I am the Interplay Workgroup Manager at my TV station. The editors are using Media Composer Adrenaline version 2.8.1 and Interplay for Windows 2003 version 1.2.0.7079. This post is in regards to the Check-In process as it relates to the Media Composer, as well as the Media Composer's Interplay functionality for its users.

An editor myself, I must say that the lack of a couple key functionalities is just mind boggling. If Avid is going to keep marketing its Interplay product to long-format (non-news) facilities, the following issues need to be addressed immediately.

I will also post this to the Avid Product Feature Requests forum. I'm posting it here as well, in case I am wrong on any of the following and can be corrected.

Issue #1: Media Composer Interplay Check-in

In Media Composer, there are two Check-In options in the file pull-downs. They are Check In Bin To Interplay and Check In All Open Bins to Interplay.

You need to add one more called "Check All Project Bins To Interplay".

We work on long format documentaries, and have at least 20 Avid projects active at all times, and each one has between 50 and 250 bins in it. (No, I'm not exaggerating, and yes this is a necessary workflow.) Please create a file pull-down option in Media Composer called "Check All Project Bins To Interplay". This should check all bins (opened and unopened) into the selected Interplay Folder.

In a creative environment, it is unreasonable to require every editor to remember to check-in every bin before closing it. It is equally difficult to stomach that the only advice the Broadcast Tech Support folks can give us is to have the editors go back and open every bin... in every project... and manually check everything in. This is clearly a software limitation, not an operator error. An alternative option would be to put a selectable called Check In Bin To Interplay upon Closing into Media Composer's Bin setting.

Issue #2: Media Composer Interplay Settings

Go to Media Composer's Project bin. Go to the Settings tab. Scroll down. You will see three settings: Interplay Folder, Interplay Server, and Interplay User.

Firstly, there is no need to segregate these. There should be one setting called Interplay which opens a window that accesses all Interplay information. It could either be all-inclusive like the setting called General, or have many tabs like the one called Media Creation. There are also many features for long-format workflows that are lacking, which could be located here. A couple that come to mind are better locator functionality and the Find Bin function. It is well documented in Avid that locators have a severe incompatability problem between Assist and Media Composer. It is also a crippling limitation that the Find Bin function does not channel through the Interplay Window to the folder the source clip came from. Both of these could be fixed and accessible through a master Interplay settings window.

This could also solve Issue #1 listed above by having a selectable called Check All Project Bins To Interplay, which could operate similarly to the Save Workspace Now selectable in the Workspace setting.

Issue #3: Batch Capture

It is not possible to click on a clip in the Interplay Window and to Batch Capture it.

Really? That completely floors me. Imagine a clip that was captured and shared to a bunch of different people and their projects. One editor discovers that the clip has a little digital breakup happening in a 6-second chunk of video - - the result of a dirty head in the tape deck. Is there really no way that the editor can simply click Batch Capture and fix the problem? Sure there is a (very manual-labor intensive) process for working around this, but seriously. This needs to change.

I truly respect that the Interplay environment is still an infant being nurtured to maturity. Hats off to all those at Avid involved in both its conception and its constant implementation. It is an amazing tool. I hope that posts like this can help the process along.

I also admit to being only months into my own learning curve, so please correct me if I am wildly wrong on anything above.

Anxiously awaiting any response,

Pixel Monkey:

Issue #1: Media Composer Interplay Check-in

it is unreasonable to require every editor to remember to check-in every bin before closing it.

 In your workflow, you create a Bin and add material to it.  If you add material to a Bin (or those items get changed somehow) then the Bin should check In.  But, if you have 250 bins in a project, but yet haven't made any changes to those Bins (ie not added any clips to them) then why would you expect them to check in?

Whenever you close a Bin you should be prompted with a dialogue box... 

"Check in bin(s) to Interplay?"  "Check In" is the default button   "Don't Check In" is the other

I think the first part of your issue is that for whatever reason, you don't have it set to prompt for Check In when a Bin (or the project is Closed)  That would solve it for you I believe.

Pixel Monkey:

Issue #2: Media Composer Interplay Settings

100% agreed, the Settings list is already cluttered enough with the 10000 Export settings. 

Pixel Monkey:

Issue #3: Batch Capture

Batch Capture is only allowed to Local Bins.  So, in the scenario you outlined - the editor would check the clip out to his Local Bin and do the Batch Capture there.  Then re-check in the clip. 

