How Media Organizer works

Media Organizer is a Windows app for anyone whose recordings are spread over camera cards and a pile of external drives. It keeps a catalog of what is on each of them, helps you keep enough copies, and prepares edit packs from the recordings you pick.

The catalog

You add drives, folders and camera cards to the library. Media Organizer scans them: it reads each file's name, folder, size and dates, and what the file says about the camera and the recording. It only reads. The catalog stays on your computer and keeps listing a drive's files after you unplug it, so you can search everything you own and see which drive holds a clip before you connect it.

Copies

You decide how many copies of your videos, photos and audio there should be, each on a different drive. The library report says how many recordings fall short and where, and Plan remaining copies… plans the copies that would fix it, between the drives that are connected, using the room they have. A camera card is copied into storage from its own window, and is safe to format once everything on it meets your rule on other drives. See Keep enough copies of your recordings.

Edit packs

An edit pack collects the recordings for one edit. When you prepare it, every file gets a permanent name built from its date, time, camera and original name, and the edit pack gets its own edit folder, the one you open in your editor. Its Media folder holds the edit pack’s files, served from wherever they are by the read-only Media Manager drive. Because the names never change, your editor finds the files again months later. For DaVinci Resolve, Media Organizer also creates the Resolve project. See Prepare an edit pack for DaVinci Resolve.

What the colours mean

A colour means the same thing in every window, in the Activity panel and in the Library: blue tells you how something works or what is going on, green that something is done or safe, amber that something needs you, and red that something failed or can be lost: recordings that are only on a camera card, or an action that deletes. Grey has no status: unknown, disconnected or waiting its turn.

What it never does

• It never changes, renames, moves or deletes an original recording unless you ask it to.
• It never writes a copy over an existing file.
• It never formats a card.
• It never uploads anything: there is no account and no cloud service.