Re: help! audio lost in MC 3.5 project

If the files are still there, you should eventually be OK. Besides: you've made a backup of the media for that large project, didn't you? If not, you now know that you always should.

Let's step through this. First of all, if you display the "offline" column heading in your bin, does the Avid tell you that your audiotracks are offline? If not, check if your project sample rate matches the sample rate of your sound files, and if that is not the case, then switch the project sample rate, or turn on sample rate conversion. All done in Audio Project Settings.

If the bins tell you the audio media is offline, but you still see it at finder level, open the Media Tool and see if you see any of that audio there. Does it come up in the bins now?

Suppose it does not. Double check if the mediafiles folder is sitting at the root level of the drive, and is actually named OMFO MediaFiles (sic).

You mention using OMFI MediaFiles rather than Avid MXF MediaFiles. Not a problem, but there is a limit to the amount of files that can reside in the OMFI MediaFiles folder. How many files are in there? Should be well under 10,000 files.

Suppose there's more than 10,000 files in there. Close MC. Rename the OMFI MediaFiles folder to "Media Temp". Create a new folder named "OMFI MediaFiles". Drag a few hundred files from Media Temp into OMFI MediaFiles. Lanuch MC. It will rebuild the database. Does it see the media you just added? If so, quit MC, drag some more files from Media Temp into OMFI MediaFiles, and launch MC again.

You need to quit and launch MC in order to make sure that MC will have enough memory available to rebuild those databases in steps, otherwise you will just be looking a frozen system.

If you have a large amount of files, if possible, divide the mediafiles across more than one folder. Having so many files in one folder makes any computer balk, and MC will suffer from it. Best practice is to keep less than 5,000 files per folder. Have to say that I have worked with folders containing 15,000 files, and they worked fine (but were very slow to open from finder).

Hope any of this helps.