In this ongoing series, we’re going to take a look at many common issues, questions and confusion that revolve around some (which might be considered to be) common workflows that editors encounter on a daily basis inside of Media Composer, what you should consider and how to navigate through them.   In this In Depth – the Avid Attic.

One of the big reasons I love Media Composer, as opposed to other NLE’s is the way it organizes the projects.  With Premiere and Resolve, the projects and everything contained within, are a single file.  If your project file corrupt (or your database for Resolve editors), you’re in big trouble.  You also, more so in Premiere, have the issue with bloating projects where, depending on how many elements your project contains, the file size of the project can start bloating to massive sizes.  Media Composer handles things differently.  The project is just a shell.  There are some settings that revolve around the project itself, but all the information is contained in the bins (much like other NLE’s), that are easily accessible in the project’s external folder.  With that said, if you ever run into an issue with a bin, or if you were to delete something by accident, that’s where the Avid Attic comes into play.  The Avid Attic is a quick and simple way to get in and find the last auto save, to bring back your project, from potential doom.  In this “In Depth”, we’ll take a look at the Attic, how it works, and how you’ll access it.

SETTINGS

Your Avid Attic’s backups are directly impacted by the parameters you have set for it in your Bin Settings.  The Auto-Save Interval (how many minutes between auto-saves), Max file in a project’s Avid Attic (which I’ve never changed from 1000 but, depending on the project you’re working on might be more), and the Max versions of a file in the attic.  What’s important to keep in mind is that the Avid Attic is only populated by open bins, as that’s what Media Composer is assuming you’re updating.  So, looking at the below image, my Auto-Save is set to 2 min for a max of 50 files in my attic, for any particular bin. 

Assuming that I have a bin called “Sequences”, and I have it open all day, as I’m working on a current timeline, It will save every 2 min, and save a max of 50 files, meaning that I’ll have a backup that spans 100 minutes, or one hour and 40 min.  Now, some editors might want to have a backup that spans an entire day, as we know that producers/directors could come back the next morning and say “Remember that timeline I told you I hated, and to delete it, well, I like it now, let’s edit with that one”.  Since I can edit a lot in 2 minutes, if I wanted to adjust the Avid Attic’s backup to make sure that with my 2 minute save interval, that I have an entire eight hour timeframe covered, I’d make sure that my Max versions of a file in the attic is set to 240, as 2×30 (Auto-Saves/hour) x 8 hours = 480.  But let’s be honest, what editor only edits for 8 hour shifts.  LOL.

THE AVID ATTIC IS SET…..NOW WHAT?

So, once you’ve got your Bin settings set the way you like, what do you do if, God forbid, you every ACTUALLY needed the Avid Attic.  Well, the first thing you need to do is to actually track it down.  Here’s the location(s) on Mac and Windows:

C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Avid Media Composer\Avid Attic
Macintosh HD/Users/Shared/AvidMediaComposer/Avid Attic

One thing you’ll notice is that both of the locations, Mac and Windows, are in a shared location, so no matter who is logged into the computer, they will be able to access the Avid Attic with little to no problems.  Once you’re in the archive you’ll see that it’s simply organized in folders by project.

The beauty part about the Avid Attic is that if you didn’t know it was there, it will just keep backing up your projects for as long as you edit in Media Composer (potentially decades, depending on how long your computer lasts for).

When you’re in need of a bin, what my normal process is, is to go into the Avid Attic, and find the project you need.  How the Attic is organized is pretty simple.  The Avid Attic folder contains all the projects with the corresponding bin backups.  Each project folder contains a folder called “Bins” and potentially another folder called “Scripts”.

The Bins folder contains folders that have the backups for each bin that’s ever been opened in the project.

Each folder contains all the bin backups for their respective bins.  You’ll notice they’re simply called the name of the bin and a .Number so that you can easily figure out which is the most current bin backup (higher the number, the more recent the backup).

With the bins contained in the Avid Attic, it’s normally not a good idea to open them from there, as then your “Attic” becomes more of a “Current”, then it’s original purpose.  I will normally copy out the bin that I either want to restore, or pull something from, and put it on my desktop so that once I’m done with it, I can delete it.  What’s exceptionally important to keep in mind is that you cannot open an Avid Attic bin into a project that contains the master bin that the backup was made from.  It’s kind of like the Timecop rule on not have same matter in the same place at the same time.  What I will normally do is create a new bin called “RESTORE” or something along those lines.  I’ll close every other bin in the project other than the “RESTORE” bin.  I’ll then simple use the CTL/CMD+O command to open an bin, navigate to the bin on the desktop, open it, pull out whatever I need from the bin and put it in the “RESTORE” bin in my project, then close the Avid Attic bin, delete it from the project, then delete it from my desktop.  Once I’ve done that I’ll either CTL/CMD+S or close the bin to save it, so that I know that what I’ve brought back from the Avid Attic is safe.  Keep in mind, now, that once you’ve done that that there will be a new Avid Attic bin folder created called “RESTORE” since it’s now a part of your project!

If you missed my write up on Project Creation, you can find it at this link, and here’s a great white page from Avid on the Avid Attic!