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Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

variety.com

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Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#191

Post by __david__ »

zerocrates wrote: post #165
api wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Hollywood is so obsessed with DRM because they themselves are such f'ing pirates. The entire culture of Hollywood is around stealing (e.g. the endless so-and-so stole my script idea lawsuits) and defending oneself from having one's stuff stolen. Maybe they're projecting and imagining that everyone is constantly trying to steal everything. As a normal movie and TV viewer I will always look for an option to…

Since we're talking Hollywood, what's your success rate in being able to buy movies that don't have DRM? I can't think of any way to do that, really. Or are you saying that you basically can't, and therefore don't buy movies and instead stream or rent?

Physical media has DRM but it's pretty much completely cracked. I can rip Blurays and even UHD Blurays now and end up with a non-drm-ed movie. It's not nearly as convenient as streaming (initially) but I can "own" the movie in a non-drm-ed form for as long as I can keep the bits alive.

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#192

Post by batmanthehorse »

This site says Chrome Updater is the cause of the problem: https://mrmacintosh.com/google-chrome-keystone-is-modifying-...

It only happens on Macs with SIP disabled, which includes a lot of Mac Pros with Avid (for third-party video card support)

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#193

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

jboggan wrote: post #148
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #98

Did anyone else get a drive-by download from synchroscript.deliveryengine.adswizz.com?

Yes, what was that?

I have no idea. It was a 0 byte afp.php file. You only really get those when a webserver isn't setup to process the PHP files and ends up sending it out like a download.

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#194

Post by theclaw »

ratww wrote: post #189

Someone on Reddit posted some more details. Apparently it's iLok removing the /var directory. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/d8nxhk/mysterious_av...

It now looks as though it might be Google Chrome. Whoooops.

https://mrmacintosh.com/google-chrome-keystone-is-modifying-...

e: hn discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21064663

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#195

Post by therealx »

episodeiv wrote: post #22
RealDinosaur wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it's not just Avid. Some audio production software such as ReFX Nexus still uses a USB dongle. There is no way to use the software without it plugged in. It also has a policy where if you damage the dongle, you have to buy again and get a 10% discount off the FULL price of the VST. In the age of people gigging on laptops, I'm not entirely sure how they think they are gonna sell any more of them. I fancy it myself…

To add to that, it's not just media production. In the medical field, almost all software for performing and analyzing EKGs, X-rays, MRIs etc. comes by default with some sort of dongle-based protection. Apparently, it's not enough that you need the biggest dongle in the world (i.e. the machine itself!) to use the software. Some vendors do offer alternatives if you fight them hard enough but the default still is a tri…

I used to work with cat scan machines a lot, and I found out how to emulate their dongle - you just returned 0 when it called for the check...

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#196

Post by imagetic »

KaiserPro wrote: post #31

rule 1 of hollywood tech support: Always take what the editor says with a massive pinch of salt. I spent ten years in the movie industry, and the people that were the most forthright, and almost universally wrong about technical things were editors. "The monitor is out of grade" No, you've set the background lights to red. "The sound is out of sync" No, you've turned off the amp and somehow managed to get the crappy…

ha, I'm in the same boat. Spent 8+ years doing engineering for live/post-production television. And the younger they got, the less technical they were.

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#197

Post by 693471 »

fredoralive wrote: post #156
693471 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not possible with SIP. The OS files are read only. Not even root can change them.

Someone else in thread mentions an kext for the iLok dongle AVID uses, so are kexts covered by SIP? Or are they counted as part of the kernel, and thus all powerful?

Looks like some situations AVID requires SIP disabled for external video cards?

So dumb. Why do companies pull this crap instead of fixing their issues with the vendor instead of leaving their users vulnerable

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#198

Post by colejohnson66 »

__david__ wrote: post #191
zerocrates wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're talking Hollywood, what's your success rate in being able to buy movies that don't have DRM? I can't think of any way to do that, really. Or are you saying that you basically can't, and therefore don't buy movies and instead stream or rent?

Physical media has DRM but it's pretty much completely cracked. I can rip Blurays and even UHD Blurays now and end up with a non-drm-ed movie. It's not nearly as convenient as streaming (initially) but I can "own" the movie in a non-drm-ed form for as long as I can keep the bits alive.

How can you rip UHD (4K) movies? MakeMKV doesn’t support them last I used it (a month ago)

Re: Mysterious Avid Issue Knocks Out Mac Pro Workstations Across Hollywood

#200

Post by __david__ »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #198
__david__ wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical media has DRM but it's pretty much completely cracked. I can rip Blurays and even UHD Blurays now and end up with a non-drm-ed movie. It's not nearly as convenient as streaming (initially) but I can "own" the movie in a non-drm-ed form for as long as I can keep the bits alive.

How can you rip UHD (4K) movies? MakeMKV doesn’t support them last I used it (a month ago)

MakeMKV does support them, but you need a UHD drive with specific firmware. On the forums you can figure out which drive will work the best and which is the easiest to flash old firmware on. Either way requires a hacked firmware updater because the drive makers have to give it their best shot to avoid downgrades (to satisfy DRM licenses).

Also you can decide between old stock firmware or new firmware that has been modified by the MakeMKV team. I opted for the old stock firmware, I'm not really sure what the modified firmware buys you.

It seemed overwhelming at first, but after an hour of reading and searching on Amazon I figured out what the easiest route was. Once the drive arrived, the flashing was simple—I plugged the drive into my Windows box and ran the flashing code, then plugged it into my Linux Plex server and it worked right away.

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