Avid Media Composer - Using Symbolic Links for Media

This method works on MacOS.

Basically you put your media on a subfolder on your drive, say /Volumes/WM3_Edit_Bkp3/Volumes/WM_S3_Block_1/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/

Then you create a symbolic link of that MXF folder. You can use Symbolic Linker to do so.

Then you create a Sparse Disc Bundle (using MacOS's Disk Utility) named after your workspace/volume, eg. "WM_S3_Block_1"

• "Set the maximum size to something at least large enough to house the estimated maximum size of all the media in your project, set the format to Mac OS Extended (journaled), select sparsebundle disk image as the Image Format"

Within that Sparse Disc Bundle you put a "Avid MediaFiles" folder. Within that you put the MXF symbolic link. That's it.

When you mount that Sparse Disc Bundle, Avid sees the media within the MXF, even though it's in the other folder. When you select "reveal file" from the Avid bin, you are taken to the /Volumes/WM3_Edit_Bkp3/Volumes/WM_S3_Block_1/Avid MediaFiles/MXF/ location.

Alternate "Loopback" Method

• The command used to create the loopback is:
  • sudo ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.2 alias up
  • "Keep in mind that this resets itself when you restart. There are a bunch of ways around this but I have done it with an automator action that runs on start up, not the best way but was the easiest."
• then in System Preferences / Sharing
  • share the folders you want to mount as drives
• then in Finder
  • afp://127.0.0.2