that titles were saved as Precomputes, but they seem not to have the project name before the file name, as the effects files do.

That also seems to happen in the Media files, where more files are kept there looking like fades and other effects.

Will consolidating the files do all that? What will happen to the original files?

[krestofre]

Consolidating the Sequence will create new media files based on what's in your edited sequence and a new Sequence file. Then if you keep the consolidated media files, and that consolidated sequence, then you'll have that as a backup. The original media is still present, just linked to the old sequence. So that is one viable method to backup.

You might look "Consolidate" up in the manual. Avid would probably do a better job explaining the process than I do.

[Brandon Rice]

I always make seperate folders for each project.