Select levels for assets in DF Studio are stored within Edits at the Project level, which means that when assets are moved from one Project to another, the Edits from the source Project must be migrated or merged with the Edits in the destination Project. This is handled automatically, except for two specific situations:
- When more than one Edit by the same user in the source Project has an identical name.
- Any Edits created by Messenger recipients.
If Selects and Edits matching these conditions must be transferred to the new Project as well, there are a number of ways to achieve this.
Migrate Edits Automatically
The easiest approach will be to copy or rename the desired Edit before moving assets, so that it will be included in the automated migration.
- For identically-named Edits, use the “Manage Edits” button to rename one of the Edits.
- For Edits from Messenger recipients, select the desired Edit, then use the “New Edit” button to make a copy of the necessary Edit.
Migrate Edits Manually
If the above steps aren’t workable for a specific Project, alternate workflows exist for migrating the select level information.
Manually Migrate a Single Edit
For Projects containing a single Edit, the most straightforward approach may be to migrate the assets in smaller groups having identical Select levels. Simply filter the source Project to a certain Select level, select all matching assets, and move them to a new Project or an existing Project. Then set their Select level in the destination Project before returning to the source Project to repeat for the next Select level.
Manually Migrate Multiple Edits
For Projects of greater complexity, or Projects containing multiple Edits that must be migrated, it is possible to accomplish this using metadata import and export. Consult the steps below.
Before moving any assets, use the Edits menu to choose each Edit from the source Project that should be migrated to the new Project. (If an Edit does not contain any Selects, it does not need to be migrated.)
For each Edit, select an asset then click the “Export as Text” button from the Asset Inspector and export the Image Name and Select Level for all assets in the Project. (See Import and Export Asset Metadata for additional details about exporting metadata.)
Once the Selects for each Edit have been exported to a separate file, move the assets to the destination Project using the Bin.
After the assets have been moved to the destination Project, create a new Edit for each Edit that will be imported from the source Project. (Edits should be clear—starting without any Selects—and include all assets from the Project.)
Use the Edits menu to select each new Edit, then click the “Import Metadata” button in the Project Inspector to import the file created for the corresponding Edit in the source Project. Use the Image Name column from the file for lookup, and match the Select Level column with any empty metadata field. (The metadata import tool cannot change Selects, so it is necessary to store this information temporarily in a metadata field. If the chosen field is not empty, it will be overwritten with the data from the Select Level column in the imported file.)
Once the metadata has been imported (monitor the Activity page for progress), use the Find in Project tool to search for each Select individually in the imported metadata field. (For example, search for “1st Select”, “2nd Select”, or “Kill”.) In the search results for each keyword, click “Select all on page”, then use the Select button from the menu bar to set the appropriate level for that set of assets. (See Set Select Levels for more information.) Optionally, clear the keyword from the imported metadata field as well.
Repeat the process for each Edit migrated from the source Project. (If the metadata field wasn’t cleared, it will be overwritten with the new data.) When finished, an Edit in the destination Project will exist for each Edit from the source Project, with the Selects set to match.