Hi everybody!

I need some help understanding Avid Interplay and Avid Media Central and can't seem to find easily understandable documentation that goes a little deeper than just telling me that it's "exciting" and "fast" and "easy".

The production company where I work is working with 32TB of ISIS storage and 6 Media Composers. We're mostly editing documentaries and other non fictional formats, that rely on tons of archival footage. Since we often need certain archival footage in various documentaries we were thinking that having a kind of searchable archive with every bit of archival (i.e. historic) footage that we've aquired over the years would be a huge time saver.

At the moment our system is pretty flawed. For example, if we're looking for footage of Berlin in the early 90s, we rely on our boss knowing, that we used a couple of shots of Berlin in the early 90s in a certain project, we then recover that project from external HDDs (were we archived the whole project to at some point in the past), consolidate the shots we need to our ISIS into the project we're currently working on. We still try our best to tag footage in the comments collum and populate every clip with custom meta data as well, but if you don't know what project you have to look in for that certain clip and meta data, you won't be able to find it.

When I saw a couple of videos about Media Central, and that it offers search capabilites across projects I thought this could help us in a big way. Does Media Central offer the capability to search for custom meta data that I put into custom collums in Media Composer?

While trying to educate myself about Media Central I learned, that parts of it at least only seem to work with interplay (or that interplay is about to be rebranded Media Central Production?), which brings me to my next question: What exactly is interplay and what does it do...?

Since I tried to learn more about Media Central I found out that it only seems to work with Nexus storage. However buying Nexus storage just to archive old projects to and thus having a searchable archive is probably too expensive for my boss. I can't find any information about pricing on Nexus Near Line, which I read also works with Media Central.

While looking at other companies that offer avid compatible network attached storage I found Object Matrix. They claim, that their MatrixStore Storage works with Media Central... but only with interplay? I guess this is a question that I have to direct to the people at Object Matrix, but in order to understand I guess I have to understand what Interplay and Media Central essentially are first.

So any help you guys could give me and/or any documentation you could point me to would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Johannes

Johannes

I will have someone very kowledgeable in this area reach out to you....

Marianna

I also would like to get this information. Could you public it please?

Here's my 50 cent tour.

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Section 1 - Modules

Interplay Production Asset Management is now MediaCentral Production Management

Interplay MAM is now MediaCentral Asset Management

iNews is now MediaCentral Newsroom Management

MediaCentral is now MediaCentral Cloud UX

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Section 2 - services and integrations

Now that the modules are out of the way, here's how it works:

Production Management is a system of servers (physical or virtual) that perform asset tracking, media management and basic automation functions for NATIVE AVID MEDIA. At it's core, there is a database where asset metadata is stored and accessed ("checked-in", "checked-out", modified.) The database matches the object to the location of media on Nexis storage via the Avid Media Indexer service. The Avid MI replaces mdb and pmr files with a server cache of all media managed by the system. By adding the "Production Services" modules, you can get things like watch folder media moves, transcodes, archives (with the proper integrations), etc. 

Sitting on top of the Production Management system is MediaCentral Cloud UX. Cloud UX is a server or cluster of servers that hosts (different) various services. By default, you get a web app that can browse the Production Management database, view, play, and do limited editing of checked-in assets. Perhaps most importantly, the CloudUX server/cluster is supposed to host the avid services that enable search across databases, remote editorial clients with bi-directional media transfer, etc. Some of this is live/in the product now, and some of it is future development. 

You can add various Avid or Third-Party modules to your CloudUX system to enable additional functionality, like transcoding, third party ingest/outgest, transfer manager/delivery to deliver avid assets to remote Production Managment system or playout devices like Airspeed/EVS/etc. 

You can also add other Avid Services to the CloudUX interface with the correct licensing and components, like iNews/Newsroom Management, Production Management Archive, and Avid's MAM/MediaCentral Asset Management. It gets pretty complicated and is fairly out-of-scope for your questions. 

regarding archive - there are several third-party systems that integrate with production management in various ways. Avid sells a product (previously called "Interplay Archive") that acts as a front-end database for moving native avid assets off to 'other' storage, which is managed by a third party piece of software.  This third party middleware software is something like Atempo Digital Archive/Miria, SGL/Masstech Flashnet, or Front Porch Digital. 

There are other third party products that DO NOT require interplay archive, but they break the most compelling reason for integrating  production management with avid's archive database, which is persistant multi-resolution asset tracking across the production and archive databases. This is the single biggest marketing failure of production management, in my opinion. Production Management is sold like a mini-MAM, but doesn't have complete automation or third party media capabilities. However, multirez assets allow you to keep a flavor (or several flavors) of a single asset online on your primary working storage (Nexis/ISIS), while also keeping another flavor safely stored in archive or nearline. With multirez assets, you can have a media composer client working with native avid proxy media, then uprez the entire sequence to it's intermediate codec (DNX/Prores) with about 4 mouse clicks and a render pass.  It's very cool and almost never talked about.

