Media Manager

You know it happens. You have moved files around on your computer. Maybe it happened accidentally. Maybe you were re-organizing and you did it on purpose. It could be you've switched laptops. Whatever the reason, files move and moving files is part and parcel of working with digital media.

Now a Resolume composition doesn't contain your media itself. If it did that, the composition files would become unwieldy massive. Like, terrabyte order of massive. So instead, it just remembers the location of the files you're using.

So, when you've moved files, Resolume will need to know where you've moved them. 

Clip Reconnect

It starts by letting you know which files have gone missing. They'll be marked in red and have a 'Relocate' button on them.


Clicking on the Relocate button will open the Media Manager. The Media Manager will build a list of all the files used in your composition, and mark the missing ones in red for you.

Tip! The Media Manager always needs to save your composition before it can do its magic. If you're unsure about the current state of your comp, you might want to save under a different name before you open the Media Manager. Resolume will always prompt you when it's about to do a save.

The best way to find missing files is to go to the first missing file in the list and hit the 'Relocate' button on the right side in the Path column. This will open a file browser, and you can navigate to the place where this file now lives.

Tip! System dialogs are a fickle lover and for some reason, we can't seem to show the file name in the dialog window on OSX. So make sure you remember which file you are relocating before you start browsing.

Once you found the prodigal file, select it and the file browser will close. At this point, Resolume knows where to find this particular file again. 

At this point, the magic also happens.

Relocate ALL the files!

Are you missing more than one file? And are all those missing files in the same folder as the file you located? Or somewhere close to it? Awesome sauce. 

Then the Media Manager will find those for you. It does some file gymnastics and pops up a list of all the files it managed to dig up. You can choose to fix all of them in one fell swoop, fix just the one you started with, or back out and cancel the whole deal.

I recommend you choose Fix All :)

Nerd Alert! So how does the Media Manager know where to look? Long story short, it looks for what we call sibling files, files that are in the same relative position to each other. What does that mean? Well, let's say you had a bunch of files (file1.mov, file2.mov, file3.mov etc etc) in a folder called Old, and you moved them to a folder called New. By pointing the Media Manager to New/file1.mov, it will of course find New/file2.mov and the rest. They're in the same folder so they're relative to each other. But it will also look at subfolders. So if you had files like Old/Sub/file1.mov that also got moved to New/Sub/file1.mov, those will be found in the same search. It also looks the other way, and scans for parent folders that are relative to each other. So relocating a file from ComputerA/Folder1/file1.mov to ComputerB/Folder1/file.mov will find all the files in all the folders that were in ComputerA and were moved to ComputerB. I realise this is no longer a short story, but basically if you keep your folder structure in tact, pointing Resolume to one file will mean it finds them all.

So what if it didn't magically find all the files? That can happen if some of the files are in a completely different place relative to each other. Maybe they were originally all on your desktop, and you've organised them into subfolders based on content.

In that case, it's a matter of hitting relocate on the next missing file and pointing the Media Manager to it again. It will do the same file gymnastics to find as many as it can and show you the results. Rinse and repeat till everything is in its place again.

But it's all different!

But Resolume, why did you change this? I used to be able to just select a folder and it would find everything. This new way is super time consuming.

I hear you but the old way had a lot of gotchas. If it worked for you, it was great. But it couldn't deal with finding the same file name in different locations. It didn't prevent you from selecting C: and then you had to sit there while it spent the next couple of hours going through each and every file on your computer. And then when it couldn't find it, even though you knew where it was, you were up the creek with no options.

The new way can mean a bit more clicking, but it's super robust because you have total control. And when you keep everything organised in the same structure, it's so fast it's stupid. So yeah, out with the old, in with the new.

Applying Changes

The Media Manager will apply the changes when you close it. It's good to know that at this point, it does not save your composition! So remember to hit save when you're happy with the changes that were made!

Replace File

You can use the Media Manager to replace a particular file with a different one. Even when no files are missing.

You can open the Media Manager from the File menu.

Then, right click on the file you'd like to replace and choose Set Path. You can then select the file you'd like to replace it with. This is a great way to update a particular file with an updated version. 

"This time it's really the final version. I promise there will be no more changes. Let's render Intro v17 Final Def v3 rev11.mov"

Collect Media

The Media Manager can also be used to collect and gather the files in your composition in one place.

To do this, select 'Collect Media' from the bottom left.

The Media Manager will show you how many files there currently are in your composition, and how much space they take up. You can then select a folder where you would like to copy the files to.

The Media Manager always copies! Resolume will never try to delete files. We know your content is holy.

Media

This will copy all your files into a single folder called Media. Inside Media, it will make subfolders for every deck and copy the content of that deck into it. Files that aren't part of a deck, like masks on the composition, are copied into their own folder.

It will then make a copy of the current composition, update the file locations and place it next to the Media folder. 

There. You're all set to move your composition with all its content to a separate drive or another computer.

Also, it cleans up the mess that you made when you were being creative and pulled files from 23 different subfolders on your computer, 12 more subfolders shared from your friend's laptop, 6 subfolders on 2 external drives, 1 file from that Hello Kitty thumb drive you secretly keep under your pillow, 2 files from your Google Drive and one picture from your mom's Dropbox.

Nerd Alert! Having separate folders for decks does mean that if you're using the same file in two different decks, it will be copied twice. We feel this is acceptable because it makes sure you can copy a single deck and still be sure you have all the files associated with it. The Media Manager is smart enough to know that when you're using the same file more than once in the same deck, it should only copy it once.

Associated Files

But Resolume. My show is more than my content. I also want you to collect my advanced output, my fixtures, my custom effects, my presets and everything else.

Yes! Good point! 

As it is now, managing just your content is already a task that comes with many risks that we have to take very seriously. Once we feel that we're ready to take on additional responsibilities, we'll start adding all these other files as well.

For now, the best way to make sure you have all your user files, is to just copy the Resolume folder from Documents. This folder contains all the user settings, preferences and presets that you create.

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