Cortex Reels - choose destination when making reels

As you know, you choose the deliverable location in the project settings. And when you make a new reel, the output files get placed in a reel folder in the deliverable location.

This doesn’t jive well when you have different deliverables that need to go to different locations. For example, let’s say I have clips that have been logged/colored/etc. From these clips I need to make DNxHD 36 files and ProRes 4444 files with 4K resolution. The DNxHD 36 is really lightweight and I can push those files directly to our Avid ISIS over 1Gb ethernet. But ProRes 4444 4K is a bigger animal and needs output to a different location (like a fiber-connected SAN or direct attached SAS RAID).

Currently, I would have two options (and neither option is very efficient):

  1. Render DNxHD 36 files, close project, change project deliverable location, then reopen project.
  2. Export the manifest, make a new project (with different deliverable location) and reimport the manifest.

Repeat these steps for each different type of deliverable (ie DPX, h.264, etc)

Instead, there should be an option when creating a new reel to set the deliverable location. The default location could be the one set in the project settings. But allow the user to change it. This would give more flexibility to how reels are created and how Cortex could be used in a more central role.

We’ve heard this request once or twice before and it’s been hanging out on our backlog/waitlist, I’ll be sure to add your request and bump it up.