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3
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Avid Media | Director User’s Guide • Created 7/9/14 • This document is distributed by Avid in online (electronic) form
only, and is not available for purchase in printed form.
Changing the Profile Associated with the Watch Folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6
Using This Guide
Congratulations on your purchase of Media | Director, an optional service for Interplay
Production that allows workgroups to capture field footage shot in various formats quickly by
processing it against user-definable profiles.
This guide is intended for all users of Media | Director. For additional information, see “Typical
Media | Director Users” on page 25.
Revision dateComments
07/09/2014Added description of GUID on Display tab. See
“Editing the Display Tab for a Profile” on page 46.
07/01/2014Minor corrections and reformatting.
The documentation describes the features and hardware of all models. Therefore, your system
n
might not contain certain features and hardware that are covered in the documentation.
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8
1Media | Director Overview
Media | Director is an optional service for Interplay Production that allows workgroups to
capture field footage shot in various formats quickly by processing it against user-definable
profiles that orchestrate copy, naming and transcode processes via a powerful rules system.
With this option workgroups can dramatically reduce the time spent performing the following
tasks:
•Capturing media from a wide variety of file based cameras
•Normalizing various formats to create an efficient production workflow
•Migrating multi-resolution media to make cost efficient use of tiered storage environments
•Making the material available quickly to multiple editors within the Interplay environment.
The following sections describe the benefits of using Media | Director.
Provide an efficient and consistent method for ingesting file-based material
Media | Director has a powerful template-based rules system that allows you to define the copy,
transcode, and naming portions of the ingest workflow. You can use standard templates and
define your own variations. This eliminates the need for remembering and repeating known
ingest policies and ensures that ingest tasks are handled accurately across staff (for example,
in-house vs. freelance, different training levels, different locations).
Media | Director provides a central server that can process ingest jobs. Individual jobs can be
initiated from client machines with LAN access to the server. This frees up valuable editing
systems and allows staff to use older client machines to initiate ingest jobs. Operators can
prioritize jobs by reorganizing the job queue before submitting them to the server.
Protect camera originals and save storage space on the production ISIS
Camera originals represent a production investment (talent, travel, etc.) and long-term
monetizing opportunities. Media | Director can be configured to automatically copy camera
originals to a central parking storage such as an ISIS 2500. Media | Director allows you to
transcode the camera source material to a low-bit-rate proxy format, such as 2Mb H.264 video
and MPEG-1 Layer II audio. This allows you to work with the proxy version on the main
Interplay Production ISIS and keep the camera sources on the parking ISIS. This saves storage
on the production ISIS and reduces network bandwidth requirements. Later, when you identify
Media | Director Components
the material you want to work with, you can use a qualified version of an Avid editing
application or Interplay Transcode service to consolidate from the camera sources to the
production ISIS at full resolution.
You can also use the Media | Director to consolidate an entire volume of AMA material to your
n
production ISIS.
Provide support for post-production workflows
Some post-production work flows, such as reality TV, often capture a large ratio of raw footage
compared to the size of the final show. Shooting ratios can be up to and in excess of 200:1. This
creates a large amount of camera source material. Editors need access to the sources but you
don’t want to copy them all onto your production ISIS system. The concepts of parking storage
and dual res work flows works well in a post-production workflow. Your camera sources are
stored in their unchanged/native form in a storage area that is easily searchable and you edit with
the proxy versions. You can consolidate the material for the final sequences at full resolution to
the production ISIS when it’s time to create final masters. This workflow keeps the camera
sources in an area that is protected but still easily accessible by qualified users.
Many of today’s show formats are captured on a wide variety of cameras. Media | Director’s
rules system provides the ability to match camera format properties with the project/production
requirements of a show. For example, you can create a profile for a specific camera and modify
the profile for use on different projects.
Media | Director Components
Media | Director consists of the following components:
•Media | Director Engine: provides workflow orchestration and media processing services.
The Media | Director Engine hosts AMA plug-ins and provides the ability to ingest AMA
material, register new clips with the Interplay database, and perform proxy transcode and
full-resolution consolidate operations.
•Media | Director Drop Utility: provides the user interface for starting and configuring
Media | Director Engine jobs and for building profiles.
Note that Media | Director relies on a new generation of AMA plugins that is compatible with the
n
latest versions of the Avid editing applications.
10
The Media | Director Engine
Media | Director supports Avid’s Media Access plug in technology (AMA) and provides flexible
acquisition format support via qualified AMA plug ins.
