I've have been asked recently on numerous occasions at what bit depth do Media Composer and Symphony process color correction.

I've heard all sorts of answers, like 12-bit, 16-bit integer, 32-bit float. Does anyone know for sure? Thanks so much.

Antivirus essential from my Synology NAS has quarantined "SetSecDescBG.exe" and "SetSecDMF.exe" from the 2018.12.3 installation folders (unzipped Avid download), threat = Win.Trojan.Refroso-12582: I guess/hope these are just false positives...?

Probably will need support for this but does anyone have any ideas behind these issues?

Its my tried and tested workflow on XAVC UHD and 50P media - been using it years really.  On Latest version Avid Symphony its crash city though.  Doing a full re-install now...

It crashes all the time and especially during a render.  Green screens come up and flicker as you edit. 

Here are screenshots of my symptoms and if anyone has any idea I'd appreciate it.  Its nothing trick and no workflow I havent been using for 2yrs plus :(

Can anyone who uses Frameflex and Symphony confirm they too get a green screen in the sourcve viewer if they try to adjust a Frameflex with a Symphony colour correct active too?

Full of green eyed monsterly yours!

Windows updated itself to version 1809 when I wasn't looking and now loads of things are broken - Avid being one of them!

The error messages start during the boot-up routine when Avid Link tries to start. There is a whole series of the same type of message reporting that:-

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\FILENAME.DLL is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error Try installing the program again using the installlation media or contact software vendor. Error status 0xc000012f

I was getting similar errors for MS Office but have fixed with a re-installation, but I have tried re-installing MC and still get this error.

This is not my main edit machine, so it is not holding me up. it is an old-ish license MC 2018.11 on a former edit workstation nw relegated to occasional preview and legacy stuff. nevertheless still annoying the Windows update seems to have comprehensively screwed it up.

Anyone else?

I have ran into this issue 3 times now and wanted to post this to see if anyone else has seen this before. I have to master my sequences in 1080i for the networks. I have an original sequence offlined in 720p from linked xdcam 35mb footage. These are simple 2 channel two microphone interviews. The example is as follows. If I have a sequence that has both mics on channels one and two respectivly and I lift out just a portion of one of the audio tracks, when I go to my final sequence conversion to 1080i and AVID makes a new sequence out of the 720P footage the audio sounds like it is off. I have tried to slip the track that I lifted just a protion of the audio our 1 frame forwards or backwards and it gets worse. It's almost as if the audio track that I have lifted a portion out of is off by half a frame. I am running 2018.12.3 of MC.

Richard Riley

Madstache, Inc.

Everytime I try to enter full screen playback both monitors go white and Media Composer goes unresponsive. Have to end task and re-launch. Full screen playback used to work with version 7.0.4 and an earlier version of 8 (I believe 8.4 but I'm not sure).

Has anyone else run into this issue and found a workaround?

Have tried:

-NVidia drivers 340.84 / 353.82 (Windows 10 only, failed to load) / 385.08

-NVidia control panel solution as listed in thread http://community.avid.com/forums/t/183957.aspx

-Enabling Windows Desktop Composition http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/How_To/Enable-Desktop-Composition-in-Windows

-Switching the playback monitor between the main (Displayport connection) and the 2nd (DVI connection)

System:

HP Z840

Windows 7 SP1

Quadro K4200

Media Compser 8.10

Dual monitor 1920x1200 (1-DVI, 1-Display port)

Hi All,

Its been awhile since I posted and I don't know if the subject represents the scope about what I am going to post - but - we are on an older bundle - 3.0.5 with updated 3.4.3 MI - Interplay production and our newsroom editors are Newscutter v. 11.0.6 -- and we had a mystery for awhile. 

As some of you may remember I was with Avid support for several years and specialized in Interplay. The reason I post today is to say that we found a bug that probably will never be fixed but burned us for years. I used every trick in the book that I knew but could not get it resolved. Well...at least we found the workaround and a decent resolution. 

When an editor does restore through media services/restore - as the job finishes and completes in the Media Services Status Viewer (ie turns green) - that is the visual indication that the media should be now available in Interplay window. For the most part it is - but sometimes one - or more of our editors would see the media status remain OFFLINE in the bin. We became micro focused on Media Indexer in our attempts to resolve the problem. As we got down to it - our editors would restart newscutter which would resolve the problem. The media would be online next time they access the bin/seq/media. 

After studying the cache dates and times in the local MI folder on the edit stations we realized that cache files were not being refreshed as designed - only when in the administrator role - could a steady tech log into the MI via webbrowser and re-commit those caches to update them - but I digress - we noticed that the cache updates didn't seem to matter - our offline media would remain offline. 

