CTM Solutions

Hey MediaCentral folks........

MediaCentral | Cloud UX Feature Pack 2023.7.1 (Long Term Maintenance (LTM) version) was released this week and can be found on the Avid Download Centerr under Avid MediaCentral LTM (Long Term Maintenance release) and CURRENT RELEASES

There is one new feature included:

And the following fixes:

Hope this helps folks....

Marianna

Hi Mediacentral production users.

I have also raised these question to support and in the ACSR mailing list.

While Avid indicated the Mediacentral production + Media composer (and dynamic relink) were solved, it seems there are still some issues although things are a lot better then 1-2 years ago.

In general I see 2 issues

1. Media Indexer threads set for each worker are not consistent with nr of logical processors. In 2022.3.x the number of threads for the classic scanning and indexing workers and mongodb scanning worker are set too low. mongodb indexing worker is set too high. This is supposedly corrected in 2023.7 media indexer. However while classic scanning worker and mongodb scanning worker are now set to the same amount as the nr of logical processors, classic indexing worker and mongodb indexing worker are still set with double the threads of the available logical processors. As far as I know this was never the case in Media Indexer 2021.3.4 and lower. This is currently being investigated by support.

2. Microsoft windows 2019 server seems to have 1 or more performance issues impacting both local and network file transfers. This is observed on Dell r630 SUU 2023.5 applied windows 2019 server all updates applied. File transfers of large files, read and write, reach 113MB/s through 1GB connections. Folders with small amounts of files (which are expected to be much slower) can cause large variations in file transfer time when copying to a windows 2019 server network share.

Comparing to copying files to a Synology storage shows large differences up to 50% shorter duration = 200% average speed. However when doing multiple attempts, a single attempt can be almost as fast as the synology. It's not consistent. Observered differences between the Synology and a Windows share is that windows shares use SMB v3.1.1 while Synology uses SMB v2.

I became aware of this due to increased backup times of the Interplay Archive database. Backup duration on 2012r2 server (latest update in 2018) to a share on 2012r2 (latest update in 2018) took 3 hours. After update of server hosting file share to 2019 server backup time increased to 67 hours.  After update of Mediacentral production Archive engine backup times to file share remained 67 hours. Tested backup to local storage on Archive engine which took 5 hours. Backup to Synology Storage takes 'normal' 3 hours.

In general after updating all Dell r630 2012r2 servers to 2019 server + Dell SUU 2023.5, servers feel normally responsive in explorer. All applications also function normally and no obvious perforance problems are observed in any user interface.

However, both Media composer 2022.12.4 and Cloud UX 2022.3.16 produce occasional sluggish behavior, especially when total system load increases. Saving a sequence and dragging clips into a sequence can all of a sudden take much more time than normal. I have spoken to a few Mediacentral users around the globe and they report having performance related cases open with Avid support. 

Through this post I would like to learn if more people experience similar problems and have cases open with Avid support. Feel free to react to this post or email me directly.

Jeroen van Eekeres

Avid is having a webinar on "What's New" in media Central next Thursday August 24th.....

Check out this link to register.

https://community.avid.com/forums/p/209152/932664.aspx#932664

Hope to see you there.

Marianna

WHEN I ATTEMPT TO LOGIN TO AVID INSTINCT I GET THE FOLLOWING ERROR "Asset Manager : Unable to acquire interplay engine services. Please check your interplay access installation and verify that are running the correct version". CAN YOU HELP TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS THE REASON? there is no interplay access program on the workstation. Someone must have removed it. if this is the reason, where can i get it?

MediaCentral | Cloud UX 2021.7.12 was posted to the download center today.

The readme can be found here:

https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/attach/MediaCentral_Cloud_UX/MCCUX_2021_7_12_ReadMe.pdf

The installer can be found on the download center under Avid MediaCentral Patches/2021.7 Patches

Hi community

I have a question after resolving, with the help of Avid support, send to playback issues from cloud UX at one of our customers which proved to be caused by media indexer performance issues in combination with a 'change/bug' in MCDS that was released to actually fix this issues. But it doesn't.

Bug Number: SAK-870. STP sometimes fails because media generated as part of the STP operation is not indexed quickly enough.

https://resources.avid.com/SupportFiles/attach/Readme_Production_Management_V2021.3.1.pdf 

The media indexer fixes can be found here:

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Troubleshooting/Recommended-changes-for-Media-Indexer-2020-x-and-2021-x

The STP issues were eventually fixed by downgrading MCDS from 2021.3.1 to 2021.3.0.

