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Date Revised Changes Made 21 March 2014 Release Media Director 1.0 18 June 2014 Release Media Director 1.0.1

Important Information

Avid recommends that you read all the information in this ReadMe file thoroughly before installing or using any new software release.

Terminology Volume – A volume is considered a folder structure as it is produced by a camera (e.g. Sony Professional Disc, P2 Card, …) that can be handled in its entirety by an AMA plugin, or folders with collections of either Op-1a or QuickTime / MP4 files (Canon D5 or GoPro SDCard, ….)

Supported Volume Types

- Sony: XDCAM HD or XDCAM EX structure containing XDCAM HD, IMX or XAVC-Intra media - Panasonic: P2 structure containing AVC-Intra or DVC/DVCPRO media - QuickTime: Folder containing one or more MOV or MP4 containers containing supported media. - MXF: Folder containing one or more MXF OP-1a containers with AVC-I, XDCAM, IMX, DNxHD or DV/DVCPRO media.

Additional volume types can be supported as qualified AMA plugins become available.

Supported Transcode Target Formats

- AVC-Intra 50, AVC-Intra 100 - DNxHD 4:4:4, DNxHD High Quality (10 bit), DNxHD High Quality (8 bit), DNxHD Standard Quality, DNxHD Standard Thin Raster, DNxHD Compact, DNxHD Low Bandwidth - IEC-DV - DV-based 25, DV-based 50, DV-based 100 - H.264 800k Class, H.264 2M Class (both with MPEG-1 Layer II and PCM audio) - IMX 30, IMX 40, IMX 50 - JFIF 10:1, JFIF 10:1m, JFIF 15:1s - XDCAM-EX 35, XDCAM HD 18, XDCAM-HD 35, XDCAM-HD 50 - XAVC-Intra 4:2:0, XAVC-Intra 4:4:4 - transparent pass-through

Notes and Limitations

Language and character support

 Fully supported languages are: English, French, German, Swedish, and Polish.  Media | Director is ready to support Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and, to a limited extent, other Unicode character sets for end user relevant areas. In detail this means: o Supported by Media | Director in: . Clip and PAM folder name building rules o Not supported by Media | Director in: . Filenames . Other Operating System visible items (e.g. ISIS directories, temp directories, etc.)  Media | Director only supports characters from the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Media | Director does not support characters from the Unicode supplementary planes.  Important: Other products (e.g. Media Composer) typically used with Media | Director may have different or limited support for international character sets. Please check interoperability for every product involved separately before workflow pipelines that rely on international character sets.

Media Ingest

 Stitching is not supported in this release of Media | Director.  AMA workflows for media with interleaved audio (e.g. Sony IMX, GoPro) require Interplay Production 3.1 and Media Composer 8.1 or better  General: o off-speed (23.98, 24, 25, 29.97) as source formats aren’t supported for transcoding and consolidation. o NTSC and PAL progressive (25 and 29.97 SD formats) source formats aren’t supported for transcoding and consolidation. o Op-1a media with unknown duration is not supported by the AMA MXF plugin. o QuickTime media that is exported from Media Composer applications will require the Avid Codec Pack to be installed before it can be processed by Media | Director. o Audio-only media is not supported. o Source media with alpha channel isn’t supported for transcode and consolidation. o Media with and corresponding are not, yet, supported  Transcoding o Cross edit-rate transcoding isn’t supported, except: 720p/59.94 or 720p/50 to 1080i/29.97 or NTSC and 1080i/25 or PAL, respectively. o Transcoding from interlaced to progressive formats () is not supported.  Consolidating o Some source formats are not supported for consolidation workflows with Media Composer and Interplay Production Transcode. Please see the list below for formats that are supported for consolidation workflows. o Media | Director ‘full volume’ consolidation must be triggered from the Media | Director Drop Utility.  Registering o Currently Media | Director does not generate head frames for the clip in Interplay Production when running park and register (without transcode) workflows.  Audio Processing o On consolidate and transcode audio is always written as single channel Avid OP Atom files Other

 There is no automatic enforcement of the maximum file count per folder on ISIS (5000 items per folder). File count limitations must be implemented through suitable storage rules, using the week or month tokens.  Media | Director is supported only for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.  If a park/register/transcode workflow is run more than once with the same media, Media | Director may and append multiple edit resolutions to the asset in Interplay. Duplicate resolutions are not rejected.

Performance

 Volumes with very short clips adversely affect throughput due to the processing overhead involved. The documented throughput is valid for clips of at least 10 minutes duration or longer where processing and setup times are less relevant.  For AMA plugins that work in sample provider mode, the maximum achievable throughput depends strongly on the performance of the plugin. Some plugins may, even with multiple parallel media processor services running, not be able to achieve 100% server usage.