The Media | Director Engine is a self-contained device based on Avid or customer provided
standard hardware. In its first release, its main functions are to execute automatic workflows that
register camera native media volumes as AMA assets in an Interplay Production; to create a
choice of Avid Production native proxies for these assets from the source media, and to
consolidate high resolution material to the Avid production storage.
The Media | Director Engine connects Avid’s storage and asset management solutions with
external sources of media and metadata such as camera storage media or video servers, and
offers a choice of automated workflows to move media from those sources into an Avid
production environment in a highly automated way.
Media | Director Engine includes a workflow engine that drives a scalable number of media
processing services with built-in proxy generation through a predefined set of workflows. It also
contains adapters that can orchestrate Interplay Production operations such as checking files into
Interplay. Built-in MediaCentral | UX technology provides status information through any
HTML-5 capable web browser.
Media | Director Components
The Media | Director Drop Utility
Media | Director Engine ships with an OS-native client application for Windows and Mac OS X,
the Media | Director Drop Utility. The Drop Utility displays a user interface based on the
MediaCentral | UX interface.
The Drop Utility is the user interface for the Media | Director engine. Its main functions are as
follows:
•Start Media | Director jobs based on a selectable profile and optional additional parameters
•Create and work with profiles
•Provide feedback about job status and progress
11
Media | Director Components
The Drop Utility application has two main sections, the Job Builder and the Profile Builder, as
shown in the following illustration.
For a description of how different users interact with the interface, see “Typical Media | Director
Users” on page 25.
12
Media | Director Environment
Production ISIS
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0HGLD'LVNV
*
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0HGLD_'LUHFWRU6HUYHU
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*
The Media | Director Engine is part of an Avid Interplay Production environment as shown in the
following illustration.
Media | Director Environment
The Media | Director Engines’ AMA registration and multi resolution capabilities require the
following infrastructure to fully leverage the functionality:
•Interplay Production 3.1.x (Interplay Engine and Media Indexer with updated Avid editing
applications) for full functionality.
•Interplay Production 3.0.x (Interplay Engine and Media Indexer with updated Avid editing
applications) for full Direct Ingest.
•Direct ingest only functionality is available in pre-3.0 environments
•ISIS 7500 or 5500 production shared storage for Avid-native media and proxies
•ISIS 2000 storage for camera-native media (7500 and 5500 are also supported)
•Enterprise-class networking; fully Avid-qualified 10G infrastructure between
Media | Director Engine and ISIS 7500/2500.
•Note that 10G client connectivity is optional.
13
File Based Workflow
ISIS 2000
Parking
Storage
Avid ISIS
5500/7500
Interplay
Engine
AMA Register
Proxy Generation
HiRes
Consolidate
Park
AMA Access
Proxy
Playback
MediaCentral | UX
Media Composer
Interplay Access
Interplay Admin
The following illustration shows the basic AMA workflow.
File Based Workflow
The basic workflow for the Media | Director process named Park, Register and Transcode
consists of the following steps:
1. Insert the camera formatted media such as backup disk with camera media, a P2 card, or
XDCAM disk into a reader on the Media | Director client.
2. Drag the volume onto the Media | Director client and select a predefined Profile.
3. For workflows containing Park, Media | Director copies the media from the card or disk to a
parking storage system such as an ISIS 2000 or other parking storage. This parking storage
provides a single location where you can always find a copy of your original media. This
allows AMA workflows to function reliably no matter what happens to the original carrier.
Support for non-ISIS parking storage is a licensable option.
n
4. For workflows that contain Register, Media | Director uses an AMA register process to
create an AMA-linked asset in the Interplay database. These assets point to the media on the
parking storage. Note that for pre-Interplay 3.0 workflows, AMA register can be turned off,
producing “standard” assets.
14
About Media | Director Workflows and Processes
At this point the media is available for a limited number of users that can work directly with
high res AMA material. For example, you can now edit the material on a Media Composer
or NewsCutter system. This is represented by the “AMA Access” portion of the illustration.
5. Next (if the Park, Register and Transcode workflow is used), the Media | Director server
uses its built in proxy generation to create a proxy.
Once the proxy is available, editors and other Interplay clients can relink to the proxy. This
makes the material available to a much larger group of users such as MediaCentral | UX,
Interplay Assist, and Media Composer | Cloud.
This finishes the Media | Director Park, Register and Transcode process.
