Avid Unity / Workgroups / Local Storage

3.5 and 3.5.4 slowdown with large project on Unity

mark.burton — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:39:24 GMT

Running a fairly large shared project on MC 3.5.0 on Quad Core 3.0Ghz, 8GB ram, 10.5.6. As the project has grown the resposivness of opening and saving bins has become very slow. Also if I switch to desktop and then back into app, its spinning beach ball for 5 seconds or so.

Did 3.5.1 contain any specific updates for slow bin/project access? Can't see anything in the readme, maybe it was a behind the scenes change?

The project can't really be broken up at this stage, so its not a question of doing that. I've had much larger projects on previous (pre 3.5) versions and not had anywhere near this level of slow down.

Timeline and general usage is not really affected, just bin/project access times. Its pretty much the same accross 4 unity connected MC 3.5.0 Mac systems.

Thanks for any ideas.

Unity MediaManager prevents deleting from local storage

steelydave — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:41:47 GMT

We are running an Adrenaline HD for cutting promos that is hooked into the Unity via MediaManager that serves our Newscutters.

However, when we try to delete locally stored media from within Avid, we get the message "Some shared items were not deleted." And it is obvious when we notice that our drivespace has not changed that things were not deleted.

I can't find any of our files listed in the MediaManager, either, since they are stored locally. For some reason, using Media Tool to delete local media appears to be disabled.

Is this an incompatibility, a bad setting, or a simple misunderstanding of using a system connected to MediaManager? How can I delete media from my system?

thanks

Dave

Avid Adrenaline 2.2.12

Unity MediaManager 4.5.11

WinXP

Media Browse 2.8.3.38 compatability

SkyItalia — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:42:54 GMT

Hi there,

I recently tried upgrading some of Media Browse clients from version 2.8.1.32 to 2.8.3.38 on Windows XP SP3.

I installed all the reccomended compontents: Microsoft Java VM (3810) for Windows XP, SpectreView 3.1.2 (2.3.3) and finally upgraded to Media Browse 2.8.3.38.

After the install which completes successfully Media Browse will not run, if I double click on the .exe the application splash screen appears but after about 30 sec just closes.

I have tried upgrading on various clients and this issues is present on all of them! The clients are all operating on Windows XP SP3 with Internet Explorer 7, are there any compatability issues with Explorer 7 or any Microsoft patch which may cause the application to crash? I have looked in the Avid Knowledge base but Avid seem to know very little about Media Browse so I looking for help on the forums!

I think it's an IE7 issue as a year ago we upgraded from MB 2.8.1.32 to 2.8.3.38 on clients operating on XP with IE6 and there was no issue there! I have tried uninstalling IE7 reverting back to IE6 but the problem persists, perhaps a registry issue in this case!!

Any ideas? I going insane!!

Unity Workspaces become locked

mrtrees — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:54:07 GMT

Just recently i have had two Unity workspaces that have become locked. The workspace appears on the desktop with a padlock on the bottom right hand corner.

The permissions for these workspaces are set to read only, and i am unable to change them to read write.

The workspaces were created with R/W access and had been functioning correctly until recently. We were able to read from them and write render files and capture media to them.

I have created new users with admin rights on the Mac operating system to no avail. The workspaces also appear locked on every other workstation were they are mounted.

I am running

MC 3.5.4/OSx 10.5.4/Unity 5.1.1/FM 5.1.2

Any ideas or experience of this?

Regards

Unity and fibre-connected local storage interop issues

janusz — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:58:43 GMT

I've a problem on a Mac (Nehalem) Unity client with a Atto Celerity FC42ES board, with one of the fibre channel ports connected to the Unity, and the other to a Lacie 12big FC array.

Unity works fine, as does the Lacie. But if I try to copy files from the Unity to the Lacie with the Finder, the copy hangs at just under 700MB, and nothing is in fact copied. The system is responsive, but the Finder is blocked, with the only means to resume normal operation being a forced shutdown.