One other issue found by support from the indexer logs was the presence of offline AMA media. So I checked and indeed this customer hasn’t been cleaning out a lot of, what I believe are, obsolete AMA assets. But the Media Indexer and therefor Interplay Access only has information on the presence of the spaaf and aaf files inside the SPAAF workspace, not the actual linked media. So Interplay access can’t tell me which spaaf +aaf files still point to valid media locations. 

I have asked the same question to support but I thought I might ask here as well. Is there any way to determine which spaaf+aaf files do and do not link to valid storage locations in an Interplay environment? Maybe from the Media indexer logs. But how to isolate the AMA logs in those?

Having to check the AAF files in each folder on the SPAAF workspace to verify if they still link to a valid location unc path will be a pain. Maybe Avid or somebody outside of Avid (makers of MDV) ever thought of writing a small utility that can do this cross check and/or maybe including that info in the Media indexer web page? That utility could also be used on a standalone media composer setup or media composer with Nexis only. In that configuration the content of the xml file on the individual media composer systems at C:\Users\Public\Documents\Avid Media Composer\AMA Management\Managed AMA Media Folders.xml might be of help although the drive letter mounted locations differ from system to system and have no relation to workspace names in a unc path.

Thanks

An issue was found with MediaCentral | Cloud UX (version 2020.4.x) where if a site is running with 3rd Party Integration when the site reboots (for maintenance or troubleshooting)

MediaCentral | Cloud UX 2020.4.x sites with 3rd Party Integrations will fail connecting to the gateway (triggered by maintenance or troubleshooting reboot) with the following error:

ERROR - unable to connect to the gateway at 'wss://clouduxserver:9900/ws': RemoteCertificateChainErrors

The details & the fix for this are here: 

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/troubleshooting/MediaCentral-Cloud-UX-2020-4-x-sites-with-3rd-Party-Integrations-will-fail-connecting-to-the-gateway

Some of the Pods in CloudUX showing the error message : 
0/1 nodes are available: 1 node(s) didn't match pod affinity/anti-affinity, 1 node(s) didn't match pod anti-affinity rules.
These pods are similar with other pods setting, but the others is functional.

I have tried to reboot those pods, deployment, node ... nothing help with it.

Hi All,

After almost a year of going back and forth with Avid on the new 2022 LTM policy, being no backwards compatibility with previous versions. which results in the need for forklift upgrading of mediacentral production + cloud UX + Media composer + iNews, Avid Graphics systems, which has practical problems regarding the amount of work needed in a short time and the risks involved if a problem is encountered, but mostly any compatibility issue, being Avid hardware and software or 3rd party hardware software blocking an upgrade of an entire system, I believe the time has come to put a post out here (also) asking on how other users/technicians/acsr's/resellers are dealing with this.

Over the past 2 years the amount of Mediacentral, Media composer, Nexis,etc... updates that caused minor and mayor issues were of an amount that the Mediacentral production customers in our market were either partially rolled back or stayed on 2018.x.x versions. As a result some systems use a mix of versions, typically Media composer 2018.12.15 against Mediacentral production 2021.x products which function and are more or less supported by Avid.

But its the experiences of the past 2 years, trying an update, finding one or more issues, engaging with support, waiting for a fix, etc.. that make customers (and us resellers) very sceptical about upgrading into a 2022 version.

As time progresses, fixes for problems found in 2020/2021 versions are ONLY ending up in mediacentral production and cloud UX 2022 versions while Media composer 2020 and 2021 are still being maintained. (The latest patch for Media composer, 2020.12.7 coming soon). And this increases the pressure to upgrade relative to previous versions. 

My questions to the Mediacentral production (Interplay) users in the community are:

- Are you able to follow the new LTM compatibility rules to the letter or do you apply a pragmatic approach, meaning upgrading product by product and temporarily using a unsupported setup prior upgrading other products?

- Have the 2022 mediacentral versions reached a point that they are 99.xx% stable and can be deployed with 'ease of mind'? 

- If you find an issue do you roll back a whole system (if possible/supported) or do you accept running an unsupported setup for a period of xx months (as long as it takes to develop and roll out a fix)?

- Are you using (virtual) replicas of a setup in a lab to test an upgrade prior rolling it out in a production environment?

The 'big' question:

- How do you deal with Avid in this? Obviously you engage with Avid support, but do you ask assistance from Avid services and sales?

Thanks for any feedback from a reseller tech getting desperate.

Hello,

We are working in an Interplay and Nexis environment, and I feel the uptime for our servers is too high. I was wondering what would be the best practice and sequence to restart the system servers. Our PAM servers are: Interplay Engine, Lookup server, Production Services server, Transfer server and Media Indexer. We also have couple of servers for the Archive services. The Interplay Engines are connected to dedicated database.

Thanks.