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Section 3 - Media Composer/Editing Clients

When a media composer client is connected to Mediacentral by installing the client software, the user/editor logs into the database, opens their project, sets their check-in path and starts working.

Everything from the editing aspect is pretty much the same. You can still import, link+transcode/consolidate, or capture from tape or non-tape video signal to get media into the system. Bins, clips, sequences all behave the same way....until you check the asset into the database. This can be accomplished a few different ways and i wont go into that here. Basically, a check-in is handing ownership of the media composer object (master clip, audio master clip, group clip, sequence, subsequence, effect/mattekey, or subclip) over to the database for management. 

What this means in practice is that media composer projects should really become projects for each individual user's working space, and Work-In-Progress items should be checked-out, edited, and checked-in. In reality, shared projects are still used and this causes occasional problems when multiple operators are trying to modify the same sequence. (Note: DUPE YOUR SEQUENCES for every different editors/revision/date of work!)

media and metadata tracking is essentially offloaded to the the server side. No more database rebuilds, no more media tool. You gain a panel that allows you to search or manually navigate the database to find assets. The panel also allows you to load (check-out) assets into MC for preview or into bins, and check MC assets into the database for media managers to process/archive/delete, or for use by others. 

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Section 4 - Cloud UX, 'legacy' desktop client for media management.

The primary function of Cloud UX for most people is hosting the web app or mobile app connector.,The web app is an HTML web page that provides a GUI for your production management, production archive, inews, and MAM databases. The web app can play back supported codecs from master clips, group clips, and sequences and do limited editing (stringouts, VO records, etc.) In an archive-heavy post production environment, the best use case for Cloud UX is for logging and metadata tagging prior to archiving assets, or as a post-ingest metadata injection point. 

CloudUX also hosts the Mediacentral API for certified third party products. Out of scope for this discussion.

The legacy thick client for interplay/production management, called 'interplay access', is still a good and useful tool for metadata entry, and is still required for media management. Deletions, enabling/modifying folder automation actions, enabling/modifying asset protection, color coding, and manually submitting production services jobs are all done throughthe thick client. Probably more than that, but those are the major day-to-day items. 

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Section 5 - TL;DR

if you dont want to buy nexis storage for nearline spinning disk, production management or production management with cloudux can connect native avid assets to third party software. However, if you don't care about persistant object tracking, and are on a fairly tight budget, you probably want to be looking at tools like Marquis Project Parking and Workspace Tools. 

NYnutz:

Here's my 50 cent tour

Well worth the price of admission, thanks.

So is interplay pretty much EOL & will be replaced by Media Central going forward?

Is there a ‘media central window’ in media composer to replace the interplay window?

thanks

Interplay was officially re-branded to "Mediacentral Production Management", but I can't speak to the specifics of how or when it will be totally replaced.  

If you have a newer version of media composer (2018.2+ maybe?) the "interplay window" was renamed "production management window" but no functionality was changed. If you have MediaCentral Cloud UX, you can use the new Cloud UX window in addition to the classic window in media composer by using the MCCUX url instead of the Production Management URL to login to the database. 

Bravo!

Resurecting this thread as I have questions about MediaCentral / Interplay.

Like the OP, I'm trying to find more info than "it's amazing". Especially on how it interacts with Media Composer.

I'm about to start on a big project (5 part series shot in UHD, downconverted to DNxHD for editing, tons of footage and tons of archive material). The post-production is using an Interplay server and at one of the meetings we had recently with my fellow editors, they demo'ed to us how all the material was accessible from inside their network, using MMCUX (if I remember the name correctly) and how the assistants, the directors, and others could add notes to the footage. 

From what we were told, it would all be accessible from MC, including the locators/markers and the comments left by others ahead of editing. But it was all very virtual since the demo was done by the tech department, and they for sure feel very very territorial. We were not shown how it works within Media Composer, we just had to take their word for it. I"m usually quite good at communicating with tech department, being a bit of a geek myself. But I need to understand a few things before I talk to them again, so they don't look down at me as they tend to do... Also, when they set up the post-production workflow, it was very early this year... before Covid came around and drastically changed how we (should) work!

When they demo'ed the system, we were told that Media Composer sequences could also be shared directly in MediaCentral / Interplay. But when we asked how exactly it works, it became not so clear. And from what I understand, for us editors, we'll be in Media Composer and will add footage from Interplay via Source Browser (or a dedicated import window?). Could someone do a simple breakdown of the usual workflow? "Footage in Interplay -> into MC -> export (or share) back in Interplay"?

