Watch folders with subfolders

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

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.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

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.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Totally agree. A watch folder with recursive function would be necessary in this software.

[Guest]

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!

[Bernardo24831095u6fq]

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.

[Jak5F85]

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, 

[SFAndi]

Are there any news regarding this topic? 

[EckiAME]

I have added all your suggestions to a feature request and we will discuss this in the team. Thanks for all your ideas!

[Samuel314370014opj]

Watchfolders accessing subfolders would be huge for large scale project exports that need multiple itterations of videos in different video formats. Allowing the option to specify video formats per subfolder would be an incredible feature. Also being able split a single video export apart into two different formats would be useful. Ex. Send video to watch folder (preset to export one 480p and one 1080p version)-> 480p sent to one folder and 1080p sent to another.

[Alastair Rankin]

Is there any updates on an overhaul of the watch folders?

[EckiAME]

We have added a feature request with a link to this forum thread. I will post here as soon as we have news for you. Thanks for your patience.

[Guest]

Any news on this?

Usually I am copying the whole memory card of the camera to a drive with checksum verification.

I would like to have a watchfolder transcode all my new video files.

But the watchfolder does not detect new files to process as they are "hidden" in a subfolder like "DCIM".

Is it possible to process all files that are copied to the watchfolder, even when they are in new subfolders?

[EckiAME]

See my answer above.

[default5zfiedh8qbim]

This would be an amazing addition to Media Encoder... as well as the ability to recreate the subfolder structures in the output directory. 

If this was possible, then we could setup Media Encoder on a transcode machine in our server room watching a network location... and then AEs and Editors can drop in large batches of camera cards into the watchfolder to handle edit and web proxies without tying up resources on their local station. 

[adamjsanders]

Update on this?? 

[JackDawkins]

Funnily enough its now 2025 and im still looking at how to do this! @EckiAME any news?