Once the editors and producers create their sequences and other output based on the proxy,
editors can use the Avid editing application or the Interplay Transcode service to initiate a
transcode/consolidate operation to bring the desired high res material onto the ISIS 5500 system
in the Interplay environment. This will copy the desired portions of the original AMA material
from the parking storage onto the ISIS 5500 in the OP-ATOM format used by Avid applications.
You can also use the Media | Director Consolidate from Parking workflow to transcode or
n
rewrap all of the AMA material in a volume to the Interplay Production ISIS system.
About Media | Director Workflows and Processes
When a new job is submitted, the job profile defines which of the built-in processes are executed.
Depending on the profile, the user may have the opportunity to supply additional detail
information to the process such as the clip name or the name of an Interplay database folder to
create to store the clip metadata.
15
About Media | Director Workflows and Processes
For every process built into the Media | Director Engine, there is a profile template in the
Templates folder as shown in the following illustration:
From those templates, you can create profile “instances” or copies that are tailored to a specific
purpose via a set of storage and naming rules. The profile instances start the process they link to
with different rules and dynamic data. Even though profiles can be renamed, they remain linked
to the original process template. The right column in the profile list shows the original process
template that a template has been derived from.
16
About Media | Director Workflows and Processes
The following table lists the Media | Director built-in processes.
Process NameProcess Description
Direct IngestDirectly rewraps volumes from the source carrier to Production Storage (ISIS)
without copying or registering the AMA clips first. The Transcode portion of
the profile contains a “transparent pass-through” option. This option treats
native codecs as follows:
•If the native codecs are supported in Interplay Production, they are
preserved.
•Some AMA plugins provide only uncompressed frames for media like
GoPro and some Quicktime files. As uncompressed frames cannot be
consolidated, Media | Director automatically transcode these formats to
XDCAM HD 50 instead.
This process is compatible with pre-3.0 versions of Interplay Production back
to Interplay 2.7.5. Backwards compatibility is possible because the process
does not rely on AMA support in Interplay Production.
Direct Ingest via CacheThis process is similar to Direct Ingest except that the AMA media is first
copied (cached) and then processed from the parking storage. This is intended
for source carriers that cannot be efficiently processed by a Media | Director,
for example because they that are too small, too fragmented, or cannot be read
fast enough. Since the copy operation is carried out by the client, this process
avoids inefficient use of the processing capabilities on the Media | Director
server. Also, since the client accesses the source, no share or access
permissions for Media | Director are necessary.
This process is also compatible with pre-3.0 versions of Interplay Production
back to Interplay 2.7.5.
Hi-Res Conform from Parked
Volume
Rewraps volumes on Parking Storage to Production Storage (ISIS) while
preserving logging information on AMA clips and proxies. In The Transcode
portion of the profile contains a “transparent pass-through” option. This option
treats native codecs as follows:
•If the native codecs are supported in Interplay Production, they are
preserved.
•Some AMA plugins provide only uncompressed frames for media like
GoPro and some Quicktime files. As uncompressed frames cannot be
consolidated, Media | Director automatically transcode theses formats to
XDCAM HD 50 instead.
Park and RegisterParks volumes on Parking Storage and registers them as AMA clips in
Interplay Production 3.0 and higher.
17
Media | Director Process Detail Descriptions
Process NameProcess Description
Park, Register & TranscodeParks volumes on Parking Storage and registers them as AMA clips in
Interplay Production 3.0. Transcodes source material from parking storage to
user-definable proxy format.
The following section describes the Processes in detail.
Media | Director Process Detail Descriptions
The Media | Director Direct Ingest Process
The Media Director Direct Ingest process is designed for customers who want to use a classic
Avid workflow where all source material is transferred to the production ISIS storage and made
available as native Avid assets in Interplay.
Under the Direct Ingest Process source media does not get parked; rather it is consolidated over
to the production storage directly from the source. This assumes that the source media
carrier/disk is large and fast enough to keep a Media Processor busy for the duration of the
ingest. Depending on the target resolution setting in the profile, media will either be transcoded
to one of the formats supported by Media | Director, or – if “transparent pass-through” is selected
in the profile – will be converted (rewrapped) to native Avid media as lossless as possible. As
always, sources are read through the matching AMA plugin. Since different AMA plugins
provide a different level of support in the case of “transparent pass-through”, the ingest operation
will be handled as one of the following two cases:
•If the source media contains essence that is natively supported in Interplay Production, the
source media will simply be rewrapped to OP-Atom, placed onto the Production ISIS
storage, and checked into Interplay according to the rules defined in the profile. This is the
default behavior of the “transparent pass-through” option.
