Skip to main content
Inspiring
August 1, 2022
Under Review

Watch folders with subfolders

  • August 1, 2022
  • 15 replies
  • 2513 views
Watch folders should be able to also watch and encode from subfolders. Having all footage in one folder or having to create multiple watch folders is very inefficient and impractical when dealing with a lot of footage.

I would also like to be able to use Media Encoder to automatically render small HEVC backup files of all new footage to be sent to offsite backup. Setting my whole video project directory as a watch folder with subfolders would allow this; the output folder would be easy to back up.

15 replies

Participant
March 2, 2023

Just bumping this request - just spent a bunch of time trying to work out why my watchfolders weren't working and apparently it's because I'm too neat with subfoldering sequences - it'd be great to have watchfolders look in subfolders. 

 

Thanks, 

Participant
August 1, 2022
Agree with all these suggestions; the user should be able to adapt the watch folder behavior to their workflow rather than the other way around. It's also really annoying to have the source files moved into individual dated folders after conversion - a simple checkbox to leave the source files in the watch folder where they are, or to put them all in a "finished" folder without otherwise changing their current directory structure would be ideal. But having to dig them individually out of folders with basically the same names makes it practically impossible to use the watch folder unless you plan on deleting all the source files afterwards.
August 1, 2022
It's not workable for larger companies with render machines.
If we use After Effects -> Consolidate Footage, it creates a subfolder in a watchfolder by itself.
A render machine doesn't detect any compositions in the Watch folder because they're in a subfolder.

We need people to manually cut/paste compositions and their dependencies into the root of a watch folder. Really unworkable!
Inspiring
August 1, 2022
Totally agree. A watch folder with recursive function would be necessary in this software.
Inspiring
August 1, 2022
A general overhaul of Watch Folder functionality would be good. It's got great potential but there are some limitations. Individual folders for the source video isn't really necessary - it would be good to have the option to have the files moved to a folder of your choice or just put them in one 'source' folder.

There also seems to be no way to edit the watch folder location or duplicate the watch folder setting and change the location so that you could have folders for individual projects without the need to set up everything again. For instance, I would export in a high-bitrate version that is then converted to a youtube preset and a 480p preview format so that final checks can be made and the preview version is uploaded to frame.io if there are issues or final changes to be commented on, while the youtube format is uploaded for delivery to the client.