Copying a Project from Sourcebook

As you’ve likely learned by now in your Editing class, Sourcebook projects have 2 components: bins and media. You’re probably already familiar with the process of copying bins from Sourcebook into your project. This guide will take it a step further by showing you how to copy the media files from Sourcebook to an external hard drive or your laptop for easy and fast editing without access to the VPN or Sourcebook.

Understanding Sourcebook

Sourcebook has two root level folders that are relevant to you: ‘EDITOR’S SOURCEBOOK’ and ‘Avid MediaFiles’

EDITOR’S SOURCEBOOK is where we save the bins - typically .abv files (you can think of these as project files)

Avid MediaFiles is where Avid saves all it’s media files - A.K.A. your audio and video files. These are typically .mxf files. You cannot change the name or file structure of this folder. This folder must also live on the very root of it’s hard drive (in our case, Avid views Sourcebook as a hard drive).

If you open up Avid MediaFiles and the MXF folder, you’ll see a list of numbers, each containing the media files for a different project. The folder number corresponds to the "MXF folder" column in the 'Sourcebook Index' spreadsheet.

Copying Media Files to your hard drive

First, we need to make an Avid MediaFiles folder that mimics the one on Sourcebook. Avid is very picky about file management, so the spelling and location of this folder are important.

Please take note of the exact spelling - there is one space after ‘Avid’ but ‘MediaFiles’ is one word. This is case sensitive, too. 

The ‘Avid MediaFiles’ folder must be on the root of your hard drive or else Avid will not find it.

If you're using an external hard drive (recommended), it should look like this:

If you are using Mac’s internal hard drive, place this folder directly on the Macintosh HD.

On a PC, place this folder in your Local Disk

Make sure the permissions for this folder are read & write (right click, get info)

Inside ‘Avid MediaFiles’ create a folder named MXF.

Now, open Sourcebook’s Avid MediaFiles folder and locate the folder for your project. Right click/Copy the numbered folder for your project and Paste it inside the MXF folder you created on your own hard drive. (If you don't know which number folder to copy, reference the 'Sourcebook Index' spreadsheet).

It will take some time to copy your media - be patient. Once that finishes, you can close Sourcebook and open your project in Avid. Your media should be online automatically! Avid scans all available hard drives for 'Avid MediaFiles' folders every time you launch it, so you don't even need to point it to the new location. 

If your media is still offline, double check that your folders are spelled correctly and that Avid MediaFiles is at the very root of your hard drive. If you still have trouble, email kieran_mckeon@emerson.edu with a screenshot of your media folders.