In transferring a recent set of programme files from the CF card to the computer I have lost the .idx files. What happened was that the files were MOVED from the Cf cards rather than being copied - a fault I think with the Sandisk Firewire 800 reader. Worse it';s a fault I cannot replicate ie a second programme recorded since was transferred perfectly normally using the standard USB2 reader.

The result is that the majority of files aren't imported into Avid Liquid 7.2 correctly. I'm posting a second question about importing the "constituent" files in that section but what I'd like to ask here is whether I can use the Sony software drawing on the m2T files on the hard disk and whether it will it stitch the long files together properly without the .idx files?

Try MPEGStream clip. That might be able to open & transcode your files to what you need.

I highly doubt that a card reader is to blame, they're just not that smart / complicated to pick & chose what files to copy / not copy.

The safest thing to do when pulling contents off a flash media card to to transfer EVERYTHING. Make a new folder on your hard drive & then transfer the entire contents of the card. The entire folder structure & all the seamingless non-sense files.

Zach, I agree with your suggestion in principle however in practice I don't think it works because the Sony software only recognises CF cards - I can't make it "look" at a folder and stitch the files together from there.

I use FCP w/ the Sony plug-in to read from the cards. I know that if I don't have the meta data files nothing is going to show up & any spanned clips won't be automatically stitched back together.

While it seems to me like the software shouldn't need the meta data, I've found that all file based cameras & NLEs have this relationship. You NEED ALL the files & ALL the folders to make sure the NLE can bring in the video correctly. I'm not a programmer, so I have to default to the opinion that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to import / transcode / transfer video files into a NLE w/o the metadata.

From my experiences I have started the practice whenever I'm moving video from a CF card (or on P2, SxS, SDHC / AVCHD) I move the entire contents of that card so that I don't run into any problems with my NLE.

For your problem... if you've moved some files off a card, but not deleted any files, you should be able to put all the files back in the same folder. Once they're all back at home together your software should be able to "see" everything correctly & stitch the files together again.

If files have gotten trashed, I don't think there is anyway to re-create the meta-data needed to automatically stitch the files back together. I think your only option then is to manually stitch the files together.

Good luck with it all. Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

I still don't understand how a FW800 card reader & a USB card reader would read / transfer things differently. If either of them don't display the entire contents of the card they're reading then that card reader needs to be exchanged or thrown into the trash.

I've used both USB & FW readers & they always work the same for me (except for the fact that my Lexar FW800 CF reader is much faster than anything else I've used).