I have a client that wants to save all the material we encoded for his project to an external drive he can take with him.

I found a post on the MDV media tool (very slick application) , downloaded it, used it and found it did move the media to the external drive.  (I actually copied it to that drive till I figure out what to do next)

Now let's say the client comes back in a year and wants to use this media again. I have long since deleted it from my system using the media tool.   

(here comes the stupid question) 

How do I get it back into my system (copy the MXF files the MDV program creates into what folder?)

How does my system know what it is getting.  Do I have to keep the original project folders forever so it has a reference database from the original encode to look at?

I guess this is kindof like the thermos bottle question  How does it know??

Thanks for your guidance

Andy 

Storyteller:

the client comes back in a year and wants to use this media again. ... How do I get it back into my system

You copy the files that you've archived onto his drive back into D:\Avid MediaFiles\MXF\1, where D: is the media drive that you want them to end up on.  You then copy the project that you should also have backed up at the same time back into its original location.  Start Avid and click on that project.  You're up and running.

You might have to delete your database files off your Avid media drive.  If you've used MDV to copy the media to your client's drive you won't need to do this, since MDV doesn't copy or rebuild those files.

Looking at your system, I would assume that you're using Windows XP.  If that's the case you will find the Avid projects in C:\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\My Documents\Avid Projects.

To clarify, the bracketted section above won't literally be "your user name", nor will it be in brackets.  If your user name is "fred" for example, it will be C:\Documents and Settings\fred\... and so on.

Yes - your media files and your projects are both required in order to be able to use an old project again.  The files that MDV copies are only the media files.  If your client is taking the external drive, you might want to copy the project you were working on to this drive as well.

I back up my project files to an external drive nightly.  It's usually impractical to backup your media files on an ongoing basis because they occupy so much space.  If you lose the media files, you can use the sequence or clips bins in your project to batch digitize and or batch import your media if needs be.