I suspect this is a Atto firmware issue, but I believe the firmware (dated 8th December 2006) is the latest and correct firmware for operation with Unity.

Any ideas anyone?

Janusz

PathDiag in Unity

Melanie B. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:39:12 GMT

I am more familiar with ISIS, but I need to do a pathdiag test and in the Admin tool, I just don't see it. Where is it and how do I navigate to it?

Unity for Avid, Smoke, AE & Protools - a centralised solution

christopher@fearlesstv.com — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:01:56 GMT

Hello Avid Lovers

I am looking for a way to streamline a small post house workflow that has 2 MCs, a protools, Smoke and AE. As is usual, the idea is to centralise the media onto a single server so that everyone can play with it (as opposed to having loads of hard drives running about). I have plenty of experience with Unity and MC but I have never seen a Smoke attached and I have little idea of how After Effects can work efficiently. Naturally, the idea is to work off MXF in HD, so the questions are as follows:

1. Can SMOKE & AE work efficiently in MXF ... without transcoding?

2. The company does predominately commercials. What HD codec could be suggested?

3. All the films will be shot on RED (yuck). Has anyone tried the new Avid native workflow on a DS with a Unity?

4. Has anyone ever used the Quantum Unity archive system?

All ideas, comments are welcome.
Many thanks

Have a LanShare that restarts by itself...(screenshots)

mkj — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:39:21 GMT

http://i35.tinypic.com/nczio4.jpg

http://i35.tinypic.com/9jivys.jpg

And this error messages apperar in Event Viewer... Do anyone have a clue what's failing?

The LanShare can run without restarting for a week...but suddenly it starts doing that again...and this error's seems to increase when it happens.

Air Speed vs Nitris DX

Colby — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 22:45:52 GMT

I load a lot of footage via a number of Nitris DX stations, which I use for digitizing individual tapes, one at a time.

I don't know that much about Air Speed.

Can anyone tell me what the purpose of Air Speed is, what was it initially designed for? Is it a "crash record tool to just get the footage into the Unity/Isis from where it can then be indexed in Interplay and clipped off into bins for editors?

Can one do a basic logging of the tape and then hit "go" and move onto the next one?

Can one Aid Speed box only handle one ingest? And therefore does one need one Air Speed for each deck that you're using for ingest?

How does this work exactly? I'll read the product guides as well, but some operator experience would help.

issues with Mac on Unity

JoeProcopio — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:11:40 GMT

looks like we can't capture to a unity space if there is a period in the name, now I can't work in a project that was created on another syste (PC Symphony nitris v3.x, I'm on Mac MCA 3.5.4)

are there any naming gotchas i need to know? or anything else for that matter....this is our first Mac on Unity, and we will be adding some more shortly, so the more we know about the gotchas, the better we will be. but i need to know they will work with our other edit systems....

Intel Mac Pro AND PC's on same Unity?

sfabbri — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:15:35 GMT

Just wondering if you can have a combination of MAC and PC Media Composer clients on the same Avid Unity. Are there any known downfalls or issues with this solutution?

Avid Client Still Sending To Old Server Name

WQADJoshua — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:51:41 GMT

In the avid client I changed the workgroup server names from as-1 & as-2 to as-2 & as-3. The clients are now lagging terribly and when the transfer status comes up it is still trying to send to as-1 even though it is not in the workgroup list anymore!? What can I do!?

Universal Client Connection Issues?

joe@zekepictures.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:19:07 GMT

We've got a few different 4.1.6 Lanshares, and a Unity 4.2.4 system - have not made any changes on the server side at all.

Recently we made a new Disk Image for our HP 8200's and decided to put the Universal Client on it - MN 5.1.1.

Since putting the Universal client on the systems we've been having intermittent connection issues in the mornings. No link light on the Fibre card in the PC - no drives seen, etc... Happens with both Celerity 41XS, and Atto 3300's - whether in PTP Pref or Arbitrated Loop. This was not happening before with 4.2.4 or 4.1.6 MN Client software installed.

