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Script Sync AI behaving badly.
Hey!
Would really appreciate some help on this one.
Background —
I’ve used avid to create transcripts of everything, and then generated scripts from my sunc groups and subclips. Great. Works fine.
Here’s where the problem is–
The scripts have this problem of big blocky text, so I’ve gone in and manually broken up the large sections for accuracy. Obviously then I need to reapply the clip that created the script for more accurate sync marks.
When I attempt to use ScriptSync AI (which I’ve successfully done before in this project) I’m recieving the following error.
Exception:std::exception, what:Failed to create transform rule
I’ve attempted to place audio at the top of the multigroup (I saw some forum posts about this working) no use.
I’ve attempted to update my machine and avid version (actually the old error said that the media was offline but it wasn’t).
I’ve attempted to refresh my media directories.
I’ve attempted to nuke the MCSTATE
I’m close to invading a foreign country to fix this. Please help me.
Current setup:
2022 Mac Studio M1 Max
Sequoia 15.6
Media Composer 2025.6. 0
replied 6 days, 9 hours ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
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3 Replies
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Hi Chris – sorry I don’t have a fix for you but I’m having what sounds like exactly the same problem. Did you ever find a solution to this?
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Hi Nathan,
Did you end up figuring out the issue with this? I’m having the same problem.
Best,
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Finally ran this down, posting in case it saves someone else — the “Exception: std::exception, what:Failed to create transform rule” error may have nothing to do with your script, bins, or media.
Media Composer ships with an embedded Elasticsearch service that ScriptSync AI depends on. On my failing machine (macOS, MC 2025.12.1), that service was crash-looping silently in the background — restarting and dying every ~10 seconds.
How to check: open Terminal and run
tail -50 /Users/Shared/AvidMediaComposer/Search/logs/elasticsearch.log
If you see “java.lang.RuntimeException: can not run elasticsearch as root” repeating, you’ve got the same problem. Avid’s installer left a root-level LaunchDaemon (/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.avid.elasticsearch.plist) that launches the search service as root, which Elasticsearch refuses to run as. Newer installs also add a user-level LaunchAgent at /Library/LaunchAgents/com.avid.elasticsearch.plist — the fix is to disable the root daemon and let the user agent take over:
1. Quit Media Composer
2. sudo launchctl bootout system/elasticsearch
3. sudo mv /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.avid.elasticsearch.plist ~/Desktop/
4. sudo rm -f /tmp/elasticsearch.out /tmp/elasticsearch.err (root-owned logs that block the user agent from starting)
5. sudo chown -R $(whoami):staff /Users/Shared/AvidMediaComposer/Search
6. Log out and back in (or: launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) /Library/LaunchAgents/com.avid.elasticsearch.plist)
7. Verify with: ps aux | grep elasticsearch — the server process should now be running as your user, not root
After that, ScriptSync AI worked immediately for me. It seems to depend on install/upgrade history rather than MC version — I had an identical MC build working fine on another Mac, which is what let me diff the two machines and find this. Worth reporting to Avid support if you hit it so it gets a proper bug ticket.
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