Making several assumptions I finally realized that this problem had nothing to do with relinking, or Indexer caches, or user settings, project, etc. 

What did work - and the reason you have kept reading this post - is a feature called 'Clear Bin Memory'. It was something that was designed in the older versions to clear outstanding media objects that consume RAM. 

We think why it works to solve our problem is that when an editor access the interplay window and drag clip from Interplay into Bin - there is a temporary object that exists - and gets in the way of the relink/dynamic relink process for this particular editor.  As I mentioned earlier in the post - some edit bays had no problem acccessing the media several minutes after a restore - usually when the editor complains he can't see his media - will run to another room - check for online status in that edit bay and would see it online. 

After fumbling around with this for several weeks - and knowing about the problem even longer - we came up with this. 

So - if you restore something and it doesn't come back in your room - try using the Clear Bin Memory button (info tab on project window). 

Hope it helps some of you oldies. 

Mike Sturgeon

Avid MC audio punch-in blues:

Greetings all. Am not having success using my audio punch-in function since upgrading to MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 and MC 2018.12.3. (I’ve really enjoyed using this functionality since my NuVista days, so I’m a little chagrined at this development…)

I’ve been using a Shure USB mic adapter with great results forever and today I had to tell my VO talent to please return another day once I’ve been able to learn how to use my equipment and software. 

I’ll walk you through it…

Verified that OS System Preferences showed good levels on Sound/Input and that ‘Shure Digital’ was selected rather than ‘Internal Microphone’.  Input level bars in the OS window were deflecting, showing that the Shure USB was functioning as expected. 

Started new HD project. A system pop-up window asked if MC could access the ‘microphone’. I answered ‘no’ since I wanted MC to use the Shure USB mic, thinking that it was a reasonable response. Since upgrading to Mojave I’ve noticed the OS ask me questions like that a number of times for different apps.  I think my negative response regarding microphone access has doomed me to recording silence. From that moment on I cannot record ANY audio with MC. 

Troubleshooting steps:  Checked Audio settings in MC. MC sees my Shure peripheral and is properly selecting it in Audio Punch-in tool.  In the Audio Project Settings/Input I see the input source properly identifying ‘Shure Digital’ as the source. Under ‘Hardware’ in that same window I see ‘Card’ displaying ‘Open!O-NDI& 1394 Audio & CoreAudio Host Audio”.

I invoke the punch-in tool as I’ve done thousands of times. No audio captured. Waveforms are completely flat. Audio files are being generated and stored, but no audio data is present. 

Question: how can I get my OS to ask me the “Media Composer wants to access your microphone” question again so I can respond “Just kidding, go ahead and access Microphone”? Maybe that will do it?

(I tried deleting and installing MC, restarting, creating new user.)  Really stuck here. 

I find it very frustrating that you can drop a marker on a clip, cut that clip in, and that marker will show up in your timeline. However, if you do the same thing with a spanned marker, nothing shows up--not even the in-point of the spanned marker. 

This seems like an inconsistency with the feature. 

The span of the spanned markers should show up in a sequence on the clips the same way they show up in the source monitor. 

Further, when they show up on the clips, they should also be listed in the Marker window.

+1 if you agree

I’ve been very happy back on Avid (2818.12.3), using AMA linking to replace Premiere Pro workflow for fast turnaround where sources are typically Sony F5 and Sony A7s files from a variety of shooters.

This week the A7sii files would not link in Source Browser, or if Alt-dragged to bins. Pretty sure I’ve had media from the mk2 before.

Is there some recording mode that the plug-ins don’t work for?

I tried transcoding, to DNx MXF / ProRes mov, in EditReady but neither of those would link either. Ended up using Resolve to get DNX MXF OPATOM files but would like to identify what is causing the non linkage.

I feel like I’ve reported this before... TL;dr - refreshing groups doesn’t refresh currently switched angle.

Ive been using the new grouping features (2018.12.3) extensively, with AMA linked files, and they work well for the most part.

This week I got the audio files transferred to me straight after shoot while the camera files were being hand carried back.

So I built a 4 camera sync map with the audio files & 4 dummy video clips and ‘created group’

Cut the group into a timeline, with ‘C4 dummy’ as the angle, and cut for audio content.

Camera files arrived, edited group, overwrote 4x dummy clips, updated group and right clicked on edited sequence and ‘refreshed groups’

C4 dummy clip remained the source on the timeline. I could right click and choose from the 3 other cameras but C4 was the dummy clip.

