Avid Media Composer Invalid File Name

[Danel Potvin]

Afteryou have finished this step (whether it be via AutoSequence or manually), you will have one long sequence that, if played in real-time from the beginning, will exactly recreate your shooting day. Pretty wild, huh?

Make sure your bin is still sorted by timecode and then by tape name. Pick a video track (except the one your base camera is on) and solo it (Apple-click or Ctrl-click on the monitor icon on the right side of the track button).

I wish Adam would fill us in on how he groups in final cut. The multigroup in avid is elegant and a mainstay of reality editing. Of done right your multigroup never has a black space waiting for cameras to turn back on.

Would this method work when using Final Cut Pro 7? Or rather, is this the best method for reality AE-ing when using FCP 7? Any suggestions from Final Cut Pro users who work in reality TV would be appreciated!

Also, I HIGHLY recommend Quick Keys or something similar. Not only will it save time, but it will also save your wrists. In my job, for every multigroup I do, using Quick Keys probably saves me about 6000 keystrokes. 6000!!!

The only heads up I would give, and hopefully Avid has thought of this, but relinking in Avid is based upon Source name and TC. So, I wonder if you would lose your media link when you switching drives/cards.

(EXCEPTION: If one of your cameras is non-existent during one of the groups, your cameras will shift to cover that hole. But they will stay locked in that current pattern until the entire take comes to a close or a new group starts.)

Great input. And definitely true. The only thing I would clarify on is that while you are right, sorting by name/source will alleviate some cam bank switching, depending on your add edits to your in sync timeline, you should still be mindful that you generally want to avoid Cam B popping over to Bank 1 after Cam A shuts off in the same sub-group. The only reason I ever figured out this method is because back in the day I got a lot of complaints from editors about that very problem.

Yea guys this is seriously the best resource for Avid multi grouping anywhere. Keep it up! Rob- What you say is the truth. I also use quickkeys as some people have mentioned on this thread and you can actually run into trouble with that if you allow it to add edits for you because quickkeys will add edits at the start and stop of all clips. For some reason Avid thinks that the start of filler is the start of a clip. Editors will want to kill you if you have really clippy multigroups. Especially when you are grouping digital audio, they have to change the audio source every time a new subclip starts so clippy = lots of audio changing. If anyone wants my grouping settings and/or my quikkeys file feel free to contact me

thanks for your response! I actually meant is there a way to get all four tracks of audio to appear on the timeline together? I think I might have to autosync the clips rather than group them. Are you familiar with this?

Is there a way to make sure that my external audio is the default selected audio when I group. It seems like sometimes it is and other times I have to switch it by right clicking the track and changing it from the camera audio. This can be very frustrating when doing a group that is hours long with hundreds of places where I have to switch the audio.

Ive draged the msn.MMOB files directly into a bin. But theres no way to play the clips ( I can easily play them from the drive in VLC player). I always get the error: " Exception: Failed to get the sample position from the AMA Plug-in."

"When you increase the Key Sat Line setting, you remove background pixels with the less saturated color. Typically, increasing this setting will clean up the whites, because the low saturation values will be retained in the key. "

Is that true ? It seems to me that there is a mistake here. In fact, if we increase this parameter, we retain (AFAIU) more low-saturated colors in the background (i.e. more unsaturated colors will be excluded from the key, and kept in the image.)

I skipped Ventura so I've been on Monterey for a while. I'm currently in between projects and I just discovered that Sonoma has been qualified for use. Are people liking it? Is Media Composer stable? Safe to upgrade without breaking things? What's been peoples' experiences with the newest MacOS? All opinions are welcome!

I've been troubleshooting this for a week. Have replaced both GB switch and router in server system, checked configurations, yet still have trouble. Most notuiceable is a much lower write bandwidth compared to read bandwidth (measured using both benchmark utility and Windows network graphic display).

I'm now trying to benchmark the bancwidth of transfers between my workstation and the servers. But the benchmarking tool I am using (ATTO) requiires me to set some variables, which seem logical enough but are hard to choose unless I know what AVID typically sends to the network.

Is there anyone here with an insight into MC and networking who can tell me what the appropriate settings above should be to approximate the bandwidth typical requirements og Avid MC when capturing DnXHD-185X material for 1080/50i over a 2GB (teamed 2x1GB) network connection?

I wanted to know if there was a way to tell Media Composer to scan a different folder for plugins on start up? It's crashing with a ton of plugins I use for my Pro Tools work, and I can't just not use them. I guess one solution would be to find all of the offending plugins, label them with a color tag, and move them out when I need to use MC - then put them back when I need to use PT. That sounds quite annoying though.. I just want to learn and understand Media Composer's interface and workflow for a possible job, and don't mind having no audio plugins for it. Would this be a problem?

I'm aware of tools out there that will take EDLs 'with markers'. However I want to use the clip info from my sequence and bring in again in subcap subtitle form. I don't have markers and don't want to have to add them to my sequence as that would defeat the purpose of my mission.

I am embarking on an edit of a large documentary where I will be grappling with lots of footage including lengthy interviews and exhaustive footage from numerous sources. The project will be edited at 1080 and then reconstructed at 4K once the edit is completed. But my main concern even at 1080 will be media drive space and allocation.

The last time I approached a project like this was about six years ago,. At that time I used several unpartitioned GRAID 8tb drives and things ran just fine until any drive approached 2tbs of media on it and that's when then things bogged down. My media drives have nothing else on them, just the Avid Media folders, since I keep my raw footage on different drives. But as long as I kept each drive at less than 2Tb on it, I was fine.

But this time, I can't help but think there may be a better way to approach this besides buying a new drive each time things fill up to 2tb on an 8tb drive. After all, I am using the latest AVID media composer software on a qualified mac, and while I have 8tb drives of differing ages, I am thinking leaving 6tbs unused on each drive feels like a lot.

So I am asking--- would I get more out of my drives by partitioning, or would that risk bogging down--- a risk I cannot afford to encounter midway into this lengthy edit. OR, has the avid improved in these six years so I can try using more that the 2tb max that I encountered before?

We have clean installs of MC 23.12 on 40 identical Mac Studios (M2 Max, 64GB RAM, Ventura 13.4). ScriptSync is either unusably slow, or errors with 'Error syncing 'clip name' - Failed to get segments count from database - continue?' Yes/No.

I may have asked for this before and I know it's been mentioned many times, and I know people say get Baselight Editions or use Resolve, which I do. But a large majority of work I do in UK broadcast, for finishing is still done on Symphony. I simply can't understand why development has crawled to a halt, when there is still such a market. And please open it up to 3rd party control surfaces like Tangent. Tracking is still abysmal particularly, although shapes are poor too, they are at least workable, mostly. In online I use Mocha via BCC, all the time and it would be good to use that in colour grading too. Metadata for clips is still based on tape workflows and this needs serious attention too.

The following comment was posted by user Robert Martindale to me in response to my post. Does Avid tolerate this language on the forums? Please remove him from all forums. See attached screen grab thanks.

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I did a completely fresh, ground-up install of Ventura 13.4 on a Mac Studio M1 Max on a freshly erased drive, installed Media Composer 2022.12.4, and edited with it this morning with no issues for a few hours.

I installed Blackmagic Desktop Video Setup 12.4.2 and attached an UltraStudio 4K Mini, and after activating it in Media Composer, I was unable to play one sequence without lots of stuttering and dropped frames. I loaded a second sequence, hit play, and Media Composer beach-balled and froze completely...

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