What floors me is that an editor can choose the Interplay folder as the Capture "bin", but yet is not allowed to do it.  I believe the error is "please select a bin"  and of course you say "I have... the Interplay folder"  but it still won't let you do it.  I put in a feature request some time ago that the option should be greyed out if that's the way it works to lessen the confusion.

Also, to hijack slightly -- I think the Interplay Window should be re-tooled to be more like Access as it's impossible to do any form of detailed or Extended search in Interplay Window.  It is much easier to find your material in Access especially if you're wanting to get results with certain parameters.  (ie, a particular resolution, frame rate, on a particular Workspace or even if the clip is Online!)  IPW, will return all results mainly based only on the clip's name. 

If I have a bunch of B-roll of Boston that was shot in 1000 different formats and/or resolutions and I only want to see what is online, I have to do an Extended search in Access.  I should be able to do that in the IPW.

 I don't know about Interplay, but we have experienced Media Manager losing track of material, resulting in random offline surprises. My fail safe before deleting any given project is to completely re-check in all bins in project before beginning the process. I'm glad that function is there.

Hey, Pixel Monkey,

Check out your Editor Database settings in your Interplay Administration tool. There *is* an option to check in a bin when you close it. This may help your Issue#1, however, you will still need to check in sequences manually.

Automatic checkin of sequences sounds like a good idea, but it really isn't, especially in a long-form environment like yours. Do you really want the system to check in *everything* in every sequence copy in your bin whenever an autosave kicks in? I wouldn't.

Find Bin won't really work in Interplay since a particular Avid Asset can reside in many Interplay folders at once, entirely independent of the bin that it was originally Ingested into. Bins don't matter quite so much in Interplay. There is a "Go To..." command in Assist, which you can use to find the folder where a particular asset resides, if you happen to find a sequence and you need to know where the reference clips come from.

I don't know the specifics of your workflow but I have worked in longform documentary and I would be willing to bet that some of your complex Project/Bin structure could be moved to an Interplay folder tree. It might cut down on the number of open bins your editors need to keep, which would certainly help with system performance. The search functions in Access are much stronger than "Find Bin" in the editing application. I know you know all this already, but to be fair, I think it takes some time for editors to wrap their heads around the new ways to work that Interplay offers.

Best of luck,

Thanks everyone for the feedback. Interplay is well on its way, and any little push in the right direction is a good thing.

I just found a Media Composer console command called ForceCheckin. Here's the description:

"ForceCheckin - - Toggles forced full checkin on and off."

Would this help my cause?

Did you see lawson's input from above?

I'm going to try just responding to this Thread, because it's the most on-par with where I'm at with the interplay questions.  

I work for a medium-sized TV station that does short-form and long-form documentaries on newscutters, we've just switched over to Interplay from MM, running into several of issues noted above, as well corrupt media from an ISIS distribution problem etc.

I've been reading the appendix of the Avid's Interplay for Editors workbook -- the Do's and Don't's last page--- and it says "DON'T"-- Share Bins ;  and 'DON'T"-- Share Projects (i.e. do not work on a project that another editor is already using)--

We've traditionally "shared" projects, after copying them onto the local drives from a Projects server space...  But is it safe for multiple editors/assistants to be checking items in and out of one project on the Interplay Server??? How do other people

Thanks in advance.  

Pixel Monkey:

Please create a file pull-down option in Media Composer called "Check All Project Bins To Interplay". This should check all bins (opened and unopened) into the selected Interplay Folder.

If you have your interplay set to automatically check in bins as they are closed, this becomes unnecessary.

Pixel Monkey:

It is not possible to click on a clip in the Interplay Window and to Batch Capture it.Really?

If the clip is corrupted, delete the media, batch capture from your bin and check the bin in. The clip will be updated in interplay  for all to use. Maybe I'm missing your point on that one.

JoeMFWilson:

I've been reading the appendix of the Avid's Interplay for Editors workbook -- the Do's and Don't's last page--- and it says "DON'T"-- Share Bins ;  and 'DON'T"-- Share Projects (i.e. do not work on a project that another editor is already using)--

We've traditionally "shared" projects, after copying them onto the local drives from a Projects server space...  But is it safe for multiple editors/assistants to be checking items in and out of one project on the Interplay Server??? How do other people

Only one editor should have a single project open at any given time. You need to stay away from the Unity Project Sharing & Bin Locking workflow. It may be a hard habit to break, I know.