Match frame brings up correct group, with correct C4, so had to manually overwrite the sequence clip by clip.

Seems like this might be a safety ‘feature’ in that the sequence current clips can’t be changed with the refresh, but this is wrong in my opinion.

This is on a Mac running high Sierra, but I suspect PC will be the same.

(Edit: http://community.avid.com/forums/t/196578.aspx is last time I tried this)

There was a very useful feature in Filmscribe (which from experience several of my collegues were unaware of, and used cumbersome workarounds), which allowed change lists to be created across multiple reels.  You assigned a reel number in the Reel column for each reel sequence, and Alt-dragged them in the the old or new areas to establish a change-list for multiple reels (if a shot changed reels it worked well).  In spite of us delivering digitally, many feature films I have worked on are still split into 20min reels as this simplifies the change process to a certain extent (less to export, check and conform), even when there is no 35mm print planned.

Has this feature gone (can't get it to work at all) with the integration of Filmscribe into MC.  And if so, why and can we have it back please!!

Janusz

I have just upgraded to Mac OS 14.4.4 Mojave after seeing on the Avid site that MC versions 18.10 and above are compatible. I have MC 18.12. However MC launches with a system error message and will not run. Is anyone else getting this? Advice appreciated. 

I've been using MC since the very beginning but to my knowledge (after 30 years) there's no simple way to click a sequence directly into the source monitor. It sure would be nice to be able to option or control click and have it load. I regularly make sequences of selects to cut from and I am so tired of having to select, click and drag from one monitor to the other. I do use the drop down menu, but still it would be handy. Am I missing something or is this too difficult to engineer?

Also, since I use a project menu structure, is it possible on startup to have MC provide a recently used projects list to make swapping between projects easier. Surely the software can remember the 10 most recent paths so I don't have to click/navigate, click/navigate, click/navigate, click/navigate, click/navigate, click/navigate, click/navigate to get from one project to another. ALL modern software today uses this feature - even Microsft Word . . .

Any thoughts . . ?

If you check in a sequence with one stereo track into MediaCentral, the audio track will be displayed as A1. You can not use the Web Service API (for example, GetChildren) to determine if it is a stereo track or a mono track. I do not know how to determine if this audio track is mono, stereo, 5.1ch or 7.1ch. I want to know how to determine the type of audio track using the API. Please tell me a good way.

Hello everyone, 

as the titel suggest, Im wondering which is the fastes way to have textbox, which flys into the image from the right corner (with a slight fade) and a text which fades in after the fly in has stopped. What is the fastest way in Avid to achive this? Titel Tool or Marquee?You usually see those things in a television contribution, when the autor quotes a stament or so.

Thank you!!

Hi, for reasons of compatibility of my Interplay system, I would need an old version of Avid Router Control.Only 2.2 and 2.3 would be valid.Avid does not have them.  If someone had any of them, it would be of great help to me.Thank you

My first impressions of Titler+

- Wow great at last, over 20 years after Unicode became a standard, we at last have a modern Title Tool, rewritten, with a modern(ish) interface.  So I can add titles in all scripts, with diacritics, in Cyrillic, in arabic…. No more fiddling around with photoshop, exporting, importing. Hurray!

- Toolbox nicely laid out. Not too many bells and whistles which are unnecessary most of the time.  For fancy 3D titles I’ll use another tool - here we have a modernised replacement for the old Title tool, usable for lower thirds, simple static text and end-credits (the primary uses of the Title tool) with the possibility for soft discreet shadows which are very important.

- It is directly accessible from within the timeline, no second window, no plugins, it is integrated.

Great work…

But then I started to use it….

OK, now I expect a few issues after all this is a first release (but not an alpha version), a few unforeseen use cases etc….  What I found to be honest disappoints me greatly. Certainly my expectations were high, expecting not only a slick, easy to use welcome update of the >20 year old Title tool for the final year of the decade, but with the niggles with the old title tool sorted out (that came up very frequently and well known amongst seasoned editors and AEs), namely:

1. Possibility to add left, center and right justifying tab-stops allowing two column rolling titles (for end-credits).  

2. The possibility to copy and paste images into rolling titles (used to work reliably a long time ago…)

3. The possibility to export all titles on a track as text with timecode (as is possible with subcap) for reports required by production (would be fantastic)

4. Full Unicode ie. accented / non-latin character / right-to-left support.

5. Or maybe even something amazing like importing an RTF file making a rolling title with tabs, images, fonts…  or constraining vertical movement in rolling credits to a fixed number of pixels to avoid flicker… I digress… :-)

The impression I have is that it was not thought out from a user perspective, the result is nowhere near as intuitive as it should be for software today. 

