In my university, we have in our first year, 90 students each with their own network login. We have folders full of teaching materials (Quicktimes, camera card copies, graphics etc etc). If we have linked media management enabled in the Link settings, once one logged in computer user has accessed a folder full of files, edited, quit and logged out, then another user who logs in cannot access those files. I think it is a folder permissions issue, even though the AMA metadata lives in the Shared Users folder (we are on Macs). None of us have admin rights (the IT dept saw to that).

A few years ago we could turn off management with a console command, then the option appeared in the Link settings. That has been good for a few years and students could use the same media for editing practice, group after group.

Now, this academic year, nothing works. Management on, Management off … once one user has accessed a folder of files, no other user can get them into a bin via the Source Browser. This is killing us. What sometimes works is Option+dragging to a bin but I need to teach the use of the Source Browser. Has something changed in Avid (MC 2018.12.6) or in our network accounts (suppose I'll need to ask the IT department)

There was a time when any user with or without admin rights could delete )I think) the AMA Metadata subfolder, clearing up the issue but now we can’t. Could the root of this problem be a failure to make the first launch of Media Composer be by an administrate? Would this have set folder permissions?

In the screenshot (can't add, will do so later), the user rshufflebottom (me) has R/W access to the AMA Metadata folder but others read-only - is this why no other user can access files via the Source Browser? I was the person who ran the tests on this Mac so I got in first, so to speak. Help needed.

OK - so trashed all in User>Shared>AvidMediaComposer and run up as Admin. New Project.Used Browser to link to 3 folders. All good. Quit. Log in as non-admin (regular) user and find that altho 'AMA Management' has R/W for all three levels, the sub-foler 'AMA Metadata Folders' is R/W for Admin ony. 'Wheel' and 'Everyone' are Read-only which prevents any user other than Admin for accessing ANYTHING (not just the folder that Admin looked at. Browser see the folder and contents but will not process the files. Anyone?

OK - looks like we nailed this. It all came down to not having run MC uder an Admin account for first launch (the ReadMe does say this, of course). Doing this creates Users>Shared>AvidMediaComposer and subfolders with the correct permissions for all subsequent users, including non-admin. Sorry for the excess bandwidth.

On reflection, why does it work this way? I think/hope that Avid should address this issue. The AMA metadata folders are in Users>Shared which means that all users should have access, regardless of who first launches the application. Allowing one non-admin user to lock out all others seems a bit daft. I wonder what happens to the Attic folders if a non-admin user is the first to launch Media Composer? I feel like a Gamma-tester again!

Oh - it's not just network accounts. Any non-admin user can wreak havoc.

Here's an anomaly. The first user to fire up MC auto-creates Users>Shared>AvidMediaComposer. If not an admin user, you get the problems noted above. But... I checked and a non-admin user can create the Attic folder and ANY user can use that. Permissions are correct for all users. Why is this? I really hope engineering will sort the permissions issue for the AMA Metadata folders.

So - it turns out that our problems were not to do with network accounts at all, but folder permissions. I came across another, similar Source Browser issue last week. A student had bought a 4TB USB3 drive which the dealer had formatted as ExFat so she could use it on both a Windows and a Mac laptop. On her Mac, with Media Composer 2019.x, the Source Browser could see the files and folders on her external drive but linking failed (it worked fine on her internal Mac HD). Doing a 'Get Info' on her drive showed that she had Custom Access and this could not be changed. I advised her to back up her files and reformat the drive, which she did. Now it worked. So, I think that the Source Browser is very picky about how and if it allows linking.

And this was on a Mac where (I am sure) MC had been run first under an admin account.