Hello

I take editing courses in my school and we use avid. We capture footage from dv-tapes and store the projects and sequences on external hard drives in the school editing labs. I recently got avid on my personal pc. I want to transfer all my footage and sequences to my computer so I can continue editing and working. How can I do it and if there's any previous video tutorials that shows this I'll be very grateful.

Thank you.

Go to THIS site and download MDV. Install it (If you are allowed to) on the schools computer.
Run MDV Scan and select your project from the found projects.
This will show you how many gigabytes of media you have.
Attach a USB stick to the schools CPU. Then select all of your projects media in MDV.

Use MDV to COPY this to your USB stick in a folder named 2.
Copy your Avid Project from the Schools computer to your USB stick.

At the root level of your computers media drive create this folder structure Avid MediaFiles\MXF\
Drag the 2 Folder from the USB stick into the newly created Avid MediaFiles\MXF\folder

On your C:\ drive create a folder called Avid Projects.
Drag your project into this folder.

Open Avid and select EXTERNAL. This will give you the option to Browse to your C:\Avid Projects folder and select your project.

You will then be able to carry on editing your project.

Hi

You could also go to this site   http://www.gaijin-eyes.com/2014/2014_MediaManagement.html and learn from the tutorials about media management.

Once you understand the workings you will never be afraid to move files around.

If you find you have Off Line problems they will be easy to rectify.

If you are on a MAC the MDV option may not work for you.

Ken

It's considered best practice to stor you project and Avid media on seperate hard drives. It's also wise to make a backup copy of the project at the end of each editing session (onto a USB stick or similar)

The only time we see project and media on the same drive is when we move a whle project from one place to another (and at that point we have copies of both still)

Some of the things I learned for watching the Gajin Eyes Tutorials Ken Lewis referred to are: 

-What to do with unreferenced files in MDV.
-Creating a assets structure to keep all media assets in the same place for transferring to a new location.
-Using Dylan's Templater which auto sets up your bins. 

Tutorial 2 will set up bin templates, bin and column settings, how to back up your timeline and how not to back up a sequence. 

Tutorial 3 will show you how to pull the files out of your "1" folder and put them into a more organized structure so that when you move from class to home or home to editing station at class you can be sure to move all the files for just that project along with the associated pictures, wave file, cut pictures, word docs, mixdown videos etc.... 

Your editing project could get as high as 300GB so you want to make sure you only move around what you really need. 

Tutorial 4 will show you how to move a complete project over to a new computer using three drives or folder so you have all the material you need to start your project at the new location.  There have been times when I moved a project for class I found it was missing just one media item and I could not render out for the professor. You will also carry with you all your non media material as well 

Good luck with your media Management!

As the OP specified DV tapes some media movements might be necessary, I doubt that it´ll be as much as 300 gigs however.

In todays more modern world where we just use ama to link to the origin media, can also be used for audiofiles and stills of course, I see less needs in using special procedures to move media between systems.

A copy of the origin camera card on a thumbdrive and another thumbdrive for the bins and other project files might be enough in many cases.

He might be working on small commercials or trailers, I was referring to what we were taught in editing class by purchasing a hard drive just for each client. That hard drive gets put on the shelf and taken down for any future re-edits. We were doing a huge documentary which encompasses multiple media and material.  My wedding videos have many transcoded files that are grouped for multi cam editing. Multi spanned files need to be transcoded in order to be grouped. As you can see my current wedding is at 500GB so when your moving media you want the complete scope of the project so you have everything there.  

Multicam editing with AMA linked files can be jerky if their not transcoded, but if they are spanned they really need to be transcoded. 

Gajin Eyes Tutorials will give you an example of a system that I found expidite in storing projects.