Source
r/editors•
PerfectLogic

Need help from a pro! Lost sequence could ruin weeks of work.

I know this sub is mainly for professionals and I'm not at that level yet. But I posted here because I think it's possible that the fine folks at r/videoediting might not have enough experience with Avid Media Composer to help me out. I can delete it if it's violating sub rules, but damn do i need help.

Ok, so let me explain how I got to where I'm currently at.

I recently got Media Composer in the last few weeks as it's required for my editing class to use MC and only MC. So, I bought the student version and loaded it on my brand new PC. Started up a project at school (on a Mac) and everything seemed to be working fine. While at school that first time, I literally only dropped one clip on the sequence and then had to leave cause class was over. Got home and started actually working on the project. No problems. Then I took it to school and loaded up the project on the Mac computer in the editing bay there. Project loaded up fine. All raw footage for my project is on my external hard drive as well as the project itself. I formatted the HD in exFat format. I know, I know. It's not the best format to use, but at the time, it's what my professor told me to do. SO, when I loaded up the project at school, everything worked just fine. Was able to edit and save to my project. And, because I'm a stupid newb, I didn't save backups of my sequence and didn't know anything about transcoding or consolidating at the time I first loaded the project up on the Mac at school. But everything seemed fine. Got back home last night and worked on it for hours more. Again, everything worked just fine.

Then this morning, I tried to load it up on the computers at school and it wouldn't open the most recently saved version of the sequence. It only opened the very first version I started a week ago. I have all my clips, photos, and audio available. All raw footage is available. But the sequence I worked on for days is gone. I researched online and found out about the Avid Attic. Looked through there and found a sequence with a date modified that reads last night at the time I stopped working on it. The last time the project loaded up correctly. I copied all the 8 or 9 sequence files to the Avid Projects folder on my external HD in the folder my project is saved in. I made sure that Avid was closed as I did so. That brought the sequences into my main project bin and I saw the one I needed to get loaded up (sequence 5). Tried to load it up and it only loaded to sequence 1, the very first day I started the project at school and dropped the one clip into the timeline. I tried to go back and copy sequence 5 to my desktop and then append it with the .avb as another thread on avid's website said to and it created a bin called "other bins" with just sequence 5 on it. Yet when I try to load that up it still loads up as if it was sequence 1. Is it possible that I somehow overwrote sequence 5 with sequence 1??? I thought Avid saved separately when I closed out my project. I also make sure to hit Ctrl+S when I'm done with editing for the day and before I close Avid. The thing that gets me is that when I'm in the attic, sequence 5 still says date last modified was last night. Someone mentioned on another post that when you plug into a Mac it creates some weird junk files that throw off the PC version of MC. Something that start with _bg.1 in the Avid MediaFiles>MXF folder. And, yes, my Avid MediaFiles Folder is on the root level of my hard drive. I've also heard about deleting the msmFMID.pmr and msmMMOB.mdb files but didn't know if doing so would screw me over even more. I basically need to figure out if I can recover my sequence or if I should tell the rest of my group that our project will be late because I have to redo the entire thing.

Any help would be really appreciated!!!

Posted Apr 11, 2018, 6:26 AM UTC

1026
FatGirlSquad•

I don’t have the answer, but the diagnosis and troubleshooting you’ve done is fantastic. You’re the sort of person I like to work with. You’re going to be great. Even if this one is a failure, you know Avid even better. You may be paying the price in the short term, but this experience is 100% worth it.

7
PerfectLogicOP•

Yeah, I'm slowly starting to realize i'm probably gonna have to take the L on this one. But thank you so much for your kind words. I don't like to give up when I think something is my fault or my mistake and I'm really wanting to make editing my career, so I'm probably trying harder at this than anything I've done in the last 10 years. LOL

3
[deleted]•

[deleted]

3
Agontile•

20-year Avid user here. It took me the first 10 years to get to the point where I'd actually make my version 2 edits on the version 2 timeline.

1
PerfectLogicOP•

ohh....PLEASE elaborate on this. I'm learning so much to save my ass from this thread alone. What are you referring to here?

1
christofurby•

Don't give up quite yet, as the computer at school and your computer at home both have their own separate, unique attics. Since you've successfully worked on the project at both locations at different times, I'm not convinced you've lost the work, because at least one of those computers will have more than the original, single clip worth of work.

One thing to consider is that Avid creates an attic folder for each individual user on a computer, so if you logged in as "username" on Tuesday but "superman" on Thursday, there is a different attic folder for each user. Also, while it may sound obvious, it's worth asking if you are in fact using the EXACT same computer every time you are at school?

