How do I move a project from a Mac-based Avid to a Windows-based Avid?
Projects
To move a project from a Mac system to a Windows system, the whole project folder can be moved. The structure of projects from one system to another changes, though, and 100% compatibility cannot be guaranteed. To be the safest, create a new project on the Windows system with the same name as the original project and then copy only the bin (.avb) files from the original system to the new system. The structure of bin files is simple in comparision and has a higher compatibility between systems. If moving the project using a read-only media such as CD-R, be sure to uncheck the read-only attribute from the Properties tab of the files being copied (right-click>properties). The location of the Avid Projects folder on a Windows system is:
C:\Program Files\Avid\Avid Application\Avid Projects\
**Note: the default locations of Private and Shared Projects has changed with the newer releases (Xpress 5.5 / Media Composer 2.5 and above). This was done to take advantage of the security features built into the operating systems.
Please refer to the Help Menu for these locations on either Mac or PC.
Media
Older SCSI drives (with the exception of differential SCSI) can safely be connected to new SCSI controllers to move existing media, such as Ultra160 drives on an Ultra320 controller. All drives on a single chain will run at the speed of the slowest drive. For this reason it is recommended that the newer and older drives are connected on different ports to preserve maximum speed.
Windows and Mac systems use different formats for drives (NTFS and HFS/HFS+ respectively), however, so while Windows will recognize the drives physically, the OS itself will be unable to mount Mac formatted drives and will display them in Disk Management as Unknown volumes. Third-party software is required to mount the drives. Many applications are available for this. The most commonly used is MacDrive by MediaFour (http://mediafour.com). If the Mac formatted drives are striped, MacDrive CrossStripe edition is required. Once installed, this program will mount the Mac formatted volumes. Volumes mounted by MacDrive are identified by a small, red Apple icon that is displayed on the corner of the drive icon. Volumes mounted using MacDrive are only supported for transfer of media, NEVER for use as media drives in Avid.
Once the drives have been mounted, the all files should be copied from the OMFI Mediafiles folder on the Mac drive to the OMFI Mediafiles folder on a Windows formatted volume. Database files in the OMFI Mediafiles folder should not be transferred. They will be rebuilt when the Windows Avid system is launched. Media from the Mac drive can be added to an existing OMFI Mediafiles folder already containing media. Again, the database files should be deleted from the target folder before launching Avid. The two database files are:
msmFMID.pmr
msmMMOB.mdb
On Windows, these files have grey Avid icons. Once the databases are rebuilt by the application, the Media Tool can be used to access the media or if bins have been transferred the media will automatically relink to the Master Clips and Sequences in the bins.
Alternatives to using MacDrive would be copying the media to a FAT32 formatted Firewire drive (which can be read by either Mac or Windows) and then copied to local SCSI drives on the Windows system or copying the media to DVD. Again be sure to clear the read-only attribute on any files copied from a read-only media. Windows retains this attribute when copying from read-only media. One further note with DVD is that not all drives read both writeable formats (DVD-R and DVD+R) so you must check that the drives on both systems support a common DVD type. Unfortunately, Mac tends to favor DVD-R and Windows DVD+R. Check the specifications for the DVD drive you are using in the manual or on the manufacturers website.
IMPORTANT: Notes on Audio
Audio media is a special case when moving from Mac to Windows. Mac supports AIFF, SDII and most versions support WAV data formats for audio media. This is chosen from the Audio Project setting in your project. Windows supports WAV and AIFF but does NOT support SDII. SDII is a Mac only audio format. On newer systems, SDII format files can be identified by the .sd2 file extension. On older systems where audio media was contained in OMF files the format must be determined by the Audio Project setting. If SDII format files are placed in the OMFI Mediafiles folder on a Windows system, when Avid scans the folder it will regard all SDII files are invalid or corrupt media files and issue an error such as:
Unable to scan the file "file".
The file does not appear to be an OMF File.
All SDII format audio or sequences containing SDII format audio must be opened on the Mac systems and exported as OMFI composition with the option to convert audio to AIFF. These compositions can then be imported on the Windows system.