Hello everyone,

I've been trying to find something in the forums about this but because of the terminology (OMF, OMFI, .omf) I'm having some problems locating what might be a common thread.

Bascially, I had to change RAID drives, meaning I copied the data on the old RAID to our server, then brought it all back onto a new RAID. Once we did this though, I found that audio that I had previously imported from an OMF session (that came from Protools, I believe) was not relinking properly. Maybe in part because we had different volume names on the drives from before, so it wasn't a direct "cloning". From what I have found in the forums, I understand that this can happen with relinking audio because Avid tries to relink the audio based on timecode and tape name but since the start timecode is exactly the same for most, if not all, of the clips in the OMF sequence (and the bin obviously) and they don't have unique tape names associated with them, Avid relinks sometimes to the wrong media. Interestingly enough, in the same sequence and bin, some of the media relinked correctly while other clips did not. I cannot find the logic to it though so I can't find a simple fix, nor even a manual and tedious one!

But here's the real issue. I WOULD simply just reimport the OMF 2.0 session but I have already been using it and cutting audio from it into other timelines and it's the full sound recording for a feature, lots and lots of files...so....how do I reimport an OMF session as a batch reimport or whatever so that it relinks to the correct audio files contained in all my timelines and the original sequence that came with the OMF 2.0 session. Does the solution have something to do with its metadata contained in its "Digidesign Database"? I tried batch importing the individual media files but Avid can't locate them and the media file name in the bin is not the same as the .wav name in the OMF's "OMF Audio Files" folder: In my bin it might say "shot 1" but the .wav file it is linking to could be "gk22i222nm.wav" or what have you.

I'm actually hoping I look like a complete idiot and the obvious solution is right there in front of me. So feel free to call me an idiot and give me the answer. I can take it!

 

 

 

What configuration are we talking about? Are you working in an Avid project, or were you working in ProTools? Since you mention a Digidesign database....

If you were in an Avid, why would you need to relink anything? If you are on an Avid, why is the mediafiles folder named "OMF Audio Files"? The Avid will only be able to see and use the media if it is in a folder named "OMFI MediaFiles" (sic!), which needs to be in the root directory of a drive. For that, the Avid does not(!) care about the name of the volume the media is stored on, since it will determine what media is in which Mediafiles folder upon startup, and use the metadata that is associated with each mediafile.

You also cannot batch import a master clip by pointing to an Avid mediafile, Batch import is meant to reimport files, somewhere on a disk, that have been imported earlier (or that have been logged in any way). The Avid Mediafile will indeed be named something like "GH3412_A01.AGDHGWO23468E7.aif", even if the master clip itself is labeled "73/12/t3" or "cat's meow.wav".

Was the project working fine BEFORE you moved the media onto a server and back onto a new RAID again? Can you desribe, step by step, what you did?

If you had a properly functioning project, and you simply moved the media from the RAID onto the server, then back onto a RAID, there would be no reason to relink media. An Avid does not treat its media like ProTools or FCP do. It will index all media it can read, and for that to happen, that media has to reside in a folder named OMFI Mediafiles on the root of a drive/volume.

Since you have already been relinking, you may have unlinked some clips from their actual media. Do you have a backup of your project from BEFORE you did the relinking?

If so, COPY it and keep it safe. Then make sure that you actually copied all the files that were in the OMFI MediaFiles folders on the original RAID back onto the new RAID, and make sure that all of those files are in a folder named OMFI MediaFiles at the root of a volume (doesn't matter if you were to scatter the files over multiple volumes, as long as each volume has a folder named OMFI MediaFiles). Now launch the Avid application, and you should see the software index the mediafiles on the various volumes (this may take some time if it is a large project). Then open the project in the state it was in BEFORE the relinking. If you actually successfully copied all media from the original RAID onto the new one (or first to the server), you should have all media online.

A thing that comes to mind is the fact that everything was copied onto the server. You need to make sure that the filenames have not been altered in any way in that process. The filenames should not be truncated, nor should file extension tags be altered nor removed. All of that will cause the Avid not to recognise the files anymore.

Thanks for the input! But I think I wasn't as clear as I could have been about this perhaps.

To clarify a bit: Basically, the volume letters/drive letters changed and some of the files weren't being found right away (and yes they were all in OMFI MediaFiles folders, the "OMFI Audio Files" folder I was referring to was just the name of the folder that the media that came with the original OMF 2.0 session from Protools, not something I was trying to get the Avid to read from directly). We were adding another RAID and striping them together as one drive and we were told to make 4 volumes span these drives so that the file numbers in the OMFI MediaFiles would not exceed 10,000 per folder because an Avid technician told us that this can be a problem for Windows). Eventually, the project saw all of the files, but I had to unlink/relink the audio from this OMF 2.0 import to get it to be "more or less" accurate (I tried using Key numbers instead of tape/TC and that seemed to work better...or maybe it had no effect at all, only appeared to and I just got lucky???).

I guess another way to ask my question is just this: If somehow I had lost all the media files and wanted to reimport that OMF 2.0 session, how would I do this? If I highlight the files in the bin and try to batch import from the original source files (not the .wav files in the OMFI MediaFiles folder...like I said, let's assume I lost those), Avid doesn't seem to know where the original files were imported from. So I am assuming the metadata for those files was/is contained/referenced from metadata contained in the original OMF 2.0 file. If so, how do I get it to use that data again to get the media back? If I just try to reimport the OMF 2.0 session will the old session see the new media and relink to it correctly and automatically? I want to try this but since I haven't figured out how to batch import and since I've gotten close to having it see most of the audio correctly again, I'm hesitant to try anything too destructive or manual.

And like I said in my original post, I think there is a confusion of terminoloy here. When I refer to "OMF 2.0" I mean the exported file or folder from Protools that contains a sequence, media files, media and obviously some metadata that allows Avid to unpack it all and use it. So I'm not really asking how I can get Avid to see .omf or .wav files from the OMFI MediaFiles folder, I tried that, it saw them, but not quite correctly for some of the audio from this OMF 2.0 session. And according to other posts here this can happen because audio files may all start with the same TC and not have tape names associated with them.

So has anyone every had to try to batch import (reimport) the media from an imported OMF 2.0 exported from Protools?

There is no "Batch Import" for OMFs, AFAIK.

The only woraround would be to re-import the OMF and, if relinking your new sequence to the re-imported media didn't work, you might have to match all of the shots by hand.

Not exactly what I wanted to hear but I guess what I expected to hear as I couldn't find any other documentation on this issue.

I'm about to test this method you suggested so I will post results as soon as I have them.

Thanks!

Having thought about this, based on other experiences, I would think that you would not need to batch import the OMF session, but just import it.
I am assuming this is an OMF session containing both media and edit data, coming from PT. From earlier experience, my guess is that the Avid will import all clips that it has no media for, but for all clips that media is already present in the project, it will ask you whether or not it should merge the clips. My guess is that if you merge, you should be able to keep the media that is already present linked to the same media it already is, whilst adding the missing media.
The proof is in the pudding, though, I reckon.