On long format work most post teams have long been using multiple MXF media file folders to organise their media.  For example keeping each day of dailies in a separate folder... Day 1 in folder '001', temp music in folder '999', old renders in folder 2 and so on.  There are many valid reasons for doing this, so I won't go into 'why' in this post.

By default, anything that is imported or rendered on a system will go into MXF folder 1, unless folder 1 has too many files, in which case MC forces new files into folder 2.  The user has no control over this process, other than telling MC what drive the media of various types should go to (inside media creation settings).

I think everybody who works in MC the way we do, would love to have more control:

1) The ability to specify what folder (inside the MXF folder) on a particular drive certain media types should go to. This would help save a lot of time manually moving files around after the fact.  For example, the option to put render files into a certain folder, imported audio into another and so on.

2) The ability to use non-numeric names within an MXF media file folder. At the moment, this is partially true but doing so can cause problems if the databases need to be updated.

3) Having Media data bases automatically detecting that files have been changed and appending the change to the existing database file.  In the current version of MC (actually all releases for the last year), the databases do not update automatically) and the user has to manually trash them.

Anybody else have suggestions?

Having files renamed to avoid special characters like periods would be great, too. I've been banging my head against the door because I am forced to rename files to conform to our archive naming scheme and the MediaFiles crash this with the periods. No solution offered anywhere so far.

@David & Jannik:

Have you tried MDVx?

http://djfio.com/mdv/

With MDVx, you don't have to worry about MXF locations until the handoff. Let Media Composer manage the MXF locations, then use MDVx to sift and copy MXF's into new folders. Free, fast, and reliable.

Make sense?

Yes it's a very useful little application. But wouldn't it be nice if MC allowed management during rather than after the fact?

@David:

David Richardson:

But wouldn't it be nice if MC allowed management during rather than after the fact?

Maybe? But that would put the onus on MC to determine what media is fulfilling which role. With MC's current media management approach, and knowing this is an oft-requested feature year-over-year, it doesn't look like a priority.

The good news is: it's possible today with MDVx, and you can just let MC do its thing.

Much as I'm happy to have Avid doing it's own thing, I think that it could do some things better... So that people keep using it and new users aren't scratching their heads trying to understand why the media management is so rigid. 

If there was such an option within the media creation settings tabs that would go along way to helping, without changing how the media management currently works. 

For example, under the 'import' tab, something like 'MEDIA DRIVE X'/ MXF MEDIA FOLDER #. MC obviously knows what folders there are within each MXF folder, so it shouldn't bee too hard to program such an option.  With a setup like this, the user could decide where to put the media rather than having to move it out of 'folder 1' with MDVx or by hand.  The default could be folder 1 for those who don't want the flexibility.

I'd suggest posting this to the "Feature Request" forum or make sure you include that in the next Avid survey for requested features.