Avid Integration

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What is MediaHarmony?

MediaHarmony http://ingex.sourceforge.net/MediaHarmony/ is an open source (GPL) VFS extension module for Samba that enables collaborative editing of media files using Avid Media Composer on shared storage (CIFS/SMB). In QuantaStor you can activate this feature on any given network share by checking the 'Enable Media Harmony' box when you create or modify a network share. Once enabled the module ensures that multiple editors do not collide by ensuring that each user of the network share gets their own dedicated copy of the Avid Media Composer metadata files.

How does MediaHarmony work?

MediaHarmony is a special VFS plug-in module for Samba which intercepts file and directory requests and adjusts them to enable collaboration. Specifically, MediaHarmony ignores all directories on the share except those that fall under the folders named 'Avid MediaFiles' and 'OMFI MediaFiles'. As such, after you connect your Windows workstation to a MediaHarmony enabled share, you must store your data files (*.mxf) in a sub-directory of 'Avid MediaFiles'. For example, you may have the network share assigned to X: and a project called 'firefly' like so:

X:\Avid MediaFiles\firefly\

Inside the project subdirectory you'll have your mxf files and you'll also find two special files in there that Avid Media Composer creates called 'msmMMOB.mdb' and 'msmFMID.pmr'.

MediaHarmony recognizes these two specific files and stores them with a special suffix on the file server (QuantaStor) so that they're unique to the user. For example, let's say Bruce and Mary are working on editing the firefly media and both have a X:\ drive on their workstation mapped to the same MediaHarmony enabled network share on their QuantaStor storage system. Both users will see these files inside windows explorer:

X:\Avid MediaFiles\firefly\msmMMOB.mdb
X:\Avid MediaFiles\firefly\msmFMID.pmr

But in actuality MediaHarmony is maintaining separate versions of these special files for Bruce and Mary. If you look on the server side what you'll see is something like this:

/export/firefly_project/Avid MediaFiles/firefly/msmFMID.pmr_192.168.0.137_bruce /export/firefly_project/Avid MediaFiles/firefly/msmMMOB.mdb_192.168.0.137_bruce /export/firefly_project/Avid MediaFiles/firefly/msmFMID.pmr_192.168.0.115_mary /export/firefly_project/Avid MediaFiles/firefly/msmMMOB.mdb_192.168.0.115_mary

MediaHarmony is maintaining separate copies for Bruce who's logged in via 192.168.0.137 and Mary who's logged in via IP address 192.168.0.115. These metadata files ending in pmr and mdb are not designed for concurrent use by multiple editors so MediaHarmony's ability to maintain per user copies of the metadata files acts as a work-around for this. All the other files in the share work normally and are ignored by MediaHarmony.

Creating a Network Share with MediaHarmony Enabled

Verifying that MediaHarmony is active