Most post houses have multiple editing stations which generally pull projects and media off of a main server, this certainly isn’t new. But an issue that has been brought to my attention over the last few weeks is one regarding the use of multiple avid suites with different windows based platforms (ie. Windows 2000, XP, Vista) accessing the same projects. The issue being that when a project is closed on one particular suite and re-opened on another, the user would get an error which stated that the projected is locked or write protected and therefore any changes would not be saved. As one can well imagine, this can be a huge issue, especially if the project is under a deadline, and if you haven’t experienced this before, then God bless you, but I hope the shared knowledge here will benefit you down the road.
Contrary to what one might think this is not an Avid issue. No, rather this is Windows security issue regarding restrictions which are based within the administrative settings on the computer which automatically lock any files once the user on that particular machine are done with them. Unless you have administrative settings, which most of us don’t if your freelancing or perhaps work for large corporation, you will not be able to change this issue at the source computer, and chances are these settings may be in place for other reasons so you may have no choice in that matter. So how does one fix this and perhaps look like a hero to the producer or manager whose looking on?
Simple. Here is the step by step fix.
1. Exit Avid completely – you cannot have the program open before taking the next step.
2. Go into ‘My Computer’ and find the folder where the actual project is located, not just the Avid project file but the folder where the Avid project file is.
3. Right Click on the folder and scroll down and go into ‘Properties’
4. In ‘Properties’ (and this varies from different Windows platforms) you will find in the Security tab.
5. Below ‘Security’ you will find colums with varies users. You are looking for the ‘Everyone’ line which should be at the top of all of the users listed. Click ‘Everyone’ then look down below to the the next heading which should state ‘Permissions for Everyone’.
In this section you should see two colums ‘Allow’ and ‘Deny’ with varies lines stating what you are allowing or denying on the left. The important line we are looking for should be at the top which should state ‘Full Control’. To the right of ‘Full Control’ click in the checkbox of ‘Allow’. This will automatically check everything below it as you have granted full permissions.
When you are done this, go into the actual folder and repeat the steps 4 & 5 to all the actual Avid project files. Then close the folder(s) and re-start Avid. You should now be able to open the said project without any ‘access’ or ‘permission’ errors coming up on the screen.
