Avid and the Dongle

[Liam Stephens]

When u pull out the dongle during the application running it will come up with a warning ONLY if u try and do something ie Play the timeline. Once u click Ok the timeline will start playing once u stop playing it will save and shut down automatically. So “theoretically” u could output a feature length to tape and start up on another computer with same dongle. Sneaky – sneaky…Considering u can’t put another firewire device in the machine whilst Avid is running it’s only fair 😉

[Erik Pontius]

Thanks. That’s very helpful. I’m trying to get a timeline down. I’m just trying to narrow things down….make sure I wasn’t still using the avid with the dongle missing. My dongle has mysterious walked from a “secure” badge/key access only studio in a large corporate building last night or this morning. I know I was using the avid actively until I left last night at 10:30 when I finished outputting a project to beta. And my system was shut off (I left it up and avid running last night) this morning and the dongle gone when I arrived at 9:30am.
Oddly enough they only took the dongle…which was on the back of the workstation underneath a desk with loads of crap around it and not the flat panels, betacams, notebooks or any number of other high $ crap we have laying around….Most likely an inside job with our security folks.

Is there any log files that might indicate when the dongle was removed.

Thanks,

Erik

[Liam Stephens]

Yep the dongle for such a small thing is still very valuable as it will work all Avids i think. Very easy to secret out of a building. Hard luck. Don’t know anything about log info…

[Erik Pontius]

Costing $1k to get it replaced.

[Liam Stephens]

One word “Invoice”, what’s the worst that could happen?

[Oakmozart]

Last I heard, Avid software looks for the dongle every 2 minutes. In my older XDV 3.5 days, if I’d pull the dongle, it would generally give me an error right away, autosave and shut down. I don’t know if XPro’s the same (it sounds like from the above, it’s not), but it’s always best to have your dongle handy.

[Liam Stephens]

Yeah 2mins probably is correct on Xpro, i was thinking in theory u could run a full length timeline. I didn’t expect it to run at all!

[Erik Pontius]

I had a co-worker check with her own personal avid…it didn’t complain when the dongle was pulled…allowed her to mess around with bins…but attempting to do any edits caused the “no valid dongle” message and closed the software.
I just wanted to make sure that I hadn’t been using the system with it gone…say if someone slipped in a swiped it while I went to the can and left the door open.
We pulled the logs from the badge reader and there were only 3 people in between 5pm and 9am (and all are adversly affected by its disappearance). So someone jimmied the lock or used a key –off the grid so to speak.

[David Willis]

hmmmm….yet one more reason to use FCP: no dongle.

[Erik Pontius]

[David Willis] “hmmmm….yet one more reason to use FCP: no dongle.”

Oh, FCP has a dongle, Apple just calls it a G5.