Many editors are familiar with the “Lock Bin Selection” option in the editor to protect their media from being deleted.
For those that have adopted the Interplay workflow, however, locking clips in a bin is not the recommended best practice. Reservations are time-based permissions applied to folders in Interplay Access, and should be applied to protect media.
If a user locks a clip in his bin and forgets about it, Interplay doesn't have a way to delete the media file off the system. Media Managers would likely see the following error when trying to delete certain files off the system.
The file gives an “access denied” message because it is in a “Read Only” state on the Windows level and even an Interplay Administrator cannot override this permission. We’ve seen several sites in the past that have hundreds of clips appear in the “Orphan Clips” folder in the Interplay database that could not be deleted because of this. The possible workarounds would be to drag the clips into a bin and unlock them from the editor, or to hunt through Windows Explorer to find the “Read Only” files and remove the flag. Both options could prove time consuming.
With Interplay 1.4.2, we have included a new Site setting called Delete Behavior.
This setting allows the Administrator to decide how to treat media that has been locked in the bin. As you can see from the setting below, Administrators can leave it up to the delete user’s discretion, or create a default setting for everyone.
- Allow user choice in Delete dialog: Two options are available in the Delete dialog box: “Skip” and “Force delete.”
- Always skip (default): In the Delete dialog box, the “Skip” option is shown but cannot be changed.
- Always force-delete: In the Delete dialog box, the “Force delete” option is shown but cannot be changed.
Now when a Media Manager plans on deleting assets he or she will see the following “Delete Options” dialog:
Note that an Administrator will always have the option to Force-Delete or Skip locked media.
Remember, it is a best practice to apply Reservations through Interplay Access to protect media from being deleted. However, if media had been locked in the bin and was never unlocked, Media Managers now have a much easier option to purge that media from the system once it is no longer needed.
Post by Ryan Nadeau — Field Trainer, Avid Training Services