I have become the type of editor that I used to make fun of as an assistant. In fact, I am sure the two assistants we have on this show are making fun of ME as I write this.

What is that kind of editor? The one who doesn’t pay attention to what drive they are rendering to, or capturing to. The one who when something bad technical happens, is pretty much useless in terms of figuring anything out.

How did this happen? I was the assistant who figured all of this stuff out. I knew all the tricks to get the Avid working again. How to locate the CREATING files and TEMP files and trash them…that to fix media linking issues you trash the media file databases in the OMFI folders on the drives. That…

Wait…have I told you what happened yet? Oh, I see I haven’t.

I lost 80% of my temp VO. And I was too…SOMETHING…to figure it out for myself. I dunno…stuck in my “creative” editing mind that I couldn’t figure it out. Or daunted about working in OS9 again…something. Dunno…but I couldn’t figure it out myself.

This happened before. The media was offline. BUT, it was there. I saw it. It didn’t say OFFLINE in the bin, it just wouldn’t play. Now, I did look on the drive I recorded it on and I saw it (Audio files have the name you give them in the Avid project, thank goodness)…but it wouldn’t play. The Avid techs were called in (Assistants not on during the day) and they looked at the Unity, found the error, trashed the CREATING and TEMP files and BOOM, the audio came back. I felt a little stupid…but was happy to have the audio back.

Then on Friday the audio went away AGAIN, and I needed to do an output. So I was trying to be all “technical” and trashed the CREATING files, and TEMP files, and media databases and still…nada. Well darn it. And THIS time they said offline. So I was at a loss. Before I started recording the VO again, the assistants arrived and I asked one of them to look into it. HE did and said, “well, they’re offline. They aren’t here.”

Uh…what? I look…the drive is EMPTY. Well, it has the database files, but NO MEDIA. Did I NOTICE THIS when I trashed the database files? No. How did I miss that there was NO MEDIA on the drive? Got me…I have no excuse. Buried in my creative mind. I had to laugh at myself for that. “Yep,” the assistant continued. “Looks like this drive is corrupt. This is why you can’t render to it either.” I had beed getting an error when trying to render to the drive too. Forgot to mention that. And I got an error (FATAL ERROR) when loading the Media Composer software with that drive mounted. He took the drive offline, loaded MC, and no problem. “Yep, corrupt sector. We are replacing the Unity this weekend, so just do without it for now.”

And while I feel like a BIT of a heel here, not remembering all this techie stuff, my job is to pay attention to the creative, so that is where it all lies. Working with FCP and working WITHOUT and assistant and building my own system has kept me in my tech head that I had as an assistant. But now with two assistants I guess I am getting spoiled.

I can get used to being spoiled. I like this. And if I provide a little amusement to the Assistants…it is well worth it.