Hi all, here's the deal. (deep breath...)

i've been working on a project - feature length, on Xpress Pro HD 5.2.4, for some time now.  It's finished and we are having it graded on a DS Nitris as this is what's available to us and we are on a serious budget so the old post house i used to work for is helping us out.  It's HDV so the media is MXF.  The project is finished and so far this is what has happened.  Transcoded the finished sequence to DNxHD-185 (DS doesn't seem to like the Thin Raster of HDV - this sorted that problem), consolidated onto a portable 500 GB HDD with the bin file and an AFE for Nitris.  So far so good.  Next up, the sequence loads into Nitris fine (I think they're on version 7.6? or 7.8 so it does support MXF media) HOWEVER although most media is present and correct we are finding that certain clips are replaced with random other clips from the timeline and that some clips even change halfway through playing to another scene - all within the same clip.  We think we've put our finger on it being down to me being a huge novice when i started to project.  I failed to assign original tape names to each tape and all the media has one name "restaurant".  We've found that although, say, a media composer has no problem opening the full sequence, the DS looks at the timecodes and gets confused when there are more than one similar timecode seemingly from the same tape - it doesn't take into account durations ect to work out that it's not the right media for the clip.  So  10 or 15 clips came up wrong.  We made an EDL which i took back into Xpress Pro to identify the clips that were missing, i renamed the tape names for them and re-consolidated - they took it in and it seemed to work, but overnight, new clips have been thrown up - we think due to the Nitris going off and on and re-indexing the clips and finding other errors.  this seems like it could be a never ending circle so I'm going to go back to the original media (not transcoded) and rename all the tape names to their corresponding bin names - ie. Tape 001, Tape 002 etc. We think this will work and we'll just reimport the whole thing  and hopefully the new tape names will help Nitris tell whats what.

So i'm now at the stage of re-naming the original clips in Xpress Pro but this is where i'm having problems. 

What i've been told to do is highlight the clips in the bins with the original media, unlink, change the source name to the name of the bin, Tape 001 etc and then relink. 

I opened bin Tape 001, highlighted one clip to test, unlinked it, changed it's name and relinked.  The media went offline and when i relinked showed up again and the tape name heading now showed Tape 001.  Great i thought.  Funnily all the other clips in the bin had also changed to Tape 001 without me selecting them, but they were still online so i though cool, and moved onto Bin 2.  All the clips in bin 2 were called Tape 001, and in all the other bins too, they've all changed to the source name i assigned to the first clip.  So have the clips on the external drive

First question - Why?

I selected a clip from bin 2 did the same unlinking and this time only that clip changed it's name to tape 002 but it wouldn't come back online when i tried relinking.  I eventually refreshed the media directories and reloaded the media database and it reverted back to being called tape 001 and was online again. 

Question 2 - Is this the right thing to be doing?  When i look in the MXF media folder on my Avid drive the actual MXF files themselves have the bin names attached to them and not "restuarant" but for some reason all the consolidated clips on the portable drive are called restaurant?  Why, at what point are these files losing their original media names and becoming the ellusive "restaurant"?  Changing the tape names in the bins doesn't seem to affect the MXF files names at all, just the tape name under the tape heading in the bin - even though when i change the names Avid tells me "This operation changes the source to which a clip refers".  I'm very confused as to why i cant simply change the tape name in the bin and have Avid rename the media the same as the tape name? 

This is actually turning out to be really hard to explain so i hope someone has some idea of what i'm talking about or has been through this before.  All i want to do is give the media and clips distinct names so that DS doesn't get confused when it tries to fit them into the sequence.  Can anyone help?  Does anyone even know what i'm rambling on about?  God its late!  I'll be up for hours so any swift responses would really help as i'm meant to be getting the renamed clips back to them tomorrow for the final days work on monday. 

At the moment i've given up on renaming the original media and i'm working on the transcoded, consolidated media on the portable drive and going through all the transcoded clips and finding which tape they were from originally and renaming the clips without unlinking, just by going to "modify" and changing the source name to say Tape 001.  This seems to keep the clip online and the "Tape" heading displays the new name i've given it.  It doesn't however change the MXF name in the Avid MediaFiles folder on the HDD, that stills says "restaurant".  Will this mean DS is still confused because the actual media still has the same name? 

Any explainations or help would really be helpful and hugely appriciated.  This has turned into a real pain in the *** as i'm not attending the gradings, i'm working across town at my new place.  Most of the film is graded but it's these few clips that are screwing everything up.

Many, many thanks,

Andi

OK, first principles here.  EDLs only work if each frame has its own, unique, address.  That address is made up of the timecode plus the reel name.  It has been that way since the EDL was invented by CMX all those years ago.

Avid allows you to modify timecode times and reel names.  When modifying reel names its possible to do this in several ways.  What you have done is right as far as it goes, but you're missing a key step.  The important bit is highlighted below.

So first, right-click on a clip in a bin that you wish to change.  From the drop-down menu that appears, choose modify>source name.  No unlinking is necessary.  When the source name window appears if the name that you wish to use is not already there create a new reel name and type in the one that you want.  Click OK on every prompt that appears until you're back at your normal bin display.  That's done.

The newly created source name can be applied to other clips as needed, and new source names can be created for other reels in the same way.  You can also multiselect groups of clips to change at the same time.  Just make sure that you label your tapes with the reel names that you have assigned them in Avid, one reel name per tape.

Now produce a new EDL.  Everything should just fall into place.

Ok, thanks jwrl, i've been going through my clips modifying them as you suggest and all seems well.  The only thing i still dont get is where do the actual MXF media files take their names from?  because as i change the source names in avid the media files on the HDD do not change to match the renamed sources? They still have this "restaurant" prefix eg. "restaurantV01.4856B4856B887.mxf", i thought that would change to "tape 001.4856B4856B887.mxf" etc?  I'm afraid i'm a bit green about these things.  One last thing, when you say produce a new EDL do you just mean a new AFE?  This whole thing is happening entirely file based with no tapes being invoved due to their cameramans failure to prep his stock beforehand so there were a billion timecode breaks on every tape and a total nightmare to capture.  Thanks so much for your help, at least i know i'm heading in the right direction!  Cheers,

Andi

OK, slight misunderstanding here.  I thought that you were using reel numbers to sort out an EDL issue.  The problem that you have is a different one (I assume that you mean AAF, not AFE).

I've encountered just this problem within the last two weeks.  In my case the cause was due to two P2 files shot on different days and different cameras having the same name.  The original Xpress system that the cut was done on had no trouble distinguishing the two.  When they were imported into my MC one of the clips (always the same one) would present as off-line.

The workaround that we adopted was to pull out the shot that caused problems into its own sequence on the Xpress and consolidate that.  We then edited that back into the main sequence and exported it.  MC, when presented with that version of the cut, had absolutely no trouble seeing both clips.