Exception: MSM: No directory Specified_3

This message appears on launch, alongside an old favorite:
Ahh yes, the good old bus thread error.  Well fuck me sideways.

Now let's travel back in time and try to find out what caused this nonsense:  I came in to the office today to hear the four words everyone in tech fields loves to hear:  The power went out.

Awesome.

After booting ye olde Avid, I found that every time it got to the "initializing media manager" stage, it would crash out with the above two clickyboxes.  Of course, you can't click either one of them, so you have to manually force quit out of the crash.  Hilarious.

What does this mean?  Well, I tried a bunch of stuff.  I deleted site settings.  Nope.  I deleted the databases on my mounted drives.  Nope.  I deleted the database on my local drive.  Nope.  I deleted the media on my local drive.  Nope.  I cleared the shared attic, deleted shared users, reset the computer, reset the PRAM, and tried mounting up with no drives mounted whatsoever, and no Avid MediaFiles folders in the root directory of the boot drive.  All to no fucking avail.

Which is when I remembered that there's another, goddamn hidden media files folder.  It's located at:
BootDrive / Applications / Avid Media Composer / SupportingFiles / Avid_MediaFiles

Oh yeah, thanks Avid, that was easy to fucking find.  God damn Avid.

I went into there and deleted the two database files:
msmFMID.pmr
msmMMOB.mdb

Problem solved.

God damn I hate Avid.

Comments

  1. BaskarNovember 9, 2017 at 5:09 AM

    baskarsivakumar1997@gmailcom

    ReplyDelete
  2. BaskarNovember 9, 2017 at 5:13 AM

    Iam GETTING THIS ERROR WHEN IAM INPORTING

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JuddNovember 9, 2017 at 10:47 AM

      Have you tried deleting the media database files from your target drive?

      Delete
  3. andreaJuly 17, 2018 at 2:12 PM

    OMG YOU just saved ME!!!!
    Been suffering for hours here and you gave a solution that worked ... YOU ARE BRILLIANT THANKS

    ReplyDelete
  4. aivanNovember 11, 2022 at 2:59 AM

    Thanks for sharing, bloody hidden media!
    For those on win
    C:\Users\Public\Documents\Avid Media Composer\Avid_MediaFiles

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Reset your PRAM and Delete your Site Settings

After two years, it has occurred to me that I have been remiss in my duties.  Up until now I've failed to mention the most basic troubleshooting techniques for dealing with Avid:  Resetting your PRAM and Deleting your Site Settings.  Seriously, what's wrong with my brain? Basically whenever you're getting weird errors, or multiple bus thread error crashes in a row, or "you can't write to drive X" message when pretty fucking clearly you have write permissions, the problem isn't you; it's Avid.  That's a shocker, I know, and wholly unexpected, but the fact of the matter is that Avid is the only program I've ever used that required regular resetting of your Mac's PRAM (Parameter Random Access Memory).  Avid is also one of the rare pieces of software that corrupts it's own fucking settings.  Seriously, how is that even possible, Avid?  you generate  the settings on launch, so can't you do a goddamn checksum to make sure the existing o
Read more

Exception: SYS_ERROR, OSErr: -5000

Image
Dear ISIS:  I love you.  You're great.  None of the bullshit file count limits of Unity, I can fill your drives to 100% without issue, you have automatic redundancy built into your RAID storage, your control panel is .html based and runs in my browser, and you work over ethernet instead of requiring fiberoptic cable.  You're pretty fucking swell. But there's this one thing you do sometimes that reminds me you're made by Avid.  See, it's like this:  When I create a user that has write access to a drive, and I log in as that user, I goddamn expect to be able to write to that fucking drive. Instead, Avid gives me this: What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Avid?  You're blaming the goddamn system OS for the fact that ISIS mounted my drive with incorrect permissions?  Why the christ would you do that?  Wait, wait - hang on while I get out my goddamn dictionary of What the Fuck OSErr: -5000 means. Okay, yeah, this is a write error.  It means I can't wr
Read more

File 'Avid_MediaFiles' not found.

Image
This is a great error.  It's great for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the problem isn't that "Avid_MediaFiles' can't be found.  That's the folder on your media drive named "Avid Media Files" and it's pretty goddamn easily found by both you and Avid.  No, the real problem is that a file *inside* Avid Media Files can't be found.  Which file?  Good question.  A database file.  What this error message should really say is: File 'msmFMID.pmr' not found. OR File 'msmMMOB.mdb' not found. Or the error message could be actually helpful and say: The File 'msmFMID.pmr' which should be in path 'MediaDriveA/Avid Media Files/MXF/Ingest1' cannot be found. You know, something actually fucking helpful.  But no.  No, this message basically just says that Avid lost something, it isn't sure what, and it sure as shit isn't going to let you save any bins until you fix the problem.  Also, opening the Med
Read more