Useful tools for editors: MediaMover

I will make this simple. If you ever want to move a single media file from Avid Media Composer or Avid Xpress Pro then you need MediaMover. Case closed.

Anyone who has ever waded through an Avid OMFI media folder trying to sort by date and cryptic files names looking for the media from a specific project can relate to how MediaMover can help. Imagine an application that can sort your Avid media files into their own individual folder by project and and allow you to do with them as you wish. That’s MediaMover. The only downside being is that it takes the media offline while it is sorted. There’s no way around this with the way Avid manages its media. But this is still an incredibly useful tool.

From the MediaMover website:

MediaMover, the most popular utility for Avid editing systems, has been completely re-written to be faster, better and compatible with all Avid editing systems. Whether you’re using local or shared storage, MediaMover makes media management easier.

New features in MediaMover 3.0:
— Compatible with all Avid media formats – MXF, OMF, AIF, SDII, WAV
— Works with local storage, Avid Unity or any other SAN storage system
— Supports all Avid editing systems
— OS X and Windows versions available
— Dynamic storage space monitoring
— Generates detailed reports on each project’s media
— Integrated backup function makes archiving projects easy

With a simple interface you select the drives that you want to scan in the pane on the left and MediaMover will find both OMFI MediaFiles folders and Avid MediaFiles folders for the newer MXF formatted media:

Once found, analyze the media files and MediaMover will give you a list of all the project associated with the media in the selected folders. Then select the media to move offline (usually I want to move a whole project) and the app will place all the media files in a folder called MediaMover Offline. From there it’s a simple matter of copying or deleting the media from the MediaMover Offline folder. Once the media is offline just return to that app and move it back online in the Offline Media tab. You can also choose to Backup Project Media… which could be very handy in you are working on something without tape sources that could be batch digitized later on. The program is available for both Macintosh and Windows and a free demo can be downloaded as well. The program works in that it doesn’t really seem to move gigabytes and gigabytes of media. Rather it somehow moves the directory structure of where files are located so it is able to move tons of media offline and online very quickly. A great solution and a great product.