I have a request for my Flame archive to go to another facility. I’m kind of ok with that. I soft import everything and archive without cache.
Question: Do I hand over the project folder with the flame small archive or Restore the archive and cache a new archive with media? I’m guessing the former will require a bit of mucking around with filepaths.
What would you do?
I have been asked many times to share my Flame archive and since we have moved to a managed media workflow, the supply of the Flame archive seems quite redundant.
I presume that they are just doing this for Pokemon reasons and I have never had them come back to me and ask why it doesn’t work.
Having said that, the Flame archive and the accompanying folders from my server are what they probably want. I usually prep all of my layers and CG and send them as quicktime movs with alphas. I am not expecting another Flame artists to pick these up.
In this case I was told they want to do revisions in their local area. (international client). So you think it will be easy enough to relink all the media on a cacheless archive?
Sounds like a ball ache either way. Painful for you and painful for the person an the other end.
I would probably treat this another way. Export all final shots with handles. Export any GFX or other elements separate. You could export an EDL (AAF/XML) from your Flame timeline so that a reconform would be straight forward.
If they want to dig into your archive they can or if they want to rebuild and start doing revisions they can do that 
If you so choose, in the future, you will be able to build a LOGIK-PROJEKT that you can connect to your preferred flavor of internet storage. Your clients will buy access from you to this shared storage.
If you cached everything, how big would it be? Buy a drive big enough to hold them entire thing and re-bill them for it, both drive cost and time. And make sure it’s 2025.
The least amount of work. It’s not your problem.
At first I thought I shouldnt make it too easy for them. But then I thought it might be one of you guys that will pick up this job. haha. so I’m going with @ytf’s idea. This will take longer but I can charge for it. It will be easier for them to restore the whole project from a cached Flame archive.
An age old dilemma.
Annoyed: Comply with the request at minimum required effort. Send them an archive of the timeline / batches only. Make relinking and finding source files their problem.
Professional but disengaged: Archive the project like you would for yourself (in case they came back and asked for a revision). Make a copy of that archive and hand it off nicely. Don’t go overboard.
Leaning into it: We live in an age of global collaboration. You could also be the one inheriting such an archive from someone else tomorrow. As a team player, spend the extra effort to make it easy. Bill for your time, if needed explain the extra time/cost.
No right or wrong answer.
Comes down to your emotions, your principles, and how likely the choice is impacting future business from that client, and if you even care about that.
Great band name!
Haha. The people that compose and play elevator music…