Right now, in order to search for a clip by name or content or description, you have to use the Custom Sort tool which works by bin.  If you want to search project wide, you use the Media Tool to create a large bin.  There are several disadvantages of this:

1. If you have a lot of media, it can take awhile for the Media Tool to put everything together.

2. If you are looking at EVERYTHING, then you probably have more  hits on your search word than you want, requiring more hunting and pecking.

3. If you have a corrupt bin, then the Media Tool won't load.  I don't know why, but it seems that any project that takes longer than a year to cut seems to end up with at least one corrupt file somewhere.  Sometimes these are corrupt in such a way that you can't erase them and ..well... it just seems best to avoid them.

So if there could be a search tool that allowed you to choose your bins - perhaps even search in other projects, that would be awesome.

For example:  Let's say that you are working on a lot of films or tv episodes.  You are often going to use your library of B-Roll and Sound effects.  Also, sometimes b-roll and sound effects created for one film can be used in another. If I could search for these sounds and B-roll not just within the bins I select in my open project but also the bins i select in other projects, I would be in 7th heaven.

-Spencer

This has been a long requested feature. Probably as old as Avid NLEs. I think Avid can only add small upgrades but will be unable to add this significant feature without a total rewrite - which they already did in the name of ISIS/Interplay.

Is there no 3rd party solutions? Remember Metaflow? something like that.

Ssnygg:

There are several disadvantages of this:

Like the inability to find subclips or sync clips in the Media Tool.

Most of all, the search feature should allow searching in closed bins.

Metaflow

Metaflow was a Gallery product, meant to conform Avid sequences from OMFs based on the original BWF recordings. Not a search tool. I don't know of any.

Well... there's grep.

Open a terminal window (on the Mac, on Windows you'll probably need to install it somehow, maybe through Cygwin) and navigate to the directory of the Avid project.  Then type "grep -ri <searchterm> *" and it'll return a list of bins with contents that match the phrase "searchterm".  Remember, though, that Avid puts invisible copies of each clip into bins with sequences referencing them (the "reference clips"), so if you cut something into a sequence it'll show up in grep too.