Managing Projects and Media > Archiving > Browsing an Archive >
Online Tables of Contents (OTOCs)

The table of contents lists the contents of the archive, as well as information such as the order in which clips are assembled on the archive, clip IDs, transitions, and timecodes. When you restore an archive with the table of contents, Flame uses this information to restore the material.

A copy of the table of contents is saved in the filesystem. This copy is referred to as the Online Table of Contents (OTOC). You can open an archive in read-only mode using the OTOC. In read-only mode, you can load but not save or delete entries from the archive. With VTR archives, you can open an archive in read-write mode using the OTOC, and save and delete entries from the archive.

The OTOC is useful for:

- Recovering material in an archive when the table of contents on the medium is corrupted. See Recovering an Archive.
- Opening an archive quickly.

When an OTOC is created, Flame creates an ASCII text copy of it (ATOC) as well as an HTML and XML copy. Use the ASCII and HTML copies to view the contents of an archive without opening it. For example, use them to view the contents of a VTR archive without connecting to the VTR. You can also use the XML TOC to easily populate a database with information about your archives.

The OTOC, ATOC, HTML, and XML TOCs are saved to the path specified in the ArchiveLibrary token in the software initialization configuration file. If the ArchiveLibrary token is disabled, they are saved to /usr/discreet/archive. You can also define the ArchiveLibrary token in the project configuration file by adding the line:

ArchiveLibrary <directory>

where <directory> is replaced by the location for storing your archives.

The OTOC is updated each time you close the archive.

See Using an ASCII TOC to View an Archive and Using an HTML TOC to View an Archive.