Understanding the Library
The Avid Studio Library lets you manage and efficiently use the entire pool of media and other assets available for use in your productions.
What exactly does the Library contain?
The full range of assets that you can draw on for your projects is summarized by the four main branches of the Asset Tree. Each branch is further divided into more specialized subsections.
All Media contains the standard media files on your system in subsections named Photos, Video and Audio. Many standard file types are supported. The purpose of the fourth subsection, Missing media, is described below.
Projects are your own Avid Studio movie and disc projects, with subsections named accordingly. You can open a project right from the Library and begin editing it, or you can add it to the timeline of another project to serve as an ordinary clip.
Collections are custom groupings of Library media. The more time you spend on media management, the more you will probably use Collections. They can serve as temporary holding places while you work, or for classifying and setting aside media for later use. Collections may be automatically generated, but most are user defined. Hierarchically-organized Collections are also supported. The top-level Collections in the hierarchy are used as the subsections of the Collections branch.
The Creative Elements branch is shown open in the illustration at right, revealing its subsections. Each is either a type of special effect (Effects and Transitions), or a special media type (the rest). Ready-to-use, royalty-free collections of all seven types are included with Avid Studio.
Storage of Library assets
Every asset in the Library – every clip, sound, transition, and so on – corresponds to a file somewhere in the local storage of your computer system. The Library doesn’t ‘own’ these files, and never modifies them unless specifically requested to do so. Rather, it keeps track of their names, locations and properties in an internal database. The information stored also includes any tags and ratings with which you have annotated particular items, and the parameters of any correction filters you have applied.
The database
The files that make up the Library database are stored in a folder with single-user rather than shared access rights under Microsoft Windows. If Avid Studio is used on your computer by multiple users with individual log-ins, a separate Library will be created for each.
Missing media
Operations like adding, removing and renaming a Library asset are database operations that have no effect on the media file itself. When you remove an asset from the Library, an option on the confirmation dialog box does let you go one step further and delete the actual file as well, but the option is off by default – you have to specifically request the action.
By the same token, when you delete or move an asset file in Windows Explorer or another application outside of Avid Studio, the database record of the file continues to exist. Since the Library can’t actually access the file, however, an error graphic is added to the file’s listing. If the file still exists, but has simply been moved to another folder or device, relinking it to the Library is easy. Double-click the item to pop up a standard File Open dialog with which you can point the way to the file’s new location.
Incidentally, to check if there are missing media anywhere in the Library, look in the special subsection All media Ø Missing media of the Asset Tree.