« Up-rez in Final Cut Pro and After Effects | Main | Avid Express Pro Memory Error »
March 29, 2006
Avid and Hard Drive Partitions
With the implementation of things like the MediaDoc320 and HUGE arrays, Avid systems have the ability to setup and operate with media storage sizes upwards of 1.7 terabytes and higher. While the computer itself can support that much space, after 250+ gigs of storage has been taken up with media, the Avid begins to lose its way when dealing with Media DataBases. This can lead to the system losing media or incorrectly show media as Offline. Also, very often the Media Databases may not be successfully rebuilding themselves, the msm.MMOB and msm.FMID files located inside each of the OMFI MediaFiles Folder, which is causing speed and stability problems as users begin to fill up the drives with media.
Here is what is going on with your media, as you work within the Avid:
Almost everything you are doing in Avid, from launching the Avid, saving any bins, leaving capture mode, or closing the application, is causing the system to read and write data to your media drives simultaneously.
Each partition will have one OMFI MediaFiles Folder and/or one Avid Media Files Folder for MXF media.
Each media files folder contains two database files msm.MMOB and msm.FMID, which keep track of all of the changes to media files; keeping them constantly linked to the master clips in your bins (pointer files living on another drive in your applications folder).
Every time you launch the Avid, save any bins, leave capture mode, or close the application it is forcing those database files to index all of the files in that media files folder.
By having 2 database files on one very large partition containing 500GB, 1 TB, etc of media , the Avid is indexing the hundreds of thousands of files included on that partition . That, in turn, taxes the database files beyond a reasonable level and they begin to either lose track of media, or fail to complete their updates.
Media Databases no longer update correctly, causing things like OMFI HP Domain INIT Failed errors as well as Media OffLine messages, among others.
By creating more, yet smaller Drive Partitions, the Avid can more efficiently and reliably maintain its Media Database files, giving overall stability and speed back to the system.
So, it is best to partition between 250-300 gigs and this will tremendously help overall performance. Here are some instructions on how to drive strip in windows for better Avid performance. If you are running Mac OS X then check out these instructions out to speed up your Avid.
Posted by MovingPicture at March 29, 2006 04:28 PM