dvideo, I use
for this. Just create an empty folder on your video editing PC for each of your network source drives (e.g., "My Video Source 1", My Video Source 2") and then mount each drive to its empty folder. Whenever that drive is available on the network, it will be accessible via that folder on your editing PC. No more messing with drive letters.

HTH,
-jerry

"Use Network places to find the files and then drag them to the timeline. This will use actual network names, rather than mapped drives.."

Actually, I do just the opposite, and this is why:

The key here is to actually map a drive to the share even on the computer that the share is on.

For example, you have a share called "videos" on PC1. You most likely have a drive mapped on the other computers (PC2, PC3, etc) called V: that points to the video share on PC1.

You should also map a V: drive on PC1 that points to the video drive on itself.

That way, no matter which computer you're at, your files are always referrence to the V: drive.

To me, it also makes it easier to have a mapped drive than to browse and drill down to wherever the share is.

The problem I had with using drive letters was that XP often got confused when I would insert a removable drive (e.g., External USB or Firewire). Since going to mounted drives (see my previous note) I haven't had any problems. On my system, I keep everything under My Documents as below:

My Documents
My Videos
Active Projects
Completed Projects
Archived Projects 1
.
.
Archived Projects n

Now, whenever "Archived Projects 1" is available on the network, I can access if from Vegas by navigating to that (empty) folder under My Videos because that volume mounts into this empty folder when it is accessible. This works equally well for drives on other network PCs and for removable local drives.

-jerry

Another option, if using a dedicated drive or volume, is to configure it to use a specific drive letter, like "Z". then you can also mount it as "Z" on the other computers.

The advantage to assigning drive letters at the end of the alphabet is that adding a USB drive from time to time won't change the assignments.

Rob Mack

Not thinking about it too hard about this solution but the problem dvideo is describing is that if he opens a project file on another computer, the media paths may be broken.

...time passes. Okay, I see what you're saying. We've outlined at least three different strategies that would work. That's super!

Rob Mack

On the topic of "networking computers", I have 2 computers networked - one for editing only. They are both on high-speed internet.

I use the non-editing computer for surfing the net and email, etc. At the risk of sounding truly lame, if the non-editing computer were to contract a virus, would it affect my editing computer?

I do need the internet on the editing computer to load streaming videos up on the internet.

much thanks.

Some people will say that if you have a dedicated edit system you should keep it off the network and never upgrade it if it already works.

The truth is that this is inconvenient and you will probably want some network access so you'll want to try to follow good practices to keep the system safe.

Occasionally you'll find a virus that can exploit open ports on your network so the most obvious thing to do is limit the ports that are available. Only install the minimum number of network components. Don't open up shares on the edit station, keep all the shares on the other systems. Run a port scanning tool to figure out what's open on the edit system and then configure the Windows firewall to specifically block or ignore those ports.

Run a virus scanner and zonealarm on the other systems. Try out shareware on one of those first, and watch how Zonealarm responds to it. It should let you know if the software is trying to call out. That's not always bad but you should know if it's happening.

If you like, you can just leave the network cable on the edit system unplugged, or better, you can disable the interfaces in software. I think the later may stop your edit system from wasting time looking for network neighbors.

Finally, use a firewall for your entire network. You can buy a hardware router and these are relatively easy to set up or, if you have an older system available you could run IPCop on it. This is a bit more flexible and gives you a chance to run antivirus right at the firewall, as well as running a proxy server for web traffic. Good perforemance, antivirus hopefully running before anything even reaches the local systems.

Rob Mack