Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood
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Updated: Film and TV editors across Los Angeles were sweating Monday evening as their workstations were refusing to reboot, resulting in speculations about a possible computer virus attack. Social media reports suggested that the issue was widespread among users of Mac Pro computers running older versions of Apple’s operating system as well as Avid’s Media Composer software.
Avid said in a statement that it was aware of the issue:
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“Avid is aware of the reboot issue affecting Apple Mac Pro devices running some Avid products, which arose late yesterday. This issue is top priority for our engineering and support teams, who have been working diligently to determine and resolve the root cause. As we learn more, we will immediately publish information—directly to our customers and via our community forums and social media platforms—in order to resolve this issue for all affected customers and prevent any further issues.”
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment late Monday.
“A lot of L.A. post shops and people out on shows having their Macs slowly crash,” reported video post-production consultant Matt Penn on Twitter.
From what I gather there’s a massive failure of Macs with iLok/Avid that’s happening all over right now. A lot of L.A. post shops and people out on shows having their Macs slowly crash and wont boot again. Engineers are looking in to it. Don’t shut your machine off. #postchat
— Matt Penn (@mattpenndotcom) September 24, 2019
Freelance film editor Marcus Pun reposted a message from a popular Avid Facebook user group, advising users not to turn off their workstations.
BIG ALERT tonight regarding #Apple, and #MacOS running on the can. DO NOT SHUT DOWN!! #AvidEditors #Avid Apparently something is corrupting one of the UNIX root level folders. Back up everything, not just on the servers is you are in a connected environment. Refer to below FB pg pic.twitter.com/iLlfHVRfmp
— MarcusPun (@MarcusPun) September 24, 2019
Other users reported that multiple computers at their company were affected by the issue, with social media chatter indicating that a number of different companies, and even major shows like “Modern Family,” were affected by the issue.
Some analysis by affected users seemed to suggest that the outage may not have been caused by a virus, but by a recent software update that may have corrupted some data, with some suggesting a OS X reinstall that keeps the existing data to restart the machine. Either way, it’s a good idea for anyone running Avid software on a Mac to back up all data right away.
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