Thank you Job and thank you Kenton for the answers and taking the thread back to the point,

I really had some P2 projects and did a consolidate on the P2 cards all the time. But on this project I have about 1,5TB of media files that are already on my Raid Drive. I thought there is no need to consolidate them because they are allready save. There is not a single text in the manuals that says that avid forgets the media paths and that it is not possible to relink P2 cards if they are not in the avid database.

That leads me to the following:

1.) How can I recreate a project, when all I have is the backup of the P2 cards?

2.) Why do you have to start from scratch - eacht time you shut down MC or have a system crash? What if you have to import 50 P2 cards and your system hangs at card number 49?

@Kenton

I thought of this also but the absolut media paths are all the same. I still can see the path in the bins and checked if anything has changed. All drives have the same letter and no changes on the directory structure has been made.

Of course I will consolidate every P2 card in the future. But for now I will have a sleepless night caused by my editing aplication.

pro---studio:

A editor comes to your editing suite with a P2 card and wants to have an immediately edited version of the content of this card as this should be on air in a few minutes. You insert the card and start to edit right of the card. Then the OS has a problem and the PC crashes. You are thinking: No problem - just restart the system and you're back on - wrong: All your media is offline and cannot be relinked. The only way to solve this is to consolidate the media to the avid database. If this is a 64GB Card you don't have any chance to do this in the amount of time you have.

The scenario you've described above is precisely why disc-based XDCam is the preferred format for most TV and news organizations world-wide.  You can pop a disc into the deck and shuttle and capture (with TC) only bits that you need for immediate use.  Plus you get a clip with TapeID that you can re-capture later, plus a hard copy that you can store for later use. 

I realize that my info is not "HELP" based on your own definition to Job above, but it does point out an obvious advantage of one format over another when immediacy is priority.

pro---studio:

1.) How can I recreate a project, when all I have is the backup of the P2 cards?

I edited my earlier post with something that might be a solution to that. Please give it a try and let us know if that works.

2.) Why do you have to start from scratch - eacht time you shut down MC or have a system crash? What if you have to import 50 P2 cards and your system hangs at card number 49?

I will have a sleepless night

Go outside, walk a few blocks, take a deep breath and try to get some sleep. I'm not kidding, it helps. Been there, done that.

FWIW: I agree that Avid's way of speaking about "accessing P2 media" and "protecting P2 assets" does not clearly infer that you will lose media links after closing down the system.

@Job,

The funny thing about this problem is that I can reimport the P2 cards with "clips to bin" and the mediafiles in the bin are online again. But this lasts only til the next system crash or shutdown. Then you have to reimport all P2 cards again if they are not consolidated. That cannot be the sense of the P2 workflow at all. All my P2 cards are now on my Raid Drive (E:\P2\Card001... Card030).

Job ter Burg:

If you are importing load of cards, and you hang at number 49, you will only need to Import-P2-Clips-to-Bin for disk 49 and 50, then Import-P2-Media for those. All the other media is written into the Avid's own mediafolders and databases by then, and won't be lost.

That is not right. Exactly that is my problem. It is not in avids database if you do not consolidate the media. All media is offline after restart. You can start again from scratch.

@Kenton

The P2 workflow is nearly exact the same as it is also filebased. I will ask a collegue how FCP deals with P2 - but I don't think that this app forgets the media paths and you cannot relink. It's really not a P2 issue - it's an issue of MC. MC just has to store the path of the clips - that is all. Please include this warning in the manuals: "MC will not relink to external P2 clips if MC is shut down or the system crashed. There is no chance of relinking those clips if you experienced this case."

@Job

Thank you for your patience and being so nice to me after all. I have to appologise for my harsh words - I don't think that was appropriate. Hope you'll take my excuse. I will really take a walk outside and take a deep breath.

pro---studio:

The P2 workflow is nearly exact the same as it is also filebased

Ah, but you're overlooking one of XDCam's major advantages (I pointed it out in my post above), you can capture from the disc just as if it were a tape.  No need to import any files.  If you need 1 min of footage off of an hour long disc/file, you just shuttle to that section and capture it.  This saves tremendous time.

pro---studio:

It is not in avids database if you do not consolidate the media.

Sorry, I was now assuming the 2-step process. I see your point, Avid will access the P2 media natively, will let you work, review and edit from the virtual cards, but it will lose links to that media when you shut down. They recommend that you consolidate, but the don't require that, nor do they warn for the consquence of not consolidating.

pro---studio:

I will ask a collegue how FCP deals with P2

There is no chance of relinking those clips if you experienced this case

The fact that you can get the links back by reimporting the clips is of cours some sort of relinking. However, I agree it does seem silly that the links are being lost in the first place.

pro---studio:

Thank you for your patience

Is there any way you can still manage to do an Import-P2-Media or Consolidate or Transcode on your footage for this project? Just to make sure that you won't lose the whole bunch again soon? With 1.5TB you should get that done in about 25 hours, possibly in two (unattended) night shifts.

