Hi all,

Is anyone successfully using avid background services for transcoding/rendering timeline? I've never ever ever been able to get it to work on any of my systems, or at my colleges' qualified systems.

Background services in the tray show two red arrows, Avid background service status in MC shows a red dot, and the background queue is stuck on processing.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Hi there, I have had this very same problem, the fix was to uninstall MC and all related stuff except for AMA and third party effects, and manually delete whatever was left over by the uninstallers. I did not delete the license information, if unsure deactivate MC and trash everything, You Will be able to reactivate later on. Make sure You enable "show hidden/system files" in Windows Explorer, as there is stuff You otherwise won't spot. No need to delete projects and user settings! Carefully run a registry cleaner, I went with CCleaner, reboot and reinstall. Don't know if this will work for You, but it surely worked for me. I blame this issue on several MC updates/upgrades on top of each other, did You go from MC 2019 to 2020 and to 2021 without uninstalling the older release first?

Hi,

I forgot to mention: always right click the MC installer and select "Run as Administrator".

luca.mg:

Hi there, I have had this very same problem, the fix was to uninstall MC and all related stuff except for AMA and third party effects, and manually delete whatever was left over by the uninstallers. I did not delete the license information, if unsure deactivate MC and trash everything, You Will be able to reactivate later on. Make sure You enable "show hidden/system files" in Windows Explorer, as there is stuff You otherwise won't spot. No need to delete projects and user settings! Carefully run a registry cleaner, I went with CCleaner, reboot and reinstall. Don't know if this will work for You, but it surely worked for me. I blame this issue on several MC updates/upgrades on top of each other, did You go from MC 2019 to 2020 and to 2021 without uninstalling the older release first?

Oof, thats annoying. I don't have time to troubleshoot this atm - and not in the middle of a project!

I always uninstall before installing a new MC version. It seems to me that this feature isn't fit for purpose...

Philip Kapadia:

It seems to me that this feature isn't fit for purpose...

Background transcode works pretty well, I seldom use background render, since foreground renderings are quite fast and give me a welcome break, but whenever I happen to background render the feature works as advertised.

Other than uninstalling MC before updating You should manually delete whatever is left over by the uninstaller, especially when upgrading: roughly speaking an update is a maintenance release with bug fixes, while an upgrade is a major release with new features.

Just wondering if anyone had any additional suggestions? This is still an issue for me. I've re-installed, reset my windows computer, re-installed etc. 

Avid support won't help me very much because my system isn't on the qualified list xd. 

Thanks in advance!

I've had mixed success. Most of the time it work, I use it for transcoding primarily. Sometimes it craps out. I haven't tracked to see when it works best vs. when it doesn't. 

Scott Carnegie:

I've had mixed success. Most of the time it work, I use it for transcoding primarily. Sometimes it craps out. I haven't tracked to see when it works best vs. when it doesn't. 

Thanks Scott, are you on a supported system?

Philip Kapadia:

Thanks Scott, are you on a supported system?

Currenlty no. I have in the past and it did seem to be more reliable then, but I have a new really fast system with lots of RAM and Processor power and I get mixed results. 

Scott Carnegie:

Philip Kapadia:

Thanks Scott, are you on a supported system?

Currenlty no. I have in the past and it did seem to be more reliable then, but I have a new really fast system with lots of RAM and Processor power and I get mixed results. 

 

This is how support responded to me:

 This is not reproducible on any qualified system that we have available for testing.

I'm convinced it's a bug and not my hardware. 

I use background services a lot and it works well for me. I'm mostly on supported systems.

Pat Horridge:

I use background services a lot and it works well for me. I'm mostly on supported systems.

Mm interesting. I'm stumped then!

Every other mc feature works perfectly on my system. Although my system is not supported, it runs mc perfectly well (except for this of course) 

Although it seems to be an issue with the editor transcode service, not media composer itself.

I wish they'd support more systems...

A few weeks ago I went over to one of the Facebook groups and made a post there similar to this one, and almost everyone commented that background transcode wouldn't work for them... Idk, maybe it'll sort itself out in a future release. 

I use my systems to edit and for teaching and I've been demonstrating background services since it forst came along.

Occasionally I get issues with it not starting. But normally I can manage to uninstall and clear everything out and re-install to resolve.

Background services does require network access you get firewall notifications you have to enable to allow it to speak to MC.

So you may have something blocking it?

Can you access the background Queue (either within MC or via right clicking on the two arrows in the system tray?

Does anything show in the logs folder:

C:\Program Files\Avid\Editor Transcode\TranscodeService\logs

Pat Horridge:

I use my systems to edit and for teaching and I've been demonstrating background services since it forst came along.

Occasionally I get issues with it not starting. But normally I can manage to uninstall and clear everything out and re-install to resolve.

Background services does require network access you get firewall notifications you have to enable to allow it to speak to MC.

So you may have something blocking it?

Can you access the background Queue (either within MC or via right clicking on the two arrows in the system tray?

Does anything show in the logs folder:

C:\Program Files\Avid\Editor Transcode\TranscodeService\logs

 

So, I can acess the background render queue through media composer, and by right clicking the two arrows in the tray as you say. The issue is that every task is stuck on pending.

It's a bit strange, when the services start, the arrorws are green, but about 15 seconds later they turn red. I'll look into if it's something to do with firewall or windows defender. 

There seems to be nothing in the logs!