MC's lack of any easy and straighforward project archiving abilities has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time.

This seems like such a basic tool for a professional level video editing software application to have.

To make matters worse, the 3rd party tools also seem to be fairly limited.

I've used MDV a lot in the past, but the software was last updated about 10 years ago. In the tech world, 10 years is a very, very long time and the OS and MC have changed considerably during the time. While it still seems to function, I don't trust it completely and I have had issues in the past where it appears to have skipped some media for some reason and some other odd behavior.

Media Mover was the last utility I used. This had some great features and I liked its online/offline workflow. A simple concept of collecting all the media into a folder with subfolders that I could then move off my fast disks and onto an archive drive. 

I built a new system, went to install Media Mover and was shocked that it would no longer install and the developer shuttered and abandoned the software with seemingly no avenue for licensed users to continue.

I've also been looking at Solo Parking from Marquis Broadcast, their standalone workstation version of their flagship Project Parking software. This a lot of functionality and would defintely fill my needs for archiving a project including MD5 checksum copying of media and a whole host of other features... But a license for Solo Parking costs nearly $650 USD. A lot of money to spend on one piece of ultility software.

I also haven't been able to try out the software for myself. I've been in contact with their sales team and have requested a license key for a trial run, but have yet to actually get one. Purchasing it also seems like a hassle. The sales team told me they no longer have online ordering for Solo Parking and they would send me an invoice with instructions for a wire transfer. Which seems a little outdated to me.

The cost maybe worth it to have piece of mind that my projects are archived completely.

Another is Archive-R from Ocean Systems, which seems to do a basic job of archiving media to a location. However, it looks dated and practically as old as MDV. It's also $495. Ocean Systems seems to mainly be in the business of digital forensics for law enforcement.

So are there other viable solutions for project archiving? Or is a 10 year old free utility that is no longer developed on PC and two very expensive pieces of software the only options? 

I know MC 2019 is right around the corner. They supposedly rebuilt it from the ground up. Would they have been smart enough to also develop an easy to use project archving feature into it? Seems to me like there is a great need for this sort of functionality.

https://www.marquisbroadcast.com/project-parking.html

Gives an example of whats out there.

Project Parking is what I've been looking at recently. The Solo Parking version is geared towards standalone workstations . It's $650. Which I think seems like a lot for a piece of utility software. I get it if I was a large post house and could bill that cost into jobs, but for just my projects it seems like a considerable amount of cash.

Erik:

I built a new system, went to install Media Mover and was shocked that it would no longer install and the developer shuttered and abandoned the software with seemingly no avenue for licensed users to continue.

Here where each MC is standalone but on a local area network I prefer the MDV 2007 for PC to any of the new Mac only offerings. The 2007 delivers exactly what I need. The new Mac versions can deliver a lot of functions I have never needed and over all for the backup and project archiving functions I use they are ]significantly slower.

Alayne

You can also manage your media manually.

Create a new folder in Avid Mediafiles/New Number

in the evening, shove any newly created media form /MediaFiles/1 to Mediafiles/New Number

I use empty .txt files files in the Mediafiles/MXF folder to tell me which project is which.

like "192 project XY 2019-02.txt

I just got a response from the Project Parking sales team regarding my interest in Solo Parking. It's worse than I thought.

"Solo Parking is currently $750 excluding support.  I may be able to find a more cost effective alternative for you but you would still be looking at around $1000 including first year of support. "

I can't justify that sort of money for my relatively simple setup.

Is there some sort of conspiracy or mafia control over MC media archiving tools? Did the folks at Marquis Broadcast put the screws to the developers of MDV and Media Mover to kill their PC development?

Seems incredible to me that there aren't a number of viable apps to fill this hole in MC.

That sounds like a pain. In any given week I may have several projects I'm working on that are in various stages...often waiting on assets or approvals or something.

I create numerous media files subfolders to keep some stuff separate, such as round tripped graded media from Davinci Resolve... but MC's habit of just throwing everything it imports, transcodes or creates in the 1 folder on the drive is annoying.

Would be great if you could define specific subfolders in which you want media from specific projects to end up.

I have MDV installed it seems to work, but the software is over ten years old and no further developement has been done as far as I can tell for PC since then. That just worries me a little.

I used MDV for many years back around when it was first developed and many years after with subsquent versions of the software when it was still actively being developed. It did an ok job, but I seem to remember a few times when it would do some strange things like missing some media when copying and corrupting some of the database files.

But it's probably my only real option at this point.

Erik:

I seem to remember a few times when it would do some strange things like missing some media when copying and corrupting some of the database files.

Working with multiple projects simultaneously I use dedicated file copy programs to move all files from the 1 folder to a project designated number folder at the end of a session or the end of a day.  Thus whenever changing project my 1 folder is empty and each project has all of it's media in it's own group of numbered folders.  

MDV is regularly used to check that the Avid media folders I am working with each only has one projects media in it. 

Archiving each projects media becomes very simple. Only draw back I experience is if I or someone else uses or wants to use one projects media in another project after the initial projects media has been archived and been deleted from a current media drive. This is relatively easily solved by connecting one of the appropriate archive drives.

Alayne

Erik:

MC's lack of any easy and straighforward project archiving abilities has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time.

This seems like such a basic tool for a professional level video editing software application to have.

I came from Discreet Logic back in the day and they did a great job of putting everything into a job folder, but as you've indicated Avid is more arcane in their file structure. We had a Terrablock and LTO3 and would create a hard drive partition for each job and then back-up to LTO...bullet proof. I'm now a freelancer and just dedicate a portible hard drive for each job. They're cheap. I make back-ups to another portable each night. I bill the client for both drives. With a drive dedicated to each job then everything, including non-AVID assets/folders like scripts, art, logos, files from client etc etc etc are all in one place I can come back to years from now and restore. (Although old USB could make it difficult to restore as time goes on. Obviously anything important can be backed up to more current tetchnology or LTO as time goes by.) Just last week a client saw a mistake (with their script) on a job from 2013 and needed it fixed. So it was easy peasy to launch the job from it's partitiion, cut in a new VO, make the change to gfx, and bill them $1,500 for the restore.

What are you trying to install MDV on?  MDV installs and works fine here on W7 and W10 (last updated about 3 months back)

It runs, but the Windows version has always been crashy, it will randomly die in the middle of copy operations.

I guess he quit maintaining the Windows version 10+ years ago but has continued to update the Mac version.

Cheap storage transformed my game. Manual back-up as described by Lukas Boeck has proven the ideal (free) solution for my one box operation.  I have no need to overthink a simple drag and drop. When my working storage blows up (again), I'll have my project and my media. Avid does a terrific job of piecing it all back together and Bob's your uncle.