Splice Now

It used to be that if you imported a sound file into Media Composer via drag and drop from the desktop, you got a clip with the same name as the file — but the name was truncated to 27 characters. Most of the time that didn’t matter. But with sound effects it could cause problems because sound effects libraries often have long, descriptive filenames.

Unlike a filename, there isn’t any intrinsic reason for a clipname to be shortened, so the MC was recently changed to take those filenames and turn them into clipnames intact.

And therein lies a tale.

Early last Friday I imported such a clip, and then blithely worked all day in the same bin without problems.

Monday morning I booted up to discover that the bin wouldn’t open. The error message included this text:

Exception: DOMAIN_COPYOUT_FAILED
Exception: STRM_BUF_SMALL, buflen: 256

The attic only took me backwards a few hours — none of those bins would open either. I had a backup from Thursday which worked — but that meant losing a whole day’s work. Unacceptable.

Some internet research and a few frantic calls to friends turned up the idea that the bin might open in a PC system — and, indeed, our rental house was able to open it in a Nitris. We then began the laborious process of trying to figure out which sequence within the bin was the problem. Many hours of trial and error, passing bins back and forth over the net, produced an unambiguous result — it was that sound effects clip.

Avid tech support thought the problem might be with the clipname and suggested that I keep all clipnames to 27 characters. I was skeptical since I’ve had dozens and dozens of clips with names longer than that on every show I’ve ever done. Nevertheless, I did another hour or so of experimentation and learned the following:

Now that the MC doesn’t truncate your clipnames on import, you can indeed screw yourself up pretty badly using names the MC doesn’t like. There are three conditions:

1. Files that won’t import. In this case the MC produces a generic error message telling you that the file couldn’t be imported. Just renaming the file that you’re trying to import, using a short name with pure alphanumeric characters (no punctuation), will cure this one, but you have to know the secret.
2. Files that cause the MC to hang on import. These have clipnames with characters that don’t produce an error message — they just hang the machine.
3. Files with clipnames that are too long. Here’s the gotcha that we faced this week. If your source file’s name is longer than 216 characters then the MC will import it just fine. And you will be able to use it without problems. But once you close any bin that contains that file, you won’t be able to open it again — on a Mac.

The good news is that I’ve reported all this to Tewksbury and a fix is in the works. The bad news is that it represents the kind of problem Avid faces when improving the MC. The system has grown so complex that even a simple change like this can produce unexpected side effects — and in this case, pretty disastrous ones.

Meanwhile, if you import files via drag and drop, double check the filenames before you bring them in. No punctuation except a single period between the name and file type, and make sure the filename is less than 216 characters long.

Technorati Tags: avid, edit, film, video

This entry was posted on September 28, 2007 at 6:55 am and is filed under Avid, Avid Wish List & Bugs. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.