Tonight has been a dazzlingly frustrating night at work. I don’t even know where to begin.
It starts when I walk in the door. My supervisor informs me that all of the animated “lower third” graphics need to be rebuilt because the Avid has curiously lost a lot of media that was stored on it. (“Lower third” graphics are those things that show up at the bottom of the screen only, during news or in these newfangled animated teases for shows that don’t start for hours/days/weeks yet – semi-transparent image of Eddie Olmos hawking Galactica, I’m talkin’ to you. They’re in the lower 1/3 of the screen, hence the name.) A short while later he comes to me with another piece of bad news: we’ve lost one of the two Avid media drives. This might just explain the absence of, oh, I dunno, MEDIA.
Quick aside about how an Avid nonlinear editing system works: When you record audio or video into an Avid, the media files (one file for video, one file for each channel of audio – i.e. a video clip with stereo sound results in 3 media files) are stored on the external hard drive or drive array. On the computer’s internal hard drive, “pointer” files are created which tell the machine where on the external drives it can find the media associated with that clip. The pointer files record such things as the in and out edit points you last selected, what the clip is called, and so on. If a glitch happens – and it does happen – and a media drive and all of its media vanish, the first step to take is to Shut The Whole Damn Thing Down, wait a couple of minutes, then power everything back up in sequence (drives up first, outboard box next, deck third, computer last). Only then, if that drive doesn’t reappear, do you know if you’ve got a real problem. Here endeth the lecture.
Only the dayshift guys didn’t do that. They panicked and started deleting the pointer files, not realizing that the media files were perfectly intact. Now there’s a bunch of dead-weight media crowding the external drives, because with no pointer files, the stuff might as well not be there anymore. The Avid no longer knows how to find that media.
Our lower thirds are a rather elaborate animation that have to be constructed very carefully so everything matches up. There are two lines of text that animate in at different speeds and at different times, plus the station logo. Redoing a branding identity element like that – something waving the station’s banner – isn’t something to be done in a hurry, because it shows up night after night after night after night, in promo after promo. If something is even slightly “off” about it, people will pick up on it simply because of the repeat exposure. As a result, I’ve spent most of my night tonight rebuilding those animations – one for every possible time slot/eventuality (tonight at 5, tonight at 6, tonight at 10, tonight after the game, coming up next, tomorrow at…) – instead of actually getting any promos on the air. I’ve gathered that this problem showed up around mid-day, and promos stopped being made right then and there.
Maybe I’m being a bit of an asshole here, but it seems like, in a job that’s weighted down with so much technical knowledge like this one is, anyone acting as the manager should have the ability to do whatever his subordinates do. But that’s not the case here. Instead we’re reduced to “Wait until Earl shows up.” That’s flattering on a certain level, but terrifying on so many others. Because sooner or later I’m not going to be working here. What happens then, aside from me washing my hands of it? Stuff like this affects the station’s presentation, and therefore its credibility, which in turn affects the ability to sell ad time on the station, which in turn affects everyone having food on the table. Whether I am here or not, the vast majority of the people I work with, whom I like and respect, deserve something better than that kind of half-assed excuse for a standard operating procedure. Because someday Earl won’t show up on cue. I can only look out for my own interests at this point, and keep my eyes on the prize of getting out of here and setting up shop for myself; that’s something I can’t put on hold because I’m worried about my co-workers. But it says something really troubling about the hiring standards. Got a piece of paper that says you graduated? Got a suit? Great. Got any actual practical on-the-job knowledge to show for it? No? Well, that’s okay. At least you’ve got the suit.
One thing’s for sure – I expect to have a much easier time of things with my own Avid, since I’ll be the only person using it. 😛