In a sentence, Titler+ -  it is a bit like a sliding door with a pull-handle and a sign saying Push…. ;(

So here we go : 

a) You click in the monitor, a caret appears, you can type.  Double click a dotted border appears, so far so good.  All is nice and works as expected.  A good start.  It has an ugly black drop shadow that I’d prefer off by default, but I can turn it off. Fine. Looks good so far.

b) Click on the T in the Titler+ « toolbox », you get a square - You type and the square doesn’t change size, the text overflows - no wrapping….  No means (that I found) to have a text area that will wrap, not that it’s that important but the UI leads to expect that behaviour.  Resize the square and the text changes size, but the square is still smaller than the text???  Can’t change the size of the square without deforming the text.  It turns out the T creates a text layer (zone) not simply allowing text to be added, this is unclear….. hmmm it’s starting to feel a bit quirky……

c) Playing around with it I understand that there seems to be two types of ‘object’ - a ‘layer’ = zone that is created in the safe area that you can resize, resizing all the ‘child’ objects ..  and text created by clicking, making ‘child’ objects of a layer….. Phew…. Seems far too complicated and unclear - problem with nomenclature and UI.  Maybe reduce opacity on all other layers other than the selected one to indicate the current layer, but still UI badly thought out.

The whole layer / text object concept is very unclear in use - should be straightforward and evident.  I create a text object and that should be it, they have an order that I can change. Rather than have confusing layers (this is an implementation detail that should be hidden from me), allow me rather to group objects together, with safe-area guides as before.  I should be able to group and ungroup text or graphic elements and reorder them at will.  Or keep all objects independent as in the old Title tool.  The parameters in « layer » - position, scale, rotation, skew should simply apply to the current object or group, with the possibility for global positioning/scaling.  Simple and easy to understand, and closer to the way much other software operates.  No need to have layers, particularly as the UI has no window showing the hierarchy of objects and what layers exist (justified in eg. Photoshop but not here).  Something reminds me of TitleDeko with less UI... hmmm...

d) Can’t get rolling titles to work for the life of me…. That is to say…. No vertical scroll bar.   Rolling titles are used 99% of the time for end-credits, which are typically 10-20 times the height of the frame.   I can see the rest by moving the position in the clip and selecting ‘effect mode’ in the effect editor, but then I can’t edit.  And « Effect mode » in the effect palette this doesn’t mean anything at all!! I am in effect mode..!!  This is misnamed.  « Preview » maybe?  And there is no none, just Crawl, roll etc... Not clear.

e) The relationship between the effect palette and the titles is unclear.  Eg. Select a few characters, layer/scale has no effect as it only applies to layers (zones) (no visual cue as to which parameters apply), Layer/Add Text adds a new independant Text Layer, not text within a layer…. Should be named Layer/ Add text layer…     I understand the principle, but there is a problem of organisation and naming, making it very unintuitive (related to c)

f) The mixture of parameters that apply to the currently selected layer and operations‘select layers’, ‘add text’ in the same place is misleading and seems poor design.  Effect palette should be essentially for parameters and related operations, especially as there is a dedicated toolbox window with this effect for everything else - much more convenient (great that they this is the first AVX2 effect with a dedicated interface - everything does not have to be shoehorned into the effect palette). Also no means to add a tracker as was possible previously.

g) Accented characters can not be inputted from the keyboard.  É, ç à from the keyboard are ignored.  This wasn’t tested it would seem with non-US keyboards (I’m on MacOS 10.12…6, with a French keyboard).  But you can copy and paste anything you like including non-latin and right to left scripts, which is great news.

h) Selection of text.  Every text editor, be it in Word, Photoshop, Title tool… changes the background of selected text…. Here, you get a confusing rectangle, making you think that you have created an new object….  The difference between a click creating a new object and selecting an existing object is not always correctly handled -> there should be an arrow tool for selecting and a text tool for creating/editing and a way to make the caret disappear.  Feels quirky.

i) No means to select and align multiple text objects (left, right, center), a) with respect to each other and b) within the frame.  Multiple object selection impossible via Cmd+click or Shift+click.

j) Select previous/next layer icons look like alignment icons….

k) Resizing of rectangles should be unconstrained by default, and aspect constrained with shift.  The opposite is the case.

l) No polygons (often useful for basic lower thirds), or lines (there is a convention in France to place a large full frame cross 240f before FFOA - line tool useful).

