Error in RMD parsing between PC and Mac

[T_Freundlich]

Hi, ran into a weird glitch I haven't seen before, and couldn't find any info on this with Google. When moving material between my PC and Mac workstations, I'm getting an error that says,

Error parsing RMD file [clip filename here]: Encountered incorrectly encoded content.

This happens both ways any time I adjust the clip settings in RCX - If I change the settings on Mac, it works fine but I get the error (and the settings revert to the 'as shot' values) as soon as I open the same file on PC. And vice versa. I have the latest RCX build on both machines (22.4.32543). The R3D material is on an external Firewire hard drive that I'm transferring between the two machines.

Any ideas on what could be causing this and how to resolve it? This is highly annoying since I'd like to do my basic R3D grading on my primary edit machine (the PC) which has better monitoring and more processing power but I also need the Mac Pro to export ProRes proxies for the editor.

Also, are Redcine-X projects platform dependent? I can't open a project made on the PC on the Mac and the same the other way around ("Error loading index file: this project appears to be corrupted"). Is this normal?

Hints, tips & clues appreciated!

 

[David Ibbitson]

Hi Thomas,

Can you send me an .RMD file to redcinex at red dot com that shows this error?

Thanks,
David

 

[Mike P.]

Did this ever get resolved?

 

[T_Freundlich]

Not conclusively, though I was in touch with Red support about the issue, and they noted that the RMD file I sent them for review was filled with garbage, not the plain-text XML it should have been.

My current theory is that something was wrong with the HFS+ drivers on my PC, which was causing file corruption upon writing to the Mac OS volume (around that time was also running into some other problems with Mac disks on the same machine), so probably this was a system-specific OS-level issue, not anything to do with Redcine-X.

 

[Mike P.]

Crapeth. I've gotten it a couple of times recently (all MacOSX all the time.) Started when I updated to 10.9.5 (the last Mavericks update before Yosemite)... There is also a chance it could have been before that...

I've also noticed, after reading a mag on the computer and getting this error, when I re-insert it into the camera it will sometimes say 'mag is fragmented, format or it may have reduced performance'... Again, this has only started happening recently and infrequently, but it has happened with more than one mag and it obviously makes me a little nervous of impending failure...

Thanks for the (quick!) reply, Thomas... I think it's about time I do a clean/fresh install of Yosemite.

 

[T_Freundlich]

Yeah, nothing gets the cold sweat running like not being able to trust the file system on the OS... As far as I can tell, on my system it was happening only when moving stuff between the PC and Mac, and specifically after modifying RMD settings on the PC. On 10.9.5 I've only had occasional issues with files being corrupted when offloading via Firewire 800 on a Macbook Pro but that's another story I guess...

That's pretty scary, though, if you're getting the corruption even when only reading the mags on the computer. Are you changing the RMD settings for the clips, and does this happen even with Red Watchdog enabled for read-only mounting of the mags?

Personally, I always try to minimize doing anything with shot mags until they've been offloaded, backed up at least once and checksum verified for all copies... Before that, unless it's absolutely necessary, I don't like to even look at the clips on the computer off the mag – or play them back on camera – but that last part may be excessively paranoid.

Good luck, hope it works out!