I'm not an Opus developer, so I caution you to tread carefully with what I'm about to suggest. (Be sure to back up your Opus configuration before you try anything.)
Opus file collections are just plain text XML files named with a .col extension. So you should be able to you to create them externally from Opus, provided you get the content schema correct. From what little I know of this, there are a couple of issues you need to workaround.[ol][li] Certain meta data is stored for each file as an attribute for that file's element inside the .col file. Many of these attributes are not stored as plain text or decimal values.
The fields I see in my .col files are:[ul]
[li] access[/li]
[li] create[/li]
[li] modify[/li]
[li] attr[/li]
[li] size[/li][/ul]
I do not know if this is the extent of all meta data stored inside of a .col file, or if it is related to my Collections default format.
I believe size is stored as the number of bytes in octal format; thus, the file element for a file that is 26 bytes, would have an attribute of size="32". I do not know how the date/time fields are stored (access=, create=. modify=), nor the attributes (attr=).
For what it is worth, I have tried creating a collection .col file with no meta data for any files. The resulting file collection in Opus will show all the files with 0kb size and the date/time stamps fields will all be blank, et cetera. Opus doesn't seem to hang or anything on such lack of meta data. However, a collection with only file names and paths may be of little or no value.
Like I said , I'm not an Opus developer, so this is all just what I have gleaned from my own observations.
[/li]
[li] As you may already be aware the .col files can be copied to your /dopusdata\Collections folder, after which you must restart Opus before the new collections take effect.
This thread has some relevant discussion.[/li][/ol]
Hopefully this helps you some.