Mimiq – What It Does, What It Doesn’t
If you’re working together in Avid Media Composer, please believe me: I understand. It’s hard.
So many things can go wrong, and when they do, pressures mount and tempers spike.
If you’re using Mimiq when things go wrong, your first instinct may be: “Let’s blame Mimiq. After all, it’s not an official Avid product. And, sure, it works… but how?”
Let me take away some of that stress.
First, I’ll confirm what Mimiq does. Then I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do.
Mimiq Swaps Out the Golden Idol for a Bag of Sand
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is deep in the jungle searching for an artifact.
Then he finds it.
Indy knows he can’t just take it – that would be too easy! What does he do?
This is what Mimiq does – it swaps out any actively loaded NEXIS client with its own, effectively becoming the active NEXIS client.
With Mimiq 24.2, that means Media Composer will recognize a list of eligible shared volumes on the network, any Workspaces created from folders on capable storage, and now native NEXIS workspaces as Avid NEXIS Drives. In turn, you get Bin Locking (and Bin Refresh!) when working from an Avid Project shared from any of these Avid NEXIS Drives.
That’s it.
What Mimiq Doesn’t Do
Indy thought the swap was successful, but he still triggered those traps.
Was he successful?
Although he lost the artifact, he escaped to fight another day.
So it goes when working with Avid Media Composer – you will encounter troubles that are common to Media Composer, but uncommon to you. Mimiq doesn’t address or fix those troubles, so when you encounter them, you will lose time, but you’ll live to fight another day.
Knowing that, here’s a list of gotchas you’ll encounter, with or without Mimiq.
Errant Behavior
Playback is now much slower
Mimiq doesn’t intercept any input/output between your workstation and where you store your media.
You may need to confirm you’re using a qualified combination of Media Composer and your operating system, all Avid Requirements are in place on that workstation, and your network and shared storage are configured for maximum performance.
I’m getting permission errors
Mimiq doesn’t alter any permissions on any eligible volumes, whether they’re shared folders, Workspaces created from folders, or native NEXIS workspaces.
If Media Composer reports permissions-related errors, the best place to start is to give Read and Write privileges to any users who will access that share, then progressively restrict access as desired.
Media Composer keeps creating a 1 folder in my managed media folders
https://isaact.micro.blog/2024/06/12/on-renaming-avid.html
Opening Bins gets slower and slower
https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Knowledge/en397171
Media Composer crashes when loading bins
https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Knowledge/Media-Composer-crashes-when-loading-bins
There’s a .lck_conflicted file in my Avid Project folder
https://community.avid.com/forums/p/207593/925980.aspx
##Media Composer hangs/is stuck on “Configuring audio waveform cache”
Exceptions
sys_error, OSErr:-5000
https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Knowledge/Exception-SYS-ERROR-OSErr-5000
SYS_ERROR, OSErr:-61
“Project Settings not saved due to an error.” or “File (Project Name).avp not found.”
https://avidtech.my.salesforce-sites.com/pkb/articles/en_US/error_message/en275137
ReadDomainWithMobs: failure opening domain on stream for bin
Structured Exception, ExceptionCode: 3221225477, ExceptionString: Access_Violation
- https://community.avid.com/forums/p/122419/881542.aspx
- https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/e8bad4fa-b640-4a39-ad88-74afda3504de/possible-heap-corruption-detected-exception-code-3221225477?forum=winservergen
CONSISTENCY CHECK FAILURE or “Core consistency check failure"
This is a common error.
There are multiple possible causes, but the workaround is to apply a “Divide & Conquer” approach to your sequence so you can locate and remove the culprit(s).
https://avidtech.my.salesforce-sites.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Error_Message/Consistency-Check-Failure
https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/troubleshooting/Divide-and-Conquer
SFPlayConsumer::Execute TIMEOUT
This is a common error.
It means something is getting in the way of Media Composer performing as quickly as expected.
https://kb.avid.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Knowledge/en388455
Also, confirm all Avid Requirements are in place on that workstation.
It seems too good to be true, but Mimiq really delivers on doing one thing and one thing well. Revisit this guide when you trigger your next set of traps in Media Composer (without or without Mimiq), and, like Indy, you’ll live to fight another day.