Also, are you 100% certain that upon opening Avid at school, you are clicking the "External" option and then opening the project from the external drive (and NOT the internal drive)? Is it possible that you originally created the project on the school's internal drive, dropped your clip onto the timeline, navigated to "computername->users->username->documents->Avid Projects" to copy the entire project to your external drive, did your edits over the week, and now when you are back at school you think you're looking at the current project when you load Avid because it has the correct name of the project listed, but instead the "Private" or "Shared" option is checked and you are actually looking at the original project you created on the school computer?

*edited for grammar

3
starfirex•

I would open the project and a bunch of sequences and just check them all - this sounds like something got mislabeled. If you know the date/time you worked on the project last you should be able to go back and check all the attic files around that time.

1
22SharpeAvid 2018.4•

In 5 years of using avid I have definitely never seen it label a sequence as one thing and then open another; even working between Mac’s and PC’s. I’ve seen t do so with bins, I’ve seen it do so with clips, but I’ve never seen it do so with sequences.

When you moved the project back to school did you move the entire project and overwrite the one you had or just move the bin files that seemed relevant? In my experience moving just bins can confuse avid sometimes.

Assuming you can still open the working copy at home, back it up (just the project is fine, so long as the media works) and delete the one at school, again, just the project. Copy the entire project over and it should be an exact copy of what you had at home.

You also mention you didn’t know about transcoding or anything. Doesn’t change your sequence issues but were you working with AMA linked clips? Just checking because it can be a recipe for (very slow) disaster; especially when changing systems.

Also, get used to deleting the database files, don’t concern yourself with doing it, it’s normal. The only time they won’t rebuild is if you’re on a shared system and using a computer of a different name.

1
PerfectLogicOP•

I don't really understand AMA linking. I've been right-clicking inside a bin then clicking input and then Import Media to get my raw footage into Avid. So, as far as I know, I haven't AMA linked a single thing yet. When I moved the project back to school, it was entirely on the external drive and all i did was tell avid it was an external project and it opened right up with all the changes I'd made at home.

1
22SharpeAvid 2018.4•

So if everything opened up properly what’s the problem? Did the attic just throw you off a bit?

In any case, AMA linking (just called linking now, it’s through the source browser) tends to be a faster way of getting footage transcoded and is better at keeping metadata in my experience. Import is an older way that I tend to only use if I know the footage is already in an avid native format.

Linking allows you to see your footage and, theoretically, edit with it before it’s transcoded. Most systems can’t handle editing with it but it does make a fast way of transcoding. Just link to your clips (or the folder structure of your clips depending on the camera, it should find everything from most cameras), select them, right click, and hit “consolidate / transcode”. In there you can transcode to whatever you want. Personally I like DNxHD but HR will run great as well. Other options work but avid doesn’t like them as much. In any case, it’ll be faster than importing, is less prone to errors, and is easier to link back to the raw stuff later on.

1
d1squiet•

The behavior you're describing is confusing. I've never lost a sequence in Avid. If the attic has a bin from last night, whatever it contains is what you saved last night.

You seem to be saying you see "sequence 5" in your bin but when you double click on it it loads "sequence 1". This sounds impossible to me. Is it still called "sequence 5" but contains the edits from "sequence 1"?

Is it possible you were actually always working in "sequence 1" and just making copies of the sequence as you went? What I mean is sometimes I will dupe my sequence and call it "version 2" or whatever, but I forget to load it into the timeline. So I keep working on "version 1", thinking I'm on version 2. Then later when I realize this I have to swap the names.

 

A few tips when dealing with the attic and searching for old seqs:

  1. Copy, don't move bins out of the attic. That is, make sure you leave a copy where it was -- that way you can't accidentally wipe out your attic copy.

  2. On a Mac, what I do is option-drag the attic bin to the desktop, rename it from bin.# to bin .avb and double-click on it. That way I know for certain I have opened the attic bin and not some other bin.

1
Bobzyouruncle•

---- "Is it possible you were actually always working in "sequence 1" and just making copies of the sequence as you went? What I mean is sometimes I will dupe my sequence and call it "version 2" or whatever, but I forget to load it into the timeline. So I keep working on "version 1", thinking I'm on version 2. Then later when I realize this I have to swap the names."----

I do this all the time! Definitely worth OP looking into.

1
PerfectLogicOP•

Well, I only ever made one sequence. That's why I thought it was POSSIBLE that I overwrote something somehow. But as for your points 1 and 2 those are exactly the steps I took. Copy and paste the bins onto the desktop from the attic and then load into avid from the desktop copy ensuring my originals in the attic are safe.

