Avid Hates You

I'm working on a 24P show and we've been using the XDCam proxy files for our offline editing.  This season, however, we've added more cameras, and the multigroups lag when using the proxy MPEG-4 codec.  To solve this, we're transcoding everything  to 8:1m.  So much for faster than real time capture.  But I digress.  In order to make the transcode happen, you have to change your project format to 23.976 NTSC or else the 8:1m codec won't even be made available to you.  Which is horseshit, but I digress.  After transcoding, I figured hey - there's no reason I can't make my timelines and groups in the standard def project, right?  Wrong.  There's a very good reason why I can't do those things, and it's that Avid is a piece of fucking garbage.  For a reason I cannot fathom, autosequences created in 23.976 NTSC projects don't match clip TC to sequence TC.  They just don't. Change back to 1080P/23.976 and autosequencing works perfec...

Here's a quick thank you to everyone who's checked out this blog and - hopefully - learned how to solve some stupid Avid bullshit as a result.  I've passed 20,000 pageviews, and that makes me feel pretty good!  I really just started this page as a means of both venting my frustration with Avid and the real lack of troubleshooting help on the internet for large-scale productions, but I'm glad that I have been able to get at least a couple of people through some tough bugs. Keep on editing, and post here if there are any Avid issues you'd like see me post about.

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...

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. ...

My work has upgraded to Avid 6.5.4.  While it's a vast improvement over 5.5 (you know, the one with the user experience akin to stabbing yourself repeatedly in the dick), it's got some seriously annoying bugs.  Mostly because they either don't throw error messages at all (like the one I'm talking about here), or because no matter what the error messages are, the solution is to reset the PRAM and delete the site settings and user folder within the project.  Fucking buggy ass application, man. But I digress.  Avid has been doing some fucked up shit in this new version, and I'm here to tell you how to work around it.  Why me?  Because the entire fucking internet doesn't seem to know a goddamn about this AAF problem I've been having.  Fuck you, internet.  You don't know shit about Avid (well, okay, after I post this, you'll know a small amount of shit, I'll grant you that). And now I'm digressing again!  Okay, on to business: -- Randomly ...

This is possibly the most ironic of the errors that I've encountered while using Avid.  Imagine, if you will, a program that crashes two out of every three times that you use it.  The only program on the Mac (at least that I'm aware of) that is so poorly coded as to literally require you to reset your PRAM on a regular basis just in order to keep it running.  Imagine that this program is so frustrating to use, so annoyingly buggy, that you just want to quit. But you can't. I hit Command-Q and I get the Mac "bonk" sound.  Avid doesn't quit.  Go to the File menu and choose "Quit."  Bonk. What the fuck, Avid?  Of all the times that you could just crash me to the desktop, instead, you refuse  to exit.  You dirty, sneaky, underhanded asshole. Near as I can tell, this is a bug that only happens in Avid 5, which is good, because no one on Earth should ever go near that flaming piece of garbage.  It's the Final Cut X of Avids.  I'm ...

At my old office, we edited everything in 10:1m after a real-time capture because that codec is fucking good at its job. At my new office, we edit everything in MPEG-4 from the XDCam proxy files, and that codec blows hairy goat sphincter. In addition, because we deliver in HD, people keep wanting to work in an HD project.  I understand their belief that this matters, but they're wrong.  In fact, yellow/green mode in an SD project is every bit as good as yellow/green mode in an HD one as long as you're talking about multicam 9-split playback. Which I am. SO... If your producer or editor is having trouble with a group that's lagging during playback, losing audio sync, or otherwise doing that thing that Avid calls "functioning normally," the solution is often as simple as changing the format of their project from HD to SD.  That does an automatic downconvert on all playback footage, and stops stutter in its tracks.  Erm, starts stutter up again.  No.  ...