Anyone else experiencing this?

The fix is to go into Atto Config Tool (3.1.4) and commit changes - and for whatever reason even though we're not changing anything - that seems to wake it up. I gotta think it's something Atto Firmware or Driver related. The FW and Drivers were loaded from the 5.1.1 Kit. Admittedly I don't think we upgraded the phantom driver on the client? Maybe? Going to try that tomorrow.

Just wondering if anyone is experiencing this? Sometimes I've noticed as well that when it does connect the FakeComm wizard will come up but won't install - anyway... Going to look into it tomorrow morning - but just wondering if anyone else has experience with this?

False Bin Locks

drinkswater — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:27:29 GMT

On MC 2.7.5 and OS 10.4.10 with 4 editors and we keep getting false bin locks. Usually this happens if one of us crashes out of a bin, but now it happens intermittently with a normal save and close.

What's changed: we've upgraded twice, from 2.7.2 to 2.7.3 to 2.7.5, and created a new project after each upgrade, along with new user settings for everyone.

Unity Isis Client Manager Problem

mannix1000 — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:32:09 GMT

Hello, first post so please be nice.

I'm currently installing the Unity Isis Client Manager on approx 20 PC systems (all either HP XW8200 or XW8400), most of them are working fine but 3 or 4 have a strange issue. Once installed the client loads up but where there should be text I'm seeing a hollow rectangular symbol (as though it doesn't recognise the font). See below:

I've tried updating the client software, updating java, reinstalling video drivers but nothing seems to work.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Ethernet OFFLINE FC ONLINE?

acbrock — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:35:41 GMT

Anyone help! We are running show with 6 FC Avids and 1 Ethernet. We were having some crashing issues so we rebuilt the project and redid the Composer settings. Now all the FC systems are working great but the Ethernet is Offline. We can mount the drives but Avid does not see them. Everything is offline and when I go to the Media Creation settings none of the Unity Drives show up as options to save too.

Is there a setting in the Avid to tell it to look for Ethernet Drives that I maybe reset?

thanks

Avid VideoRaid Registration

amazte13 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:37:46 GMT

Hi everyone,

I would just like to ask what are the things we need to register after purchasing an Avid VideoRaid SR? I am a lil bit confused if i need to register the enclosure and the drives.The videoraid we purchase is composed of 16 500GB drives. I checked the registration site and it doesn't show videoraid on the list. Please enlighten me.

Thnks everyone.

-amtz13-

can't open project from PC Symphony Nitris

JoeProcopio — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:35:32 GMT

get assertion failed errors. opened new project, and opened bin...same error...the project does open, but when i try to load a sequence or a source clip, i get these errors. wondering if it is a permissions thing, so I'm looking into that...got a random CC effect won't open as well...Symphony is v3.x and the mac MCA is 3.5.4....any ideas? haven't called support yet...thanks

Database issues after Capturing

swest26 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:47:22 GMT

Our system has 10 Avid MC 3.5.1 systems networked to a Unity. We have one virtual drive set up for the users to capture to and one drive set up for project files. For the longest time now we have been finding large amounts of media files to be offline. Each machine has a file on the dedicated media drive that it captures to, ex avid #1 puts its media fils in AVID1.1, and avid #2 in AVID2.1 all the way to ten. We found that all the media is still there and to get the media back all we have to do is delete the two database files and restart whichever avid is giving us the problem. Then we found what causes it. When a user opens a project and begins to capture instead of adding the newly captured media to the already existing database, it overwrites the database file with one that only links the media just captured in that project, leaving everything else that has been captured on that specific machine offline.

Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening?

Thanks in advance.

Lanshare never ending scan issues

Baklap — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:47:06 GMT

We have a problem on a lanshare with 5 ethernet clients.

File Manager 4.2.1

clients feature 3 MC 4.02's (latest connection manager available)

1 3.54 client

1 2.84 client (MC both)

What happens is that especially on one 4.02 system whatever we do close a bin, open a bin close project open project is starts scanning the workspaces as something has changed.... only thing is.. nothing changed.

