The first time you open Media Organizer

The first time you open Media Organizer, before your library has any drives, a short setup in two steps comes first. Nothing on your drives changes until you press Done.

Step 1: How many copies

Choose how many copies of your footage you want, each on its own drive; 2 is recommended. Media Organizer uses this number to tell you when a camera card is safe to reuse, and which photos and videos on your drives have fewer copies. Only drives Media Organizer can see count: cloud and other backups it doesn't see. You can change the number later in Settings > Backups.

Step 2: Your drives

A table lists the hard drives and SSDs plugged in, inside the computer or connected by USB. For each one:

• Existing media to manage on it: click Choose what's in the library… to see what is on the drive, folder by folder, and tick the folders that hold photos and videos you already have, such as Photos\2019. Only those folders are read.
• Available for ingestion: tick the drives Media Organizer may copy camera cards and planned copies to; only copies on them count towards your copy rule. Each card's window still lets you choose which of them a card goes to. A drive that already has a MediaOrganizer folder from earlier copies has that folder read as well.
• Label in Media Organizer: a drive you set up keeps a label, such as WD 4TB 1. Write it on the drive itself, on a sticker or a piece of tape: Media Organizer calls drives by their labels, never by their letter, which changes. No two drives may share a label: both are marked in red until you change one.

Your computer's own drive keeps the label Windows shows. Camera cards and USB sticks are listed under the table and set up on their own, after setup. Press Done to add the drives you set up and start reading the folders you chose; the reading goes on in the Activity panel.

Back returns to step 1 with your answers kept. Skip for now opens an empty library, and drives can be added later with Add folder or drive. Leave setup closes Media Organizer; setup starts again where you left off the next time you open it.

A tour of the main window

After setup, a tour lights up the parts of the main window one at a time and says what each one is for, and the part it lights works while it is lit, so you can try it. Open it again at any time from Help > Tour of the main window.

Your first edit pack

The first time you create an edit pack, Media Organizer asks which of your drives are fast enough to edit from. Files found only on other drives are copied into your library on one of these drives when you prepare an edit pack. Each drive's choice is also in its menu and in Settings > Drives.