Hi All, 

While working with Sony Catalyst Prepare I have exported "Storyboards" as AFFs which have been imported according to the Catalyst Prepare manual into MC 20.12. A populated timeline is automatically created with all audio tracks in the right places. The timeline shows red for unlinked media. No attempt to manually relink the media is possible.

Avid Support on this has been horrible, taking weeks to respond, then asking for multiple file uploads, only to conclude that "You should make a feature request". No analysis why the AFF is not working, why the relinking is not working, no indication of a work around, no indication of what the "feature request" should consist of. Simply abysmal support.

At any rate, has anyone else any experience with this workflow?

Thanks

Richard

Hi Richard,

   Sorry to hear this, I've escalated the case to support manager, I'll see what I can find out why it's been a feature request as support told you.

RalphC

I don't personally have any experience of exporting AAFs from Catalyst Prepare, and although you should have had better service from Avid support, you shouldn't assume your non-linking media is the fault of Media Composer.

Without the necessary metadata, no AAF will relink correctly.

A bit more detail about your media (including where it's located) and what options you tried during the relink attempts would be helpful.

Have you tried bringing your AAF into Resolve? Might be useful in pinning down the problem.

Thanks for your reply.

If Avid Support remotely works on my computer and cannot explain why relinking is not possible even though all metadata is present, asks for uploads of the bin file, the aff file, and the actual video files, and then after weeks later issues a laconic "File a feature request", I have to assume that Avid MC is involved here.

Sony Catalyst Prepare has a specific documented worklfow for exporting to Avid MC, there is no reason to expect that it should automatically work for Resolve. But I will also try it to see if that is possbie.

Files are located on 10 GBE ISCSI NAS Raid Drive, and Avid Support had no difficulties remotely verifying that the files were accessible and exactly where they were supposed to be accoridng to the metadata in the AFF file. Relinking simply fails without explanation. 

I generally wouldn't bet the farm on any third-party software, no matter what the compatibility claim is. 

Curious: What exactly was done to prepare? For instance, do you know whether the original camera files themselves were changed in any way vs. what was recorded by the camera? Does a copy or the original un-changed canera media still exist and can it link directly into MC?  That might be good to know. Was the AAF generated an output of a particular sub-program? 

Camera files were renamed then imported into Catalyst, thus catalyst only knows these files under their current file names. Catalyst Prepare is the program that accesses and displays all of the Sony video file metadata. 

The problem is specific,

video files exist and are accessible,

the AFF generated by Catalyst Prepare imports without difficulty in MC,

the red unlinked files on the import time line reveal correct file locations when you pull up their metadata,

and then finally there is no way to manually or automatically relink the files on the timeline with the video files. 

Avid's AAF workflow has been pretty solid and well established over the years and is used without problems in many professional round-tripping scenarios. 

As has been suggested, if a certain piece of software doesn't produce AAFs that work with MC, I'm more inclined to point the finger there, rather than at Avid.

My students often have problems with relinking, and it's usually something to do with their preparation or relink settings rather than any problem with the software.

Just a couple of points from your last post.

Why are you renaming the camera files? Although this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, it's just adds another layer of complication. It can mean your metadata filename doesn't match your actual filename. 

You are definitely exporting an AAF? You keep referring to the file as AFF and I wanted to check that this is just a typo.

If we assume that Catalyst can export AAFs correctly, then I would suggest the following test.

1) Select a camera file that has NOT had it's filename changed. Bring that into Catalyst and using the whole duration of the clip, make a new timeline with just this clip in it.

2) Export AAF and bring in to Avid. I'll assume at this point it shows as offline (as does the master clip Avid has created).

3) separately link to the original camera clip using the Avid Source Browser. We'll assume this is online.

4) Examine the metadata of both clips in the bin columns. You may need to manually select the columns (or select 'All').

There'll be a lot of settings, but you should specifically looking for differences in any of the following...

Start & End timecode, Tape, Source File, Source Path, Reel.

Some of these may be unpopulated, but for a successful relink, Avid will need matching timecode values and some sort of file identifier to match (eg. Source Name or Tape).

sinnlicht:

Camera files were renamed

This is a no no! Can't tell for sure if this is the issue, but it may very well be.

Hi Bruno, 

Thanks for your detailed reply. I have been working on other deadlines and am getting back to this now. 

Files were batch renamed to in order to contain more metadata like the shooting day, etc. 

AAF it is, typo on my part. 

Will try the import workflow you suggest and report. 

RL