Best practices

When writing a program that operates in a shared Avid project alongside active users, it is important for your program to follow the same procedures as a “legitimate” (no offense) Avid system. binlock exists to help developers design programs that are “good citizens” in this environment. This document details additional best practices that should be followed to ensure your program plays nicely with other users and machines on the network.

Order of operations

Opening a bin unlocked

1. The bin is locked from modification by other users with the creation