OK here is another one:

I reimported one P2 card to check if it will relink to the clips: worked.

I just tried to consolidate the clips in my bin and thought MC would get the missing files.

Result: Avid consoilidated offline clips to offline media.

That means: If the P2 card "offline for avid" but still on the same system path - avid will consolidate empty clips.

Description:

I have a long clip that spans over 2 cards. I reimported the first card and tried to consolidate this clip. Avid only consolidates the first part - the second part is still "media offline" even after consolidating.

The P2 Clips to Bin command indexes the Virtual P2 cards. As you've noticed, this is only a temporary index and will be deleted when the computer is restarted. This is as designed. A P2 card will be indexed each time the Avid is started, so it is possible to edit from a P2 card.

The workflow, like it or not, is to "log the clips" using the clips to bin command and consolidate only what's needed. Chances are not all the clips are going to be wanted for the edit, like not every frame of video tape is going to be needed.

You should never edit with a single copy of your media. It's Very Dangerous to work in this fashion. If the drive fails or the media becomes corrupt, there will be no way to recover it.

The P2 Media Command performs a Checksum file copy to local storage and the drive with the master media should be stored offsite.

To relink clips the virtual P2 cards need only to be reindexed. Place all the virtual P2 cards in a single folder and select that folder during the P2 Clips to Bin command. All the virtual P2 cards in the folder will be indexed.

Its important that none of the names of the folders have any wild characters. The most common is a '/' or '.' and will cause the indexing to fail.

For the consolidate to work, you will definitely need to have the media from the cards linked to the clips. Otherwise, you are trying to consolidate offline media, which will result in nothingness.

pro---studio:

Description:

I have a long clip that spans over 2 cards. I reimported the first card and tried to consolidate this clip. Avid only consolidates the first part - the second part is still "media offline" even after consolidating.

Place both virtual P2 cards in a single folder and select the top folder when using the Clips to Bin command. All the media will be on-line and can be consolidated.

Bob,

With all due respect:

BobRusso:

As you've noticed, this is only a temporary index and will be deleted when the computer is restarted.

BobRusso:

You should never edit with a single copy of your media

That may be the case, but if a production company hands me over one of three copies of the original media to work with, I would not feel compelled to back it up again myself.

The issue is not that it is better to have safety copies of file based media, the issue is that the Avid forgets the links to those files, which is not mentioned in the documentation (apart from the recommendation to consolidate).

BobRusso:

To relink clips the virtual P2 cards need only to be reindexed. Place all the virtual P2 cards in a single folder and select that folder during the P2 Clips to Bin command. All the virtual P2 cards in the folder will be indexed.

This is good. At least this also means a quick fix for pro---studio.

pro---studio:

The P2 workflow is nearly exact the same as it is also filebased. I will ask a collegue how FCP deals with P2 - but I don't think that this app forgets the media paths and you cannot relink. It's really not a P2 issue - it's an issue of MC. MC just has to store the path of the clips - that is all. Please include this warning in the manuals: "MC will not relink to external P2 clips if MC is shut down or the system crashed. There is no chance of relinking those clips if you experienced this case."

Avid and Panasonic share the same file type, OPAtom MXF. FCP requires the MXF media to be rewrapped as a QuickTime file.

In Media Composer, editing can start right away, using the clips to bin command, but for the Media to stay online, it needs to be in the Avid MediaFiles folder.

See this tutorial: Protecting P2 Assets.

The last thing I'll point out is one the media is consolidated to local storage, the virtual P2 cards must be unmounted using the File > Unmount command. The Virtual P2 card is a valid, if only temporary media drive. Leaving it attached and the media will be in two locations. Removing the drive without unmounting it is the same thing as removing a media drive.

BobRusso:

To relink clips the virtual P2 cards need only to be reindexed. Place all the virtual P2 cards in a single folder and select that folder during the P2 Clips to Bin command. All the virtual P2 cards in the folder will be indexed.

GREAT!!!!! That worked for me!!!!

But I still see no reason why avid should forget the media paths of virtual P2 clips. There is no sense at all in this! Any chance that this is fixed in a future version? If not - please write this in huge letters to all of your documentary "AVID WILL FORGET ALL P2 MEDIA LINKS AFTER RESTART THAT ARE NOT CONSOLIDATED"

@Job

Again - thank you for your help and your patience. I'll spend you a Amstel if I'm in Amsterdam! ;)

Amstel

What? After all this, you'll buy me the worst Dutch beer??!!

Job ter Burg:

What? After all this, you'll buy me the worst Dutch beer??!!

lol... that's what I was thinking!!

I've noted that it seems that most internationally known brands are considered the worst in their own domestic countries!