We made sure (with the superb help of the local office) that we have correct time sync on the 5 clients and the lanshare but to no avail.

Anyone out there that knows what could be the cause of this?

Thx..

Menno

Media Network Upgrade

engalaa — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:58:42 GMT

Dear friends :

I have Media Network 5 with one Avid Media Composer( Nitris DX) station and I have also One station ( After effect on PC ) and the other one is After Effect on MAC

so can I connect all of it with the media network , alsoI 'm thinking to buy another station jsut contain MC 4 without the hardware .

is it will work ??

File System Busy Error when closing Unity bins

unclemilty — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:41:09 GMT

we are running avid 3.1.2 and they are connected to a Unity 5.0 Media Exchange . we get a "File System Busy" error on one of the avids when we go to close a bin open from the Unity. We do not get this error when we close the local bins. The bins where created on an Avid Express system a long time ago. could that have anything to do with it?

MC 3.5 to Unity 4.1.6 speed issues

dharia — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:28:28 GMT

Hello

I have a Unity Media Network, running Unity 4.1.6. My AVID Mac Pro's all run Media Composer 3.5 and 4.0.

The thing is for some reason on all my systems everything has a delay to it. If I open a bin its such a slow process, but then once the bin is open and I'm in the sequence everything is fast and fine. But for example, if I click out of avid and on the OSX desktop and then click back to AVID, it takes a extra 5 sec to refresh everything. Even switching between projects is slow. But if I layback HD to HDCAM or D5, or do anything, the process is fast and without a hitch. But I'd prefer to be able to hit record in my capture tool without having to wait 10sec for the AVID to respond.

Again I don't think its the computer, its a Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66 XEON. 6gb of Ram.

The Fibre Cables aren't crimped at all.

These are a couple things I think are the issue but either way what do you guys see as a easy fix to make things zippy.

- The Unity 4.1.6 and the Fibre Manager 5.1.3 are so far apart in versions that there is some issue causing the delay. I can't go below Unity 5.0 on the client cause Leopard won't run it.

- The fact that all my 10k ROM hard drives are sitting in Chassis that all run at 2 gigabit, as well as my unity machine that runs at 2 gigabit, and the switch that runs at 2 gigabit. Should I upgrade everything to 4 gigabit or will that not solve my issue.

I did try one thing, I have about 33 workspaces that I mount (total Unity size is 8TB with 6 more TB on the way). If I only mount 1 workspace and the Projects drive then everything is just as fast as working off the local hard drive, but its when I mount 10-15 workspaces that everything gets sluggish, and with 33 all mounted its very sluggish.

I work in a promo house, so I need everything available all the time, hence why I need 33 workspaces always mounted.

I can't afford a Unity 5, its too pricey for me. My Unity machine by the way is a SR2200

Thanks any input would help!

Avid Media Composer & Unity slooooow

mbuotye — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:56:15 GMT

Hello,

I am running Avid Media Composer v3.5.1.311 over a Fiber optic to a Unity system. I am on a mac osx v10.5.6. Fiber manager v5.1.2.

The main problem that I am having is the excruciatingly slow auto save times, excruciatingly slow opening the app, excruciatingly slow closing the app and also deleting bin locks only to have the bin still be reconized as locked and having to save version after version of bins (when there is another avid seat working on a project).

Everything else seems to run fine. Moving around clips, making cuts, applying effects and rendering effects all run fine. Sometimes I will see that there are red and yellow dots at the bottom of the timeline indicating dropped frames.

How can I troubleshoot this problem of the terribly slow opening, saving and closing?

Thank you in advance for any advice!

Ethernet Connection

Panther Edit — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:37:46 GMT

Lanshare PC running 4.1.6

Thursday of last week all of the sudden I can no longer connect my ethernet clients-

FIber clients work fine

Can still see the Unity Drives but cannot connect

I can still connect other network drives and connect to the internet

IT claims no changes on their end- do I just need to try a new IP address?