Before anything is edited, it has to arrive. In Accord Suite that is the job of Media Core, the first page in the bar — "your files, the source monitor and the media pool, for bringing footage in" — though most of what follows works from any page.
This guide covers every way in: dropping files, importing them, copying a camera card safely, standing in a lighter file for heavy footage, and then keeping a growing pile of media findable. Every step is the app's own, from its built-in guide (Help ▸ How to Use Accord Suite).
Drag files in from Finder
The quickest way in is the one you already know. Drag one file or several from Finder — or from Accord Suite's own Library panel — onto the window.
What happens next depends on the file, because each kind goes where it belongs:
| You drop | It becomes |
|---|---|
| A photograph or picture | A layer on the canvas |
| A film | A clip at the playhead |
| A sound (a song, an effect, a voice recorded elsewhere) | A clip at the playhead, on the audio track edits are going to — or a new audio track if there is none |
| Subtitles | Captions |
A .cube file |
A look |
| An SVG | Shapes you can edit |
With nothing open, the first file you drop opens and the rest are placed in it. So you can start a project by dragging a folder's worth of material onto an empty window.
Effects drag too. Find an effect in the Effects panel (All Effects, on Photo Core), typing to search, and drag it onto a layer in the Layers panel. It lands just above that layer, inside its group, and works on that layer and everything beneath it — exactly where you meant it, in one move.
And files drag back out. Every clip on the timeline has a small document mark at its lower left. Drag from that mark to Finder, to Mail or to another application, and you hand over the file the clip was cut from. Dragging the clip anywhere else still moves it on the timeline as normal.
One thing that does not drag yet: a piece of work from one page onto another. Moving a frame to Photo Core or a canvas onto the timeline is done from View ▸ Workspace (Send Frame to Photo Core, Place on the Timeline, Send to Anime Core).
Import, and the Project panel
For a batch you want to sort before using, choose File ▸ Import Media… and pick the files. They wait in the Project panel — sorted into bins if you like — until you use them, ready for any page.
From there:
- Put a whole film on the timeline. Put the playhead where it should start, right-click the film in the Project panel and choose Put the Whole Clip on the Timeline. No In and Out needed.
- Cut in just the part you want. Open the clip in the Source panel, mark In and Out, put the timeline's playhead where it should go, and click Insert (
,) to push the rest along, or Overwrite (.) to lay it over what is there. - Look before loading. Switch the Project panel from the list to Filmstrips: each film shows five pictures from its first frame to its last. Move the pointer across a strip to see the frame under it; click to open the clip in the Source panel.
Copy a camera card, and prove it arrived
A card that is wiped before every file has been checked is how footage is lost. Accord Suite's card copy is built around proving the copy, not trusting it:
- In the Library panel, choose Ingest a Card…
- Choose the card, then add a folder for each copy. Two folders on two drives make two copies.
- To have proxies made as well, choose a size under Proxies; they are made from the first copy once it is proven.
- Choose Copy and Prove. Every file is copied and checked by its hash. Footage whose every copy matches comes into the project from the first copy.
- Read the report written beside the first copy: every file, its hash, and what became of it.
Only once the report says every copy matches is the card safe to put away.
Heavy footage: proxies
Cutting 4K or 8K footage on a laptop is smoother with a lighter stand-in. Two ways:
- Let Accord Suite make one. In the Project panel, right-click a film, open Make Proxy and choose Half Size or Quarter Size. The proxy is written into a Proxies folder beside the film and linked to it.
- Use one you already have. Import the smaller file, right-click it, open Use as Proxy For and choose the original it stands in for.
Then choose View ▸ Play from Proxies. The viewer draws the film from its proxy, and the status line says which films are using one. Exports are always made from the originals.
Sound recorded separately
If a recorder took the sound and the camera took the picture, import the recorder's file, select the film clip on the timeline and choose Clip ▸ Sync Sound With, then the recorder's file. The clip plays with that sound, lined up to the frame.
Keeping it findable as it grows
A project with three clips needs no system. A project with three hundred does.
Bins. Click the folder button in the Project panel to make a bin. Right-click any media and open Move to Bin (or choose Top Level to take it out). Rename… changes what it is called in the project; Remove from Project takes it out.
Judge the takes once. Open a clip in the Source panel, mark a good stretch (or leave the marks off to judge the whole clip), and press P to pick it, X to reject it, or 1 to 5 for stars. The same key again takes it off. In the Project panel, filter by Picks, Rejects or stars to see only what you have judged.
Keywords. In the Source panel, type a keyword under the picture and press Return — for the whole clip, or for the stretch between In and Out. Control-1 to Control-9 apply the project's first nine keywords. Open a keyword under Keywords in the Project panel to see everything that carries it.
Smart bins. Set a filter and a search in the Project panel so it shows what you want — "picks with interview", say — then choose Save as Smart Bin… from the filter menu. The bin stays up to date as more clips are judged and tagged.
Find a shot by what is in it. For a card nobody tagged: open the filter menu and choose Look Inside Every Shot (or right-click one piece of media and choose Look Inside). Accord Suite looks at a few frames of each film, or at the still itself, with the classifier built into macOS — on your Mac, nothing sent anywhere — and keeps the names it is sure of. Then type "boat", "beach" or "kitchen" in the Project panel's search.
When a film goes missing
Move or rename a file and a project will say it could not be found. In the Project panel, find the film marked offline, choose Relink… from its menu and pick the file. Every clip cut from it comes back — picture and sound — as one step you can undo.
Cuts from other programs
An edit made elsewhere can come in as a timeline: File ▸ Import Cut (.otio, .fcpxml)… opens OpenTimelineIO and Final Cut Pro XML files. Anything the cut uses that cannot be carried over is named in a report afterwards, rather than silently dropped. (The same two formats go back out — see every way to export.)
Where to go next
Once the media is in, it goes to work on the other pages: photographs, design, the cut, the grade, animation and the sound. Or start at the overview.
Download Accord Suite — free, for the Mac.