User Interface:

 Changes to the layout in the Media | Director Drop Utility don’t get persisted.  The Media | Director Drop Utility will limit copy operations to 3 parallel volumes from different discs at the same time.  Parking volumes to an already existing location on the parking storage is prevented and will fail to protect the already existing media. Please use rules that build hierarchies and ensure unique names (such as appending a GUID to the volume copy) to avoid naming collisions on the parking storage.  Pending jobs in the JobBuilder staging area of the Media | Director Drop Utility will be removed after a restart of the Media | Director Drop Utility or a reconnection to the Media | Director Central Runtime service.

Progress UI

 200 active (running) and 200 inactive (failed, succeeded) processes and 50 users are allowed  After a restart of the Media | Director Central Runtime service all active and inactive processes disappear from Progress UI

Supported source formats for consolidation workflows

Source Codec Raster Frame Rate AVC-I 100 1080i 25 29.97 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 AVC-I 50 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 DNxHD 100 1080i 29.97 1080p 29.97 720p 59.94 DNxHD 110 720p 29.97 DNxHD 110x 720p 29.97 DNxHD 115 1080p 23.98 24 DNxHD 120 1080i 25 1080p 25 720p 50 DNxHD 145 1080i 29.97 1080p 29.97 720p 59.94 DNxHD 175 1080p 23.98 24 DNxHD 175x 1080p 23.98 24 DNxHD 185 1080i 25 1080p 25 720p 50 DNxHD 185x 1080i 25 1080p 25 720p 50 DNxHD 220 1080i 29.97 1080p 29.97 720p 59.94 DNxHD 220x 1080i 29.97 1080p 29.97 720p 59.94 DNxHD 240 1080p 50 DNxHD 290 1080p 59.94 DNxHD 36 720p 23.98 24 25 DNxHD 365 1080p 50 DNxHD 365x 1080p 50 DNxHD 40 720p 23.98 DNxHD 440 1080p 59.94 DNxHD 440x 1080p 59.94 DNxHD 444 350x 1080p 23.98 24 DNxHD 444 365x 1080p 25 DNxHD 444 440x 1080p 29.97 DNxHD 45 1080p 29.97 720p 25 DNxHD 50 720p 29.97 DNxHD 60 720p 23.98 25 DNxHD 75 1080p 50 720p 29.97 DNxHD 80 1080p 23.98 24 DNxHD 85 1080i 25 1080p 25 720p 50 DNxHD 90 1080p 59.94 720p 23.98 25 DNxHD 90x 720p 23.98 25 DNxHD-TR 120 1080i 25 DNxHD-TR 145 1080i 29.97 DVCAM NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 DVCPRO NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 DVCPRO 50 NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 DVCPROHD 1080i 25 29.97 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 IMX 30 NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 IMX 40 NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 IMX 50 NTSC 29.97 PAL 25 XAVCI-100 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 XAVCI-200 1080p 50 59.94 XAVCI-50 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 XDCAM EX 25 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 XDCAM EX 35 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 XDCAM HD 18 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 XDCAM HD 25 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 XDCAM HD 35 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 720p 23.98 25 29.97 50 59.94 XDCAM HD422 50 1080i 25 29.97 1080p 23.98 25 29.97 720p 23.98 50 59.94

Known issues

MPI-11011 MSP_MXF plugin does not support op1a with unknown duration MPI-11012 When transcoding or rewrapping Op1a (ama-to-opatom) with undefined AspecRatio defined AspectRatio appears MPI-11547 AMA Asset info extraction fails to find and audio tracks in specific OP Atom XDCAM-HD 50 1080i 25ndf 16x1pcm media MPI-12874 MRW might crash on consolidate and transcode for media where the IndexTable does not provide DeltaEntries MPI-13331 Transcode fails: Invalid edit rate for current DNxHD CB picture essence MPI-13438 QuickTime AMA plug-in does not create AMA-lined AAF for some audio-only media MPI-13498 Transcode with interlacing at the same frame rate of [email protected] / [email protected] clips failed with exception "Could not resolve transcode processing chain for specified source/target formats" MPI-13518 QuickTime plug-in doesn't put CodingEquations property to the CDCI descriptor for Avid-created Uncompressed QuickTime media MPI-9930 MRW fails on AmaToOpAtomRewrapping and transcoding of truncated op1a clips TI-606 Browsing help pane messes up other client UI TI-562 Occasionally unable to submit jobs via the MDDU client TI-445 Job doesn't start if services aren't completely up, but no message indicating so TI-407 After a reconnect to the server the MDDU no longer displays new jobs in Progress Pane TI-319 Mac Drop UI profile constants have issues with highlighting TI-295 Drop UI occasionally truncates profile names without ellipsis TI-293 Drop UI Error symbol can block text TI-291 Drop UI error window resizing moves close button TI-283 Drop Utility error window doesn't fit entirety of message text TI-269 Token should replace data entered after { TI-238 Pane layout should be retained on shutdown for subsequent launch