Edit: to clarify, I only made one sequence and put everything on that one. I realize now that maybe using sub-sequences (or multiple sequences but together in one larger timeline would have been potentially better, but I'm chalking that up to inexperience. It's possible that each of the files in the bin I found that were titled "sequence 1", "sequence 2" and so on were not different sequences, but different saved versions of the same timeline at different stages, YET when I go to load them after copying them to desktop and renaming the .avb extension it only ever loads up the same sequence I worked on at school. The one with just one clip in it and no edits.

1
d1squiet•

oh so when you say "sequence 5" you just mean bin.5 in the attic?

1
PerfectLogicOP•

Yes! It's called sequence.5 and I copied it to desktop and added .avb extension to it. But then when I try to load up the new .avb file, it just gives me my first-day-of-the-project timeline.

1
d1squiet•

.avb is a bin.

a sequence is inside the bin.

If it is loading your first-day timeline, that is what was in the bin when it was saved.

Not to sound like an a-hole, but it sounds like you mixed up your bins or something... I'm not sure.

1
22SharpeAvid 2018.4•

That’s a bin that contains your sequence. If it’s in the attic of your school computer it will only contain the cuts you made there. He numbers basically change increase to have different versions every time you save so that you can always get back to a specific point.

You need to copy your bin (or ideally whole project) over from where you were working on it at home. That bin will contain the proper sequence you’re looking for.

1
Bobzyouruncle•

Deleting those database files will only reconstruct your media folder database. It won't have anything to do with recovering your sequence. Consolidating and transcoding is also only related to media storage. It will help with ensuring your footage always links properly, but that does not seem to be an issue for you anyway.

It sounds like you have done your research well and looked in the places all of us would suggest you look. When you say that the recovered attic bin created a bin called "other bins" I'm a bit confused. Because the name of a bin is taken directly from the name in the explorer/finder window. The fact that your bin names are also called sequences is confusing. I recommend changing that for the sake of keeping bins and sequences in their technical designations.

Unfortunately, it does sound as though at some point you accidentally copied or moved an old sequence into the bin that used to contain your most recent sequence. Or is it possible that with all the moving back and forth between computers, you saved this particular project someplace and never copied it? Where is your project stored? I assume it's on the external drive and thusly has never been moved between machines.

For the sake of clarity, I'm going to suggest and recommend a few things which you may have already done or read about:

The avid attic keeps a set amount of versions for each bin (this setting can be changed in your settings tab by clicking on 'bin'). Avid attics are usually stored locally, too. So you need to access the attic on the machine in which you last did the work. You said you "copied all the 8 or 9 sequence files to the Avid Projects folder on my external HD in the folder my project is saved in." But I assume you meant you copied the attic BINs since sequences don't show up in finder/explorer folder structures. Always be sure to copy and paste these attic bins rather than moving them or cutting and pasting. You don't want to erase any of these precious backups.

Move them into a new folder in your project and name them by number or time of day or whatever. Change the extension to .avb and then when you open your avid project be sure to close the old bin with the same name- even though you renamed these avid will still see the bins as having the same name and thus will not allow you to open more than one at once.

Check each attic bin for a more recent sequence than the one you have now.

Unfortunately, that is the end of troubleshooting this problem. If all your attic bins contain the wrong sequence, then your sequence must have been saved someplace else. Check other attic bins in your project just in case it got dropped elsewhere by mistake.

1
PerfectLogicOP•

Not at home right now, but will take your advice and check those things when I get home. Yes, everything is saved on my external drive BUT I just realized that if, I recall correctly, the attic files I was looking through were on my PC's INTERNAL hard drive. So, is it possible that the external drive had its own attic folder or does the attic folder just reside on each individual machine's internal drive even though all the media resides on the external drive and the project is being loaded up from the external drive???

As for the bins being called sequences, I have all my bins named for each category of work. One called Clips, another called Photos, the next named Graphics, and then Audio and finally a bin titled Sequences. I get what you're saying about it potentially being confusing but I just didn't know what else to name that bin.

1
Bobzyouruncle•

Avid places the attic in a predetermined spot. I do not believe you can change it. When working with avid unity or ISIS it places the attic on the drive in which the project is based but this is not the case for you.

Most editors call their 'sequence' bins "Cuts". You can obviously call it whatever you want, but when having an issue with finding your "sequences" it was a bit hard to track when you were talking about a bin vs a sequence.

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PerfectLogicOP•

Thanks for the tip. I'll rename my "sequences" bin to "cuts" and save it to my default workspace.

1