Hey, gang. I’m trying to clear up space on my thunder raid 8TB drive for a new job next week so I copied the entire drive over to a seagate 8 TB drive hoping that the film I just edited would work on the other drive and that I could then delete that off the thunder raid one. So I copied all 7.5 TB over but when I open the project on the Seagate backup, half the clips are offline... it seems that the majority of them are from subclips and sinc groupings I made.

I’ve tried relinking them manually but no luck, though I believe there's many other avenues to explore with this that I'm unaware of. What’s also weird is that the video files scrub through and play ok but are still red and offline. The audio doesn’t play at all, at least the majority of them. Any idea of what I should do? I’ve read on some forums that using this Russian program “MDV” or whatever could work?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, 

Could you delete the .MDB and .PMR database files from the Avid MediaFiles folder on the new drive?

MDV just lets you organise Media Files. It's like Avid's media tool, but lets you to do some cool stuff. 

Will I be at risk of losing any other information if I delete those files? Thanks, Philip! 

No those database files are just Avids quick look up directory info of the Avid media files in that folder.

Normally Avid will rebuild those files automatically if it detects a change in the folders contents.

They exist as the scanning and building of those files takes time and would make launching the app very slow on large projects.

Deleting them forces Avid to rebuild them.

The question I'd ask is are all the clips in the project linked to AVid media and none to AMA linked media?

Moving AMA linked media will break the lnk and show as offline. But can be resolved.

Secondly are you sure the folder structures are identical? Is you AvidMedia Files folder at rootr level.

Does it have an MXF folder in it (and only that folder)

Are the folders in the MXF folder numbered and not named.

If all your media is transcoded and ALL your media was copied, there should be no offline clips.  I switch between systems/drives all the time and have had close to zero problems.

The reason you can see some offline clips is probably because they are rendered and have some sort of resize/color/framerate effect on them (some of this can be default).

A few questions to clarify:

1) All your media on Drive A was transcoded (no linked media)?  You copied all of it and the folder struture in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF folder?  Check that both folders are the same size and have the same file count.  Double check that you copied the two database files (.mdb and .pmr) in each folder.  I can't imagine how you could end up not doing this, but it does sound like maybe some database files are missing?

2) Unmount/disconnect Drive A before starting Avid up.  So only Drive B is available.

3) You say you are opening the project on Drive B.   Are you sure you copied the entire project?   I normally do not work with my project on my media drive.  I store projects on my startup drive and the media drive only has media.   I don't think this would cause your problem, but I feel it's worth mentioning.  

4) If all else fails then with only Drive B mounted and Avid not running, go and delete all the .mdb and .pmr files from your mxf folders.  Make sure all mxf folders are named with numbers only (no letters or other characters).  Restart Avid, it should rebuild your databases and either everything works or there are folders it did not rebuild for some reason – then you can figure out why not.

Can't thank you all enough for your efforts to help! First off, I apologize for not clarifying earlier, but NONE of my video files were transcoded. They were all linked to AMA, though it's unclear to me why that would be a problem for Avid. Here is some more pertinent info and answers to your questions:

1. I've checked the folder sizes and everything from Drive A seems to be identical to Drive B, EXCEPT for the fact that I deleted the .mdb and .pmr files as suggested. Subsequnetly, Avid's new creation of these files hasn't seemed to change anything upon relaunching as most of the files appear red still.

2. I tried unmounting drive A entirely, no luck.

3. I believe the "root" of the project is indeed on Drive A (which is now on Drive B) as that is where I saved the project originally. Everytime I start Avid I have to select this drive at the beginning to have the projects pop up in teh first place. 

4. Pat, if by root you mean the first section of the drive, yes, that is where the Avid MediaFiles are. Inside it is ONLY the MXF folder. 

I'm sure the big discrepancy here is the AMA linking! I hope this isn't going to screw me... any other guidance is greatly appreciated :) 

Probably not useful, but just in case – have you restarted?  I've had media drives go "offline" and only restarting my Mac solved the problem.

Your case is odd because only some of your media is offline, yet Avid has recreated all the .mdb files.    Not to beat a dead horse, but you're certain every mxf folder has a .mdb and .pmr file in it now?

I tried restarting it, no luck. I just checked again and each MXF folder has the mdp and pmr files except the thrid (3) folder which has zero files in it. Checking Drive A now and I see that the third MXF folder has one single pmr file in it (no other files at all). I must have deleted this one when I deleted the other mdp and pmr files on Drive B and I guess it never made a new pmr file since there are no files in that folder?

I also probably should've mentioned earlier that I believe the reason that only some video files are offline and others aren't is because there were lots of files I brought back in from DaVinci in round trips as AMAs as well as doing further edits down the line and bringing back shots from DaVinci and the VFX supervisor. I was exporting in various ways, ProRes, ATOM MXF, etc. I'm guessing that some of these are more easily read or recognzied by Avid when copying to a new drive? 

Still strange to me that I could have exactly the same information between drives though and have this issue... 

Managed Avid media is media created by Avid during Import, Transcode, consolidate or render.

AMA linked media lives outside the normal managed Avid Media (however a while ago AVid added some management of AMA linked media but this has limits)

So with True managed media Avid willscan the databases, rebuild if required and relink seemlessly.

With AMA linked media the databases show where that media was located. If you physically move that media Avid can't link to it because it can't find it (avid databases in AvidMedia Files files are in a known place to Avid)

So AMA linked media once moved will show as offline in Avid because AVid is trying to find that linked media in the location it was in when it was linked (and its not there now)

The simple way to reestablish that link is to create a new bin and AMA link that media into that bin. You should find the original clips in the original bins will now come online.

This is why lots of edits AMA link and then transcode to gain robust media management.