m) Tools/Avid title+ refers merely to the tool palette, allowing you to find if it is hidden behind other windows.   This is not clear.  Does nothing in Src/Rec mode.

n) To create a title you need to drag+drop from the effect editor, add title in the timeline doesn’t always work (either no response or ERROR: unable to add an Avid Titler+ effect) - impossible to create a title as the only thing in the sequence as you can’t create the space in the timeline to drop the effect.

o) Alt+Cmd after Cmd+L to move around doesn’t bring up the hand cursor (but still works - this is a minor issue)

p) The two icons in the top-right of the effect palette (drag points, select areas) are identical, wasn’t able to figure out what they do. Related to (f) - if is changes interaction with the objects in the monitor it should be in the toolbox.

q) With my developer hat on, under the hood, looking at the AAF, for interoperability... doesn't look amazing... some of the data (text/font names) is hidden as "Private data" in a proprietary binary format (seemingly confirming some TitleDeko heritage...), the rest is as AAF Constant Values, with many repeated property names.  Maybe just use XML as a text value, that other downstream software can parse and use.  Avid (and other companies) uses XML elsewhere in AAF (and MXF for that matter) where things don't easily fit in to the AAF datamodel. Interoperability is what sets Avid apart and where other systems fall way short.  AAF is documented - everything is there, once other manufacturers properly implement import (not always the case) - a clear interface that is easily parsed reduces bug probablity elsewhere. 

You sort of get used to how it operates, but it is very very quirky.  The Avid design team should put someone who has never used the Title+ tool but with experience of editing software as a user and observe how they get on without a manual - a lot would be learned….   It practically breaks most UI rules in the book…. Poor affordance, hidden hierarchy, no feedback from some user operations, unconventional behaviour.  Yet it was certainly beta-tested…  (eg. with respect to the accented character issue reproduced on two machines - no French beta testers???)

Maybe I’m a bit harsh, but I do think that the first impression that you have on these sorts of things is the right one.  It is possible that some of the things I was unable to do, are in fact possible - but this is the point, it should be intuitive - the manual should not be necessary, not for something as straightforward as this.   I teach in a film school and using this, I’m thinking, this is going to be a fun one to explain to first-time users….  :-(

It is a pity that with this opportunity to rethink things from scratch we didn’t get better than this.  Should be clean, well thought out and elegant.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m testing out the other features of 2018.12 and so far very impressed, not least the possibility to make a multigroup from a sequence AT LAST with cameras that start and stop whenever!!! Super work Avid!!  but this titler….. :-(

Curious to see what everyone else makes of it!

Janusz 

Hello,

I am attempting to use AMT2 to add proxy audio tracks to existing clips with PCM (24 bit WAB) MXF files.

The problem that I am encountering is that in the created proxy audio files - the start offset for the source mob is incorrect for all rates that are NOT 29.97 or 59.94 drop frame.   These two rates work correctly.  If I attempt NDF (with properties flag for DF set to FALSE and timecode string in NDF format) - the created audio MXF file is STILL marked as drop frame and the start tc is offset incorrectly.   Same for 23.976, 25, and 50 rates.  There is a bias that grows with the timecode relative to 30 fps but DF is false for non-30/60 fps.  It's almost as if audio only proxy created is hard coded to be DF and 30 fps.  This works correctly if there is a video track in ALL cases.

Has ANYONE used AMT2 to add a proxy audio to audio only clips?  Would you mind providing the uncompressed and compressed properties XMLs that you are using?  Maybe I am missing something?  Are there known issues with this?

Resulting media doesn't play at the correct offset in the timeline.  Again - works for 30fps DF - no other rate or NDF.

Thanks in advance!

Rich 

Dear Avid, Bob,

I see another case being opened for the latest project I'm doing but before doing so I wonder if you ever saw this before Bob?

About once a week a client of the Nexis storage, it can be a win10 editing client or win 2012r2 server like SGL all of a sudden produces a user rights access warning when you try to access a sub folder or parent folder while browsing either in an apllication or windows itself. Only resolution is to quit nexis client and start it again and that immediatly resolves it.

In the past 6 weeks I have become aware of it happening 4,5 times. So it's not a killer but still a bit worrying.

I've seen it happen with 7.3.2 client and 7.5. Weirdly never with 7.4. And because the 7.4 client accidentally did not include the fix  that could under circumstances cause the media indexer to BSOD, I wonder if that's related or just pure coincedence.

I already have a case open because 7.5 client causes BSOD's on 2 SGL Flashnet servers, probably because RSS is enabled on the 10G cards and wonder if I should open a case for this one folder user rights issue too.

Regards,