•Some AMA plugins provide only uncompressed frames for media like GoPro and some
Quicktime files. As uncompressed frames cannot be consolidated, Media | Director
automatically transcode these formats to XDCAM HD 50 instead. Alternatively, a specific
‘transcoding’ target resolution can be defined in a profile. Because a transcoding step is
involved, these options will be slower than the pure rewrapping operation from the previous
case.
For a list of supported AMA plugins, see the table of “Supported Volumes Types” in the
Media | Director ReadMe.
18
Media | Director Process Detail Descriptions
The Media | Director Cached (Direct via Cache) Ingest Process
The Media Director Cached Ingest process is designed for customers who want to use a classic
Avid workflow where all source material is transferred to the production ISIS storage and made
available as native Avid assets in Interplay.
Under the Cached Ingest Process the source is first copied (cached) and then processed from the
parking storage; this is intended for source carriers that are small or connected in a way where it
does not make sense for one of Media | Director’s Media Processors to work on the media
directly. The essence format can be preserved or transcoded. As always, sources are read through
the matching AMA plugin; since different AMA plugins provide a different level of support the
ingest operation will be handled as one of the following two cases:
•If the source media contains essence that is natively supported in Interplay Production, the
source media will simply be rewrapped to OP-Atom, placed onto the Production ISIS
storage, and checked into Interplay according to the rules defined in the profile. This is the
“transparent pass-through” option.
•Some AMA plugins provide only uncompressed frames for media like GoPro and some
Quicktime files. As uncompressed frames cannot be consolidated, Media | Director
automatically transcodes theses formats to XDCAM HD 50 instead. Alternatively, a specific
“transcoding” target resolution can be selected in a profile. When a transcoding step is
involved, the operation will be slower than the pure rewrapping operation from the previous
case.
The Media | Director Hi-Res Conform From Parked Volume Process
This process rewraps volumes on Parking Storage to Production Storage (ISIS) while preserving
logging information on AMA clips and proxies. It preserves the native codec if supported in
Interplay production. If the source formats are not natively supported it transcodes the sources to
XDCAM HD 50.
The Media | Director Hi-Res Conform from Parked Volume process is designed for customers
who want to add full resolution to existing AMA or proxy assets in Interplay production. This
process will add the new resolution in a non-destructive way, meaning that markers or subclips
created for the AMA or proxy resolutions will be unaffected.
A possible use case for this workflow would be to bring high resolution media online before
finishing work starts on a project. Assistant editors could have created shot selections and
marked areas of interest based on the AMA or proxy media, conserving space on the production
ISIS. Editing and finishing would then be performed in Interplay Production, with full
availability of all standard Avid workflow, archive and transfer options.
19
Media | Director Process Detail Descriptions
The Media | Director Park & Register Process
This process parks volumes on Parking Storage and registers them as AMA clips in Interplay Production
3.0 and higher.
The Media | Director Park & Register process is designed for applications where minimal
latencies and maximum conservation of production resources is desired at the expense of ISIS
bandwidth and interactivity. The process copies the source media to the Parking Storage and
relies on the Avid AMA technology for playing back media from the Parking Storage.
This means that all streams will play back as full resolution; consequently the user experience
will depend on the bandwidth available on the Parking Storage and may be sluggish some times.
This process is best suited for a small number of users who need the fastest possible access to
media and are willing to accept that bandwidth is not guaranteed in order to conserve the
maximum amount of production capacity.
The Media | Director Park, Register & Transcode Process
This process parks volumes on Parking Storage, registers them as AMA clips in Interplay
Production 3.0, and transcodes the source material from parking storage to a user-definable
proxy format.
The Media | Director Park, Register and Proxy process is designed for applications where a
larger number of users want to work on a proxy copy of bandwidth-intensive source material. For
example, this could include a department with a dozen employees that want to work with
AVC-I 100 sources. The process is also suitable to projects that use high-bitrate media such as
DNxHD 220 or better.
The Media | Director Park, Register & Transcode Process will copy the source media to the
Parking Storage and then first make the media available through the Avid AMA technology to
provide quick access to a subset of the departmental users. It will then proceed by creating a
proxy copy of the source media for low latency, low storage footprint playback from the
production ISIS.
Once editing on the proxy copy is complete, users have a variety of options for creating full
resolution output:
•In scenarios where all participating system components fully support AMA workflows, no
actual import of high res media is necessary. For example, full resolution output clips can be
generated directly from the AMA linked media on the parking storage.
