The Joy of Meaningless Error Messages

[Terence Curren]

That may be one of the best subject lines I’ve ever read. Instantly garners empathy from everyone who reads it.

As for the error message, that means you came up short on a clip, and it looks like it’s audio that is the culprit. decomposed motion effects can have this error also when you trim past the end, etc.

Sorry that doesn’t help much.

PS: My all time favorite Avid error message occurred in the Symphony Meridien systems. “A bad thing happened”

Terence Curren
http://www.alphadogs.tv
http://www.digitalservicestation.com
Burbank,Ca

[Fabio De la rocha]

That’s classic.

I’d only just digitised the media and was trying to shift it from one drive to another. Thankfully it was a dodgy clip of ‘B’Roll that I’m not going to use anyway, So I deleted it.

Dell Precision T3400/Core2duo 2.66GHz/4GB/Nvidia Quadro FX 1700 Running Avid Media Composer 3.0

Dell Precision M90 Core2duo 2.33GHz/4GB/Nvidia Quadro FX 2500M Running Avid Media Composer 3.0

[Michael Hancock]

[Terence Curren] “PS: My all time favorite Avid error message occurred in the Symphony Meridien systems. “A bad thing happened””

That’s awesome.

[William Watts]

My favourite error message used to occur on MC 7.2 :
‘Error ! – no error’

Regards,
Will.

(editor,Soho Asia Co. Ltd.,Bangkok)

[Fred Jackson]

Hi Fabio, please see here the answer from the AVID Knowledge base. Just log in at AvID and navigate to Knowledge Base type in your search and Viola.

Best Regards

Fred

Why do I get a message “Exception: PMM_INSUFFICIENT_MEDIA”?
Why do I get a message “Exception: PMM_INSUFFICIENT_MEDIA”?

There can be several reasons for that message:

The message appears when trying to playback a sequence:
The sequence contains a bad edit, effect or master clip.
Using the normal open end play function will trigger the error when playing back any part of the sequence because Avid is looking at the entire sequence.
To find the problem area, mark a short In/Out point at the beginning of the sequence and use the Play In/Out function instead (may need to be mapped from Tools/Command Palette/Play)

Using this function, if the marked section doesn’t include the problem, it will playback normally.
If it does, the error will be triggered. After determining the point in the sequence that is triggering the error, rerender the effect or match frame the clip.
If unable to rerender, the effect will need to be removed and redone from scratch.
If it is a clip, match frame the clip.
If it plays back without error, lift the clip and redo the edit from the clip.
If the master clip does not playback in the source monitor, unlink the master clip and redigitize or reimport the clip.

You might get this message when opening footage digitized in a film project in a video project.

XDCAM files import, but produce an error on playback.
XDCAM footage shot using a variable framerate will not play properly within the editing application. When XDCAM footage is shot at a variable framerate (overcranked or undercranked), the camera places flags on the footage to let the editing application know how to play back the footage. The application reads those flags on capture. Since XDCAM is file based and the footage is imported, the editor can’t read the flags and therefore doesn’t understand how to play back the footage properly. Thus XDCAM footage shot at a variable framerate (i.e. half speed, two-times speed, etc.) is currently not supported.

To see if your XDCAM footage was shot using a variable framerate, try using Sony’s XDCAM Viewer, the Sony PDZ-VX10. You can download it from Sony here: https://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/xdcam_license2.shtml