Now the next, and probably most important thing: the project will run for several months, and we're on the edge of going back into confinement here in Europe. The tech department is in total denyal, but honestly it's days away until it happens, - either that or a partial confinement, or being strongly advised to work from home, and any other things that could prevent us from physically going to the post-production place. So we're looking for solutions in order to work from home. Tech department says there are only two solutions: we access their Media Composers remotely using TeamViewer-like software, or they switch to "the cloud" (notice how it's called "the cloud", it's become a generic term to scare producers!). Is that true? Those are really the only solutions? In the recent past, on a project with shared media on Unity, we ended up copying the AvidMediaFiles folder and all its MXF plus the Media Composer project and finished editing from home. Ok there was 12Tb of mxf but hey, it was copied overnight. Is there a way to do this, or something similar, so we can take the mediafiles home, edit from home, and once done, re-open the project via the MediaCentral/Interplay system and relink to what they have at the post-house? 

The producer asked tech if there was a way to copy the files onto a drive and work from home already. She admitted knowing nothing about the tech aspect of things. The reply was "no way, it would severe the link between the media files and the Interplay structure and in the end we would have to relink every shot manually, by hand, one by one". So it freaked her out and she didn't ask for more details. Is this true?

Sorry for the rather long post, here is the quick recap: can we -relatively simply- go out of Interplay and back into it once editing is done?

Pierreh....

Hope you are doing well..... and staying safe my friend

It seems to me that what you are looking for is information about our Post workflows. I think that the best starting point would be this: https://www.avid.com/products/mediacentral/mediacentral-for-post

Then...... answers below:

I'm about to start on a big project (5 part series shot in UHD, downconverted to DNxHD for editing, tons of footage and tons of archive material). The post-production is using an Interplay server and at one of the meetings we had recently with my fellow editors, they demo'ed to us how all the material was accessible from inside their network, using MMCUX (if I remember the name correctly) and how the assistants, the directors, and others could add notes to the footage. 

MM> Media is stored in Nexis storage, Projects are catalogued In MediaCentral | Production Management (Formerly known as Interplay), and MediaCentral Cloud UX is providing the access interface (search, browse, preview), either standalone from local or remote, or from MediaComposer through a dedicated panel.

From what we were told, it would all be accessible from MC, including the locators/markers and the comments left by others ahead of editing. But it was all very virtual since the demo was done by the tech department, and they for sure feel very very territorial. We were not shown how it works within Media Composer, we just had to take their word for it. I"m usually quite good at communicating with tech department, being a bit of a geek myself. But I need to understand a few things before I talk to them again, so they don't look down at me as they tend to do... Also, when they set up the post-production workflow, it was very early this year... before Covid came around and drastically changed how we (should) work!

When they demo'ed the system, we were told that Media Composer sequences could also be shared directly in MediaCentral / Interplay. But when we asked how exactly it works, it became not so clear. And from what I understand, for us editors, we'll be in Media Composer and will add footage from Interplay via Source Browser (or a dedicated import window?). Could someone do a simple breakdown of the usual workflow? "Footage in Interplay -> into MC -> export (or share) back in Interplay"?

MM> The most common way would be editing on-place, so media would be in the Nexis shared storage and there would be no need to do import/export from/to MediaComposer.

Now the next, and probably most important thing: the project will run for several months, and we're on the edge of going back into confinement here in Europe. The tech department is in total denyal, but honestly it's days away until it happens, - either that or a partial confinement, or being strongly advised to work from home, and any other things that could prevent us from physically going to the post-production place. So we're looking for solutions in order to work from home. Tech department says there are only two solutions: we access their Media Composers remotely using TeamViewer-like software, or they switch to "the cloud" (notice how it's called "the cloud", it's become a generic term to scare producers!). Is that true? Those are really the only solutions? In the recent past, on a project with shared media on Unity, we ended up copying the AvidMediaFiles folder and all its MXF plus the Media Composer project and finished editing from home. Ok there was 12Tb of mxf but hey, it was copied overnight. Is there a way to do this, or something similar, so we can take the mediafiles home, edit from home, and once done, re-open the project via the MediaCentral/Interplay system and relink to what they have at the post-house? 

MM> MediaCentral CloudUX is a web client, it can be connected to a remote system (on-prem or cloud deployed) to do search, browse and preview material and perform basic editing

For cooperative editing using MediaComposer, the 2 options that make most sense are using remote editing (using a specific remote desktop technology to connect to edit stations on-prem, which works really, really good, and is the best approach for temporary work from home situations where the infrastructure is already deployed on-prem and will stay on prem in the future), or deploy the whole storage and editing tools in the cloud and use the same remote access technology.

Hope this helps....

Marianna

Marianna:

For cooperative editing using MediaComposer, the 2 options that make most sense are using remote editing (using a specific remote desktop technology to connect to edit stations on-prem, which works really, really good, and is the best approach for temporary work from home situations where the infrastructure is already deployed on-prem and will stay on prem in the future), or deploy the whole storage and editing tools in the cloud and use the same remote access technology.

Hope this helps....

Marianna

Yes it does, thanks a lot Marianna, it does help.

One question though, according to this in-house document Media Composer/Cloud Remote should allow my Media Composer to log into MediaCentral from outside the building, correct? This would be a third option which would be the best of both worlds, and rather easy to setup?

Hope you're good. Here we're now officially locking the country down again, so yes working remotely is a necessity to stay safe!