MC5 AMA playback

[Jeff Murray]

There are two long threads about it on the Avid forums on Mac and PC.

Seems to be related to any external drives connected - perhaps by eSata. And any rendering done on those drives. AMA transcode is a re-render. I blew away my AMA transcoded files and it helped but still left with me about 25 frames at a key point I couldn't use.

Patch 3.0.5.5 was supposed to fix it. 3.0.5.6 worstened it and they pulled that - 3.0.5.7 was due out before the holiday but they didn't make it.

My problem maybe related to bringing my RAID across from my old machine. I have files I cannot blow until I complete this project.

I was following some assistance Avid support was giving to a fellow with a similar problem in the forum - but they left him for the holiday. They'll get on top of it. For now its been problematic.

Regards

Jeff

[Perrone Ford]

Thanks for the update man. I haven't been following the Avid forums for a couple weeks. I have two externally connected drives (G-Tech 4TB RAID0) but they are connected via USB at the moment since my eSATA card is wonky.

Maybe that's why I haven't seen this issue. I did see something come across the AVID-L today about this new patch though. I am running a totally unpatched MC5 and it's been great for me.

[Jeff Murray]

I think runnning 5.01 is the most stable - when I finish this project I am definitely going to blow away these raids and roll back.

Avid have really got into an unstable patch between 5.0.3.4 and 5.0.3.5. For example on .5 the head and tail fades are not working. Although it was supposed to fix this error some of us are getting.

At the moment the best strategy is not to patch unless your getting some of the specific problems they are supposed to address.

I have to say this is the worst period of stability I have seen since using avid for the last six years.

With regards

Jeff

[Perrone Ford]

I think it's actually rather remarkable that the glitches we are seeing in Avid are even noteworthy. These would be daily occurrences in other products.

But I learned long ago to not patch things when I have a stable version. I am confident they'll get it sorted out, and then I might patch if it adds something I need. AVCHD transcoding is something I'd like to have, and I think they added that, but it's not important enough for me to move into an area of instability.

[Peter Moretti]

I may be being overly optimistic, but I think there is more going on with the MC code base than meets the eye.

I suspect some of the problems we are experiencing is a result of preparing the software to use a larger frame size, i.e. 4K, and for porting it to 64 bits.

My guess, wholly unsubstantiated, is that these changes were started in the MC 5 code and are causing some of the problems we are seeing right now.

[David Parks]

That could be.. given that it seems at least to me that it is more stable on Snow Leopard MAC (64bit) than Win 7. Avid generally pre-writes in code for features and functions for future releases.

To be quite honest, there hasn't ever been a perfect release from Avid...but I haven't encountered any show stoppers since we worked with Avid software and hardware in the early 90's. In those days you just shipped boards and drives back and forth to Avid until the problem resolved itself. Ah those were the days.

I am like the old man looking back to his childhood and that walked 8 miles to the school yard in the snow and by golly ...we liked it.

Jeff...Have you tried consolidating from the drive in question to another drive that you know works with 5.03? Also, don't forget to promote your sequences if asked by MC.

[Jeff Murray]

It could be the port to larger frame size, or 64 bit. The error I was experiencing was on Mac and PC. In fact when I googled it the Avid MC- Mac forum was the first site that returned (due to there being more posts).

In the end I took a hint from Perrone and rolled back to 5.0 and these problems went way.

Avid are in a huge pickle with the patches and have admitted rolling new ones out on the basis of 6 customers (multi-user sites - maybe 60 users) testing them. All manner of breaks and fixes are going on. 5.0.3.7 the hailed resolution for the problems with .5 and .6 now breaks Alt C copy to monitor and a number of other things.

For now, all I can say is I am leaving the patches well alone and am happy that linked AMA clips play like transcoded DNxHD clips for me on 5.0. This is what I was searching for with my upgrade and will fast start my editing heaps.

I am happy for now.

Regards

Jeff