This is a longstanding gripe I’ve had with Pro Tools. I know Mike feels the same. I can still remember the incredulity I felt when I realised that Pro Tools didn’t offer what I see as a basic feature. I would never choose to organise my files in a flat list so why does Pro Tools do exactly that? Some years ago I wrote a piece considering the possibilities of Media Composer and Pro Tools converging as I had noticed a certain level of standardisation across the two platforms. If you remember when Regions became Clips in Pro Tools, this was because the equivalent in Media Composer is called a Clip and with the promise of easy interoperability between Pro Tools and Media Composer with the introduction of the updated AVE, at the time I thought it might be the beginning of some degree of coming together of the two applications. I have never been so firmly shouted down by the team, they hated the idea and I understand why, but I still maintain that one of the bits of Media Composer I would like to see introduced into Pro Tools is its system of media bins.
Logical Bins
A bin is a logical container for media. All the data (i.e the files on the hard disc) are managed by Media Composer but references to those media can reside in any bin or bins (an alias to a clip can exists in as many bins as you like). You can create as many bins as suits your workflow and nesting bins within bins is possible. You can organise your media in any way you see fit. The search tools are powerful and finding and organising your media is easy.
What I like about this system is that is is logical - in that you are organising references to media rather than the media themselves. While I want folders in the clips list I don’t want it to reflect or affect the organisation of my media on the drive. While for small, single user projects Final Cut and Premiere are very strong, I’ve moved away from Media Composer to Final Cut in the last couple of years, but an area where Media Composer is very strong is in its asset management. If Avid already have such powerful tools already in house why not bring some of that experience over to Pro Tools?