This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Help! MC 8.4 Media Drive Scanning Problem

RE: Avid MXF Folders: "Always empty/re-name the "1"

David,
One of the things I preach when training shows on not letting Consolidating and Archiving go ignored until the last minute -- thereby doing it regularly at the end of each day or week instead -- is "emptying the '1' (one) folder."

On a recent show that had 10 editors working in various locations with various versions of Avid Media Composer on different OSs/Platforms, I assigned them the Avid MediaFiles > MXF > (folder number) to use in a range. I've had no problem using up to 9999 folders, but in this case, I kept it to the hundreds with 3 digits:

100 Editor 1
200 Editor 2
300 Editor 3, and so forth.

EACH DAY, before an editor launched their Avid (or when they closed at the end of the day), they were to take their "1" folder and rename it to their assigned number by the day they worked. So Editor 1 working 22 days would have folders 100 thru 121. Editor 2 working 15 days had folders 200 thru 214.

When everyone met back at home base and back on the central ISIS, their folder numbers were maintained with the 3-digit 'hundreds', but ON-LINE did their work and re-named their finishing "1" folders to 4-digit 'thousands," so Editor 1's 100 thru 121 going through on-line had its "1" folder end up as folder 1000. When an on-line editor worked on Editor 2, that "1" folder was re-named 2000.

Every time Avid starts and something is captured/imported/rendered, if it finds no "1" folder, it creates it. so the religion was to always end an Avid session renaming that to anything other than "1" for the next session; and before boot-up ensuring there was no "1" (or even being safer by ensuring there were NO single digit folders 1 thru 9).

Even when Avid hiccup'd and lost some links, it was incredibly easy for my A.E.'s and media tech's to re-link/reveal and locate files, quarantine corrupted .mxf's, and made consolidation and organization a breeze, also saving tons of drive space by negating re-renders when they weren't needed.

It's what I love about Avid -- their media management is supreme.

Best,
keoni

Keoni Tyler
Kitchen Table Editorial
Hollywood

---In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, <davidadodson@...> wrote :

Fascinating. But if that folders's never been scanned before on his system, how will MC know what's in there?

Also, and this is admittedly a hair-brained scheme, since I have a matching number '1' folder here in LA, can I send him my .pmr and .mdb files from my number '1' folder, and have him drop them in to his number '1' folder? Or is that just wild crazy talk?

Thanks!

David Dodson

davidadodson@...

On Sep 29, 2015, at 7:19 AM, Wilson Chao wilsonchao@... [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

One workaround would be to rename the "1" folder to a non-numeric name; e.g. "A" which will "lock" it so Avid won't bother to scan & re-index it. This should allow Avid to use the folder's current mediafiles which are probably 99.9% good with the exception of one or two bad files. This way your director can get to work immediately which gives you time to ship over another drive.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 10:12 AM, Jeff Hedberg jeff@... [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

David,

One other suggestion.
Do a quick sort by file size to confirm that none of the files are 0 bytes in size.
Sometimes (at least around here) a file copy done on the finder level will THINK it copies the file, but only starts and forgets to fill it full of data.
That, obviously, corrupts the file.

But, yeah, I agree, divide and conquer sucks.

Jeff
------------------
Jeff Hedberg

Director of Operations
Union Editorial
575 Broadway,6th floor
New York, NY 10012

On Sep 28, 2015, at 7:00 PM, bruno@... [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Yep, it's a pain in the backside having to use the divide-and-conquer technique.

The other thing you might like to try is to download the free version of the MXF viewer from Telestream, called Switch. It plays the Avid MXF files directly from the numbered media folders. You may be able to identify the corrupt file(s) as they may not play/only partially play correctly.

If you find you get an error at start-up after installing (as I did), the likely reason is that you have to also install the 'Microsoft Platform Update for Windows 7.1'.

Bruno

---In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, <davidadodson@...> wrote :

I've got a situation in which MC is freezing upon the scanning and indexing of new media drives.

More specifically, the project was created here in Los Angeles. A copy of all five numbered MXF folders of media was made and sent to Moscow for use by the director. But when he launches MC, and Composer sets in to scan and index the drives now connected to his system, it gets about nine seconds into scanning folder '1', and then just stops. The progress bar stops, and everything just sits there.

I had him take the number 1 folder out of the Avid MediaFiles folder (out of 'MXF', etc.), and place it in a holding folder outside of 'Avid MediaFiles', and then launch again. This time the scan began with numbered folder '2' and successfully completed the scan.

So what I'm assuming is that there is a corrupt MXF file somewhere in folder '1'. The question is, what's the best way to ferret it out? Is there any way — other than systematically removing batches of files at a time and trying to rescan — to filter for corrupt MXFs in a given folder?

Thanks,

DD

David Dodson
davidadodson@...