What you want to do in Interplay is give each Editor their own project, and direct them all to check in to the same location in their Interplay Folder Settings. This is one large difference between Interplay and Media Manager. There is no longer a one-to-one relationship between local projects and the Interplay database folder tree. Editors would find material in Interplay and check it out into their own bin, or else use the Interplay window as a source directly.

Be careful not to let editors check out the same sequence from Interplay and make changes. One editor can overwrite another editor's changes to a given sequence. Interplay tracks usage and changes of clips much more closely than Media Manager did. Just because a clip or sequence resides in your bin doesn't mean it belongs to you. An Update From Interplay will apply any outside changes to your local copy of a clip or sequence.

This is by design but I don't believe it is explained carefully enough in the documentation. It's a *radical* change for editors to get used to.

Thank you both for the somewhat differing, but I believe both correct, answers. 

We've been having editors essentially create different projects of the same name, then check in to a folder structure that is like "<D:\2009Projects\<append project name>" as an Interplay Folder Setting. Is this a dangerous setting then?

So for example with this setting, if edit RoomA and edit RoomB are two editors working on the WeatherToday project, then they'd both create a new project called "WeatherToday" in their C: drives, and then check in their work to <D:\2009Projects\WeatherToday>...

It sounds like maybe a safer workflow would be to stay away from the <append project name> setting, and make all the C: projects independent names for the sake of bandwidth ??

OK, so Editor A sets up a WeatherToday local project and checks it into Interplay to the "Projects" folder. Editor A has selected "Append Project Name..." in the Interplay Folder settings.

Editor B is also working on a local WeatherToday project. However, he is checking in his bins to the WeatherToday folder that Editor A checked in. He's got "Append Project Name..." de-selected in his Interplay Folder settings.

Both editors only need to look into the same "WeatherToday" folder in Interplay for each other's footage. That's a totally viable workflow. The one caveat, as I mentioned above, is that they should not both try to work on the same sequence at the same time. If so, each editor will overwrite the other's copy. If you're splitting a story between two editors, they should work on separate segments and then one editor should join the two segments together.

I hope this makes sense!

Thanks Rob,

This definitely makes sense.  And definitely the sequences issue is noted and as far as I'm aware a non-issue at my workplace. 

btw I was searching in media management tips/tutorials for an answer to my next Interplay-related question, and came across this excellent Interplay-awareness sheet from pixelmonkey:

http://community.avid.com/forums/p/64514/361164.aspx#361164

The only hang-up in our migration I think is convincing the editors to go more Bin-Free at the root level in order to take advantage of Interplay's speed as a tool inside the Avid.  This is particularly tough for the longer-form projects-- example "Midwest Epic" project with 200+ sources, where 50 are XDCams with 80 filres/disk; and 50 have dozens of TC breaks... etc.  Where it's inappropriate to put all sources into one large bin or folder. . .

In the pre-interplay days, we'd put raw footage into bins by tape number, then backdoor the bin files on a shared project server.  With Interplay this seems like a waste of many steps at the assistant level as well as the editors to prepare and receive these bins. It's still easier to see a Flat View in Avid than it seems to be to "flatten" the folders in an Interplay tree.  Also, can't figure out how to see all the clips in a project like we could when clicking on a project name in Media Manager. 

This my last Interplay general question, I think. 

Joe

Hi Joe,
I think the way Interplay works is not that different to your previous workflow. You can still put all your clips into bins named by tape as you're used to. But instead of putting the bins on a shared project server you just check the bins in to Interplay.
If your editors now want to use these clips they will open the Interplay window, browse to the right folder and put the clips in the source monitor instead of "Open bin" ...
If you want to see all clips in a project you can use the search. Open the Interplay Window, right-click the project folder and click search. This will limit the search to that folder (project).

BLKDOG:

If the clip is corrupted, delete the media, batch capture from your bin and check the bin in. The clip will be updated in interplay  for all to use. Maybe I'm missing your point on that one.

Not an option for some, and for a growing number-   In a file based workflow from capture to output,  deleting media isn't possible.