MC's lack of any easy and straighforward project archiving abilities has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time.
This seems like such a basic tool for a professional level video editing software application to have.
To make matters worse, the 3rd party tools also seem to be fairly limited.
I've used MDV a lot in the past, but the software was last updated about 10 years ago. In the tech world, 10 years is a very, very long time and the OS and MC have changed considerably during the time. While it still seems to function, I don't trust it completely and I have had issues in the past where it appears to have skipped some media for some reason and some other odd behavior.
Media Mover was the last utility I used. This had some great features and I liked its online/offline workflow. A simple concept of collecting all the media into a folder with subfolders that I could then move off my fast disks and onto an archive drive.
I built a new system, went to install Media Mover and was shocked that it would no longer install and the developer shuttered and abandoned the software with seemingly no avenue for licensed users to continue.
I've also been looking at Solo Parking from Marquis Broadcast, their standalone workstation version of their flagship Project Parking software. This a lot of functionality and would defintely fill my needs for archiving a project including MD5 checksum copying of media and a whole host of other features... But a license for Solo Parking costs nearly $650 USD. A lot of money to spend on one piece of ultility software.
I also haven't been able to try out the software for myself. I've been in contact with their sales team and have requested a license key for a trial run, but have yet to actually get one. Purchasing it also seems like a hassle. The sales team told me they no longer have online ordering for Solo Parking and they would send me an invoice with instructions for a wire transfer. Which seems a little outdated to me.
The cost maybe worth it to have piece of mind that my projects are archived completely.
Another is Archive-R from Ocean Systems, which seems to do a basic job of archiving media to a location. However, it looks dated and practically as old as MDV. It's also $495. Ocean Systems seems to mainly be in the business of digital forensics for law enforcement.
So are there other viable solutions for project archiving? Or is a 10 year old free utility that is no longer developed on PC and two very expensive pieces of software the only options?
I know MC 2019 is right around the corner. They supposedly rebuilt it from the ground up. Would they have been smart enough to also develop an easy to use project archving feature into it? Seems to me like there is a great need for this sort of functionality.