I have seen many productions creating a separate Avid Project for each episode of a show. Is there any reason to do so?

Is it not smartest to have everything in same project and just create folders inside of that instead?

How would you arrange a project like for example Survicor with 40 episodes?

I would also suspect that the reason for this for episodic television is workflow. They may have several different people working on a given episode at different stages. An assistant editor may create the initial project, ingest and organize footage, create dalies, etc... this is then handed off to an editor to craft the episode. This then might be passed off to others to do other finishing work.

Meanwhile the assistant editor is already working the next episode in a new project and the process continues.

Not to mention that there may be several editors working on different episodes at same time.

In any event, probably a good idea to not have all your eggs in one basket. If the Avid project gets corrupted, then you lose a lot.

You can import bins from other projects into another projects. Copies of common media, such as opening titles, graphics,etc.., can also be on a drive.

i build huge projects on a regular basis.

for me the differentiator between mega projects and one-off projects is how much you intercut.

I have customers where i have only a single project built over years and years. lots of repurposing old interviews.

i have documentary series that don't really share any media except for graphics. single projects.

I don't see how an avid project getting corrupted is of any danger.
recreate with the same name, done imho.

When I am working on a series I like to have everything on one project no matter how many episodes.

I've done 35-40 episodes (with 8-10 hours of shootings not more) on the same HD project (DNxHD36)

with absolutely no problem. Always having the project backed up on another big HDD.

MC proved worth trusty and I never forget that.

While there are other methods as well, creating many projects can help with deletion later on. If you use the media tool or MDV, creating projects per episode can make media management simpler, especially in combination with shared storage where creating storage locations (workspaces) per episode also helps.

But a project that has lots of common media and/or flashbacks might be better of with one project.

It all depends on the project type, the available storage and how experienced the editing team is with media management.

Avid projects are thjat important, and the main reason Avid is such a powerful NLE tool.

Its Avid bins that save the creative work. And Avid Attic that keeps old copies for recovery.

As Jeroen says Media created in an Avid Project is tagged by that project name so media management can be made simpler with a project for each episode.

So it really depends on what you need to achieve. With Avid you can organise it as best suits.

Personally I'd have projects for each episode and possibly an overall project for shared elements. and then use the shared project to pull bins in and work on.

This question keeps popping up from time to time, and the answer is that it's mostly better to have separate episodes, mainly for media management and prep-cut-post ease, but to each his own.

one benefit with having everything in one project must be that you can use the Find function in a better way

Upon opening a bin from another project in the current project MC will index that bin, and the clips show up in the search results. Are we talking about local or shared storage?

luca.mg:

Upon opening a bin from another project in the current project MC will index that bin, and the clips show up in the search results. Are we talking about local or shared storage?

Shared!