Collecting hi-res

When a cut's footage is on more drives than you can plug in at once, B/side copies just the seconds the cut plays from each drive as it comes by, to the cloud or to one folder, so the cut exports with none of the drives connected.

An export reads every shot from its original, and one computer makes it. When a cut's footage is spread over more drives than you can connect at once, no computer can, and the export waits. Collect Hi-Res… copies only the seconds the cut plays, with a second either side for a trim or a dissolve, from each drive as it is plugged in. Nothing is re-encoded: the copy is the original's own picture and sound.

Starting it

Export ▸ Export…. When the window says a cut cannot be exported yet, or an export is waiting for the drives, press Collect Hi-Res…. Choose where the pieces go:

• To the cloud. Any computer can then export the cut, and B/side's cloud makes the export itself when none of yours is on. The pieces are kept like the rest of your footage and count toward your storage; the window says how much, and about what it costs a month.
• To a folder on a computer. Choose a computer running A/Side and a folder on a drive with room (for example an SSD). That computer copies each piece into a folder called B-side collected when a drive with the footage is plugged into it, and can then export the cut with none of the drives.

Before you start, the window says how many clips, how much footage and about how many gigabytes it will copy, and which drives it comes from. Export it when everything is collected starts the export by itself, with the choices in the Export window as they were.

Plugging the drives in

Plug the drives in one at a time, in any order, to any computer running A/Side (for a folder, to the computer you chose). Each drive's pieces are copied while it is connected; the window shows how many are in and which clips it is still waiting for. You can close it: it carries on.

A piece that cannot be copied says why. Pieces already collected are not copied again: collecting a cut a second time, after more editing, copies only what is new.

What it does not do

It does not change the cut, rename anything, or touch the originals: the drives are only read. A multicam group collects the whole of each angle on air, and a cut inside the cut is collected whole.