•For cases where production components do not yet fully support AMA workflows, full
resolution media can be consolidated over from the parking storage. This can be done in two
different ways; for clip-based consolidate or if transcoding to non-native high-res formats is
20
Media | Director Process Detail Descriptions
required, Interplay Transcode can be used. The Media | Director Engine in turn offers
lossless high-speed rewrapping for high-res formats that are natively supported in Interplay
Production.
Depending on the resolutions available, streams will play back either as full-res AMA stream
from the parking storage or as proxy or full resolution from the Interplay Production storage, the
same way as today in classic Interplay Production workflows.
Note that relinking to either available resolution requires a manual operation through the
n
Dynamic Relink function of the Avid editors.
21
2Using the Media | Director Drop Utility
Production ISIS
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The Media | Director Drop Utility features a MediaCentral | UX style interface with tabs and
panes that are easy to customize. The following illustration shows the Drop Utility’s position in
the Interplay environment. The application resides on a Media | Director client system. This can
be one of a number of supported PC or Mac systems.
Typically a user performs the following tasks on the Media | Director client:
•Start the Drop Utility application
•Connect a drive, a share, or, insert media disks into an available media drive.
•Drag the associated volume from the media disk into the Drop Utility interface, select a
profile, and initiate a job.
Administrators use the Drop Utility to create profiles that direct the jobs and simplify the
operations for the users who are creating the jobs.
What is a Volume?
A volume is a folder containing the AMA source material. It can be a folder on local or shared
storage. It can also be a folder or camera media structure on an external card reader or camera.
The following list describes where volumes appear on different devices:
•For P2, navigate one level above the Contents folder
•For XDCAM disks, navigate to one level above the Clip folder
•For XDCAM EX, navigate to one level above the BPAV folder
•For QuickTime, navigate to the QuickTime folder that holds the QuickTime files
Note that Media | Director can recognize certain volume types and, by leveraging this capability,
can traverse folder structures containing volumes. This means that there can be multiple volumes
in a folder hierarchy, for example on a backup disk. Media | Director will create jobs for each of
the source material folders. Also, Media | Director’s rules system can be used to extract metadata
from the folder hierarchy. For example, this can be done if the folders are organized by date,
shooting site and camera team.
You can use Media | Director’s volume auto detection capabilities as follows:
•If you want Media Director to perform automatic traversal of the volume hierarchy, hold the
Shift key down while you drag the volume.
•If you do not press the Shift key while you drag the volume, Media | Director will process
exactly the folder you selected, and automatic traversal will not occur. This allows you to use
Media | Director with new AMA plugins that are not recognized automatically.
For additional information, see “Supported Volume Types” in the Media | Director ReadMe.
23
The Drop Utility User Interface
The following illustration shows the main portions of the Drop Utility interface. Depending on
your needs, you can move the panes around. For example, if you are not creating profiles you can
drag the entire Profile Builder pane behind the Job Builder pane.
The Drop Utility User Interface
The following section describes the different types of Media | Director users and how they
interact with the user interface.
24
Typical Media | Director Users
Media | Director users can be divided into three categories. Different users will focus on different
parts of the user interface.
Typical Media | Director Users
c
There is no user management for Media | Director v1.0. This means that there is no
technical distinction between operators and administrators. It is possible for any user to
edit or delete a profile.
Operators
Operators are staff members responsible for the actual ingest of camera media. They need to be
able to process media quickly and in an efficient, simple-to-use manner. An operator may not
necessarily be a subject expert on camera codecs, formats, or how the workgroup environment is
set up. They may be handling many tasks at once throughout the work day. They may be less
experienced staff or their focus may normally be in other parts of creative process.
An operator typically uses the Job Builder and Progress panes of the Media | Director interface.
Administrators
Administrators are often responsible for setting up and maintaining the workgroup environment.
They may be responsible for directing or helping direct facility-wide asset management
pipelines. An administrator needs easy-to-use, yet sophisticated tools to fine-tune the
environment and make sure media is accurately processed. Administrators are often subject
experts on camera codecs, formats, and how they line up against project needs.
An administrator uses the Profile Builder pane of the Media | Director interface.
Combined Operator and Administrator
Depending on the site, some staff members are responsible for both the actual ingest of camera
media and maintaining the workgroup environment. They need to be able to process media
quickly and in an efficient, simple-to-use manner. They are usually subject experts on camera
codecs, formats, how they line up against project needs, and how the workgroup environment is
set up. This individual typically handles many different tasks throughout the work day and must
be able to efficiently handle the addition of new workflows.
The combined operator and administrator uses all three panes of the Media | Director interface.
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