updated August 11, 2009
Though you wouldn't know it from its humble demeanor, Media Copy has a long and storied history. Back in 2001 when we were working on our early After Effects import plug-ins we often needed to move media files around the basement that served as our office at the time. We didn't know which media files we needed to move, but we had an OMF file exported from our Avid sequence, so we knew the Avid knew which files were used by the sequence. Harry wrote a little tool that used our parsing technology to get the list of files used by the OMF file and then copy those files to some new location. It was very helpful! We realized that editors who were going to be sending sequences to After Effects on another system would benefit from this utility so it became a program we called Automatic Media Copy.
Ok, I admit that history isn't overly storied, but that's how the program started. Version 2.0 takes idea of the original program, makes it current and adds new capabilities. Media Copy 2.0 copies the media files referenced by an Avid OMF 2.0 file, and also supports Avid AAF files and Final Cut Pro XML. It can also copy the media for multiple files, allowing you to copy a batch all at once.
When you save a sequence that references media you need copied, export an XML file (from FCP) or an OMF 2.0 or AAF file (from Avid, and don't embed the media). Media Copy reads your AAF, OMF or XML file, figures out which media files are referenced by the file, then copies those media files to a folder you specify. This is very useful if you need to send a sequence and its media to another system.
The application consists of three sections:
Media Copy can read AAF or OMF 2.0 compositions exported from an Avid editing system as well as XML files from Final Cut Pro. Add your source AAF, OMF or XML files to the source list in the top section of the window by clicking the Add... button then navigating to the file(s) you wish to choose or drag the files into the listing from the Finder.
You can clear the listing by holding the Option key down while clicking the Add... button or you can remove selected entries in the list by selecting them with your mouse then using the Delete key on your keyboard.
Imagine this scenario: You have your XML file from Final Cut Pro and you're ready to run over to your colleagues' place who is going to import the XML and media into After Effects. You're excited and in a hurry. You plug in your firewire drive. You launch Media Copy, you drag in the XML file and specify the correct destination. Your media copies then you eject the drive and travel a great distance to meet with your friend. How bummed are you going to be when you realize you forgot to also copy the XML file onto the drive? Well this option aims to prevent that. Enable Also copy above edit/sequence files and the AAF, OMF or XML files that you use as your sources will also be copied to the destination folder.
The second option tells Media Copy to organize your media files inside your destination folder in the same way the files originally were on your system. For example, let's say a Final Cut media file called "CU murder bunny.mov" was originally stored in "/Volumes/RAID2/Final Cut Pro Documents/Capture Scratch/BunnyHaha" and you set Media Copy's destination to be "/Volumes/G-Drive Mini". With this option turned off the media file would be copied to the root of the G-Drive Mini drive, as would every other media file Media Copy copied. With this option turned on, the "CU murder bunny.mov" file would be stored in "/Volumes/G-Drive mini/Final Cut Pro Documents/Capture Scratch/BunnyHaha". Avid media files would be copied to "/Volumes/G-Drive mini/OMFI MediaFiles" or "/Volumes/G-Drive mini/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1", you get the idea.
If you're copying the media associated with an Avid AAF or OMF file you might also want the precompute render media referenced by the sequence as well. If you enable this option Media Copy will add the render media files to the list of what is to be copied. This option has no impact on XML files from Final Cut Pro.
Next choose the destination to where Media Copy is going to copy the media files associated with the processed AAF, OMF or XML file(s). Click the Choose... button and then navigate to the destination folder of your choce or you can drag the destination folder into the destination field from the Finder.
If you choose an Avid media folder such as "OMFI MediaFiles" or "Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1" or if you choose the root of a drive and you turn on Preserve source media paths you should quit your Avid editing application during the copy. Otherwise the Avid may constantly notice the changes to the media folder and may frequently run a scan on the directories and at best this will annoy you.
Do not select a write-protected volume such as a CD-ROM or any other location you don't have permission to write to, not only will the copy fail but the plug-in won't be able to generate the HTML log to explain what the error was.
When you have provided Media Copy with the source file(s) that reference your media files and you have specified a destination, you can press the Copy button to start copying your media.
When Media Copy is finished processing and copying your files it will write a report as an HTML file that you can view in your web browser.
When you have "Preserve source media paths" enabled the Destination Path column in the HTML report shows the path the file is stored in relative to the selected Destination folder.
The HTML report file is saved in the Destination folder.
Instead of pressing the Copy button you can press the Report only button and Media Copy 2.0 will not copy any files and will only generate the HTML log file.
Media Copy does not rewrite your AAF, OMF or XML files with the new media paths after the files are copied. The source files will still have the original media paths. This isn't a problem for Pro Import FCP or Pro Import AE, the plug-ins will search for your media files.
Media Copy does not trim or consolidate or otherwise reduce your footage, it copies the entire file that your AAF, OMF or XML points to.
Media Copy does not transcode or convert your footage. The media files are copied, which means the files that are written are exactly the same as the files that are read.
Media Copy does not copy DPX sequences that Final Cut Pro might be using via Glue Tools. FCP's XML file only contains the first frame of the DPX sequence, and that is all Media Copy will copy. At this time Media Copy does not know how to get the other frames of the DPX sequence.
If you are able to imagine Collect Files being used after an import into After Effects (before you do an import there's nothing to collect) then think about Media Copy as being used before you even start doing the import. Here's the problem Media Copy solves: You have an XML file from Final Cut Pro, you want to import the XML file into After Effects, but the After Effects system doesn't have access to your Final Cut media. How will you know which media files to copy from the FCP system to the AE system? Media Copy knows. So when Media Copy is done, then you can import the XML file into After Effects, then when you're all done in AE you can Collect Files for archive.
The Media Manager function of Final Cut Pro does several things, but there is one part of where Media Copy and the Media Manager are similar: Media Manager can copy the media for a selected sequence or sequences to a destination. This is what Media Copy does. The rest of the things that Media Manager can do are beyond Media Copy's humble aspirations.
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