I'm experiencing an issue where random clips are not relinking correctly.

Without going into too much background detail, I often utlize previous projects to create new content.  This simply makes organization far easier for these projects since much of the media I'm using is the same -- it's much easier to create a new sequence in a prior project, add any new media necessary, and utilize already-edited sections of the previous sequences.  Everything is "ready to go" by remaining in the same "project" and just creating a new sequence.

The media starts as DNxHD 175X files that are linked to via AMA linking.  I then transcode these in MC down to DNxHD 36, complete my edit, then relink the final back to the 175X clips for output.  This has always worked fine before, but I just tried to use some of the previous media in a new sequence and a few random clips refuse to relink.  The media itself works fine -- I can manupulate thes clips in avid and they play and look fine -- but they won't relink in either direction (i.e. I can't relink the 175X clips to 36, or the 36 clips to 175X.)  This only happens with certain specific clips, while other clips in the same bin (clips that were created and transcoded at the same time) work just fine, allowing me to relink back and forth to the higher or lower quality media.  Those certain  specific clips, however, just refuse.  So far I can see no pattern to which clips have this issue.

Any suggestions on trying to get this to work?  I've tried playing with a LOT of the settings in the Relink window, but so far nothing has worked.  The drive shows no errors.

I also deleted and let avid rebuild the media database files, but it made no difference.

Thanks,

Larry

A couple other important piece of information:

When I relink with the "unlink if no match found" option, which is supposed to take any clips that can't be linked to the specificied resolution offline, this does not happen.  Instead, the previous clips at the previous resolution stay in place and continue to work normally.

Also, the sequence that I JUST relinked from 175X to 36 successfully will NOT relink back to 175X.  All of the clips remain at the incorrect resolution, and none of them goes offline as instructed.  Again, these are all clips that were JUST successfully linked to the lower res.  They refuse to link back to the higher res.

The bottom line is that the relink behavior is both incorrect and inconsistant.

Are there issues with using the relink function with media that was created in an earlier version of avid?

I REALLY want to avoid having to rebuild portions of these sequences by re-AMA linking to the 175X media, re-transcoding, and re-building the sections clip by clip.  This is a monumental waste of time to do something that should be incredibly easy.  At this point, however, I don't know how else to proceed.  

Thanks again,

Larry

Just to update my testing, I copied the AMA source files for some of the "problem" clips and renamed them, then AMA linked to these and transcoded them to DNxHD  36.  I can successfully relink back and forth between resolutions with these files.

For some reason, avid is treating these earlier files differently.

During my testing I also noticed that I can no longer get avid to take any clips offline even when I attempt to relink to resolutions that I've never used.

What am I missing here?  I need to get going with this -- I'm burning my time trying to get things ito work predictably again, but I'm trying to avoid the long and frustrating process of rebuilding a bunch of sequences that are already built.

Larry

I'm very interested in if there's a solution, as I'm experiencing the exactly same problem. I'm on MC 2018.12.1. My original fotage starts out as AVC-intra 4K linked media. I have then generated DNXHR LB proxy files, and when relinking the media a handful of clips (say 3 or 4 out of maybe 60 clips) are wrongfully relinked. That is, they are relinked to some other video clip in the same bin. And the problem goes the other way to, if creating a timeline with the proxy clips and then relinking them to the original fotage a few gets incorrectly relinked.

Is this a known issue, or something that's easily fixed by updating MC? 

Best regards, Daniel

I think I found at least a part of the source of this issue.  The clip info "project" column for the 175X versions of the "problem" clips are blank -- i.e. they do not appear to be associated with this project anymore.  The clips were absolutely AMA linked in this project and no other, but for whatever reason, avid appears to have "forgotten" this.  The DNxHD 36 versions are still linked to the project -- it's just the original 175X versions that have a blank project field.  This is NOT the case with my recent AMA links, which do show the association to this project.

The result of this is that for "many" of the problem clips, I can get them to relink if I uncheck the "this project only" box in the relink options.  Unfortunately, this doesn't work for all of the problem clips, with some of them continuing to refuse to relink.

I have no idea how this happened other than to say that this project was originally created in an earlier version of avid, and the clips were AMA linked at that point.  Perhaps this is a bug that I'm not aware of (or that was never discovered.)

Moving forward, is there a way to manually "assign" AMA linked clips to the current project? If not, what happens if I re-AMA link to the same files?  I'm unclear if this will end up making even more of a mess of previous sequences, so I'm reticent to try it.  I'm also unclear if I'll still have to manually replace all the "problem" clips with the newly linked AMA media anyway.

Any help in clearing all this up would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Larry

These are really good questions, Larry - I hope that someone chimes in here with some sage advice and a solution to your linking problem - we would all benefit. Good luck.

Hi

I just checked my problem clips and all clips (including my proxy clips) belong to the same project. So unfortunately that's no solution for me.

But I continued looking for a work-around, and possibly have found one. When relinking, instead of relinking by "Disk label" under the "Relink by:" section and selecting "Tape Name or Source File Name" it seems to work! I have tried relinking both ways to/from my proxy clips and found no errors at all.

Best regards, Daniel

Thanks.

I've been experimenting (carefully) with troubleshooting steps and some quesions have come up.

Does anyone know what the implications will be with re-AMA linking to the same 175X media from within the same project?  I thought that if I AMA linked to the same media -- and re-transcoded it -- that my relink operations might finally recognize this new media as the media that it was looking for and that the relink would now work.  I'm concerned, however, that a re-AMA link to the same media that I already linked to might confuse avid and make a mess.  Similarly, I'm not sure how avid will handle the new transcodes, which will end up with the exact same names as the previous transcodes of the the previously AMA linked 175X files.  I don't want to make things worse.

Thanks for any feedback on what to expect here.  I want to make sure I don't take any steps that I end up regretting.

Larry

JDwidell:

But I continued looking for a work-around, and possibly have found one. When relinking, instead of relinking by "Disk label" under the "Relink by:" section and selecting "Tape Name or Source File Name" it seems to work! I have tried relinking both ways to/from my proxy clips and found no errors at all.

Thanks Daniel -- this was really helpful.

Here's my update:

I've been trying numerous combinations of settings, which starts to get confusing after a while given that we're trying combinations rather than single settings.  I did try the "Tape Name or Source File Name" setting before with no luck, but I wasn't sure if I had tried it along with ALSO unchecking the "current project" box (which worked by itself for me on SOME, but not all, clips.)  After reading your post again I gave this combination a shot and more of the clips relinked correctly.  I'm studying things now to determine whether or not this helped "all" of the clips, but so far it's looking good, so thanks for posting that suggestion.

The potential solution for me at this point is to uncheck the "Relink only to media from the current project" box, AND ALSO to select "Tape name or source file name" for the "Source name" option (along with the default "Start" for the Timecode.)  Note that in my case, the default was "Tape name or source file ID" and not "Disk label" as you indicated.

I'm still not clear why the "project" tag is blank for these clips, but at least I appear to be moving forward.

I'll post back with any updates.

Thanks again,

Larry

So far, it appears that changing those two settings did indeed cause all clips to behave normally once again.  After some testing, I found that some of the clips respond to one setting but not the other, but so far it looks like ALL clips respond to having BOTH settings (i.e. "current project" unchecked, AND selecting "Tape name or source file name" as Daniel outlined.)

Daniel -- thanks again for alerting me to that, which allowed me to avoid playing with re-AMA linking and regenerating new proxy media.

Larry

Larry, glad I could help. 

I’m far from being a MC expert, But I still think this feels like a bug. And although having a useable workaround I would feel safer knowing if this issue was adressed. I will probably update MC in the coming months and can try and reproduce the erroneous behaviour. 

Daniel

The two things that definitely indicates a bug are 1) that the behavior is not consistant, wich some clips properly relinking without changing the settings, while other clips that were ingested at the same time in the same manner requiring one or more settings changed, and 2) that the project association disappeard on my older clips.  The second didn't happend to you, but it still effected the situation for me.

L

Well... the same problem just happened to me again, only this time the trick to change the two settings outlined above (i.e. "current project" unchecked, and selecting "Tape name or source file name" for the "relink by" option) did not work.  Even after changing these settings, the relink STILL does not work, and the clip refueses to "let go" of the lower res media and link back to the original high res sources.

Just to re-outline the process I'm using, I AMA link to DNxHD 175X media, then transcode to DNxHD 36 for editing, then relink back to the 175X media for the final output.  This has always worked, but I've had to return to previous project lately, and I'm suddenly hit with this issue -- i.e. the "relink" option does not work as expected.  Clips continue to link to the 36 media, and if I specify the settings to only link to 175X media, it tells me that no relinks were done.  I checked and the media absolutely IS there (it never moved), in the exact spot that the "source path" says it should be in avid, but avid refuses to "see" it.  I simply cannot get the clip to relink to the original, higher quality version.

Is there any way to force Avid to link to the specific media?  The process continues to work for me on new projects -- it's just with these earlier projects that the issue arises.  Changing the two settings above has always worked before, but now it no longer does.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Larry

Okay -- I finally banged my head against this long enough that I was able to figure out the workaround.  I read someplace (can't remember where now) that depending on how the ama is linked, linking to the same media again in a new bin can somehow "reveal" to avid that the media is present.  I therefore created a new "temp" bin and linked once again to the media that was missing in each bin.  I then immediately deleted this "new" ama linked media, went to the original bins where this media was linked, and NOW the relink process worked.  In other words, by doing a "new" link to the existing media, avid was somehow made "aware" of it even though I deleted the ama linked media in the temp bin, and the relinking process could now work.

What a pain, however, given that I had dozens of bins with this issue.  Once I figured out the workaround it wasn't too difficult, but it was time consuming.  Note that I left the other two settings outlined above alone, so I don't know if they were needed or not.  I was just trying to get it done, so I didn't bother to test this.

Hopefully this might help others that run into this issue with older projects.

Thanks again to everybody that helped out a few months back, and to whoever it was that revealed the trick of creating a new bin and linking to the problem media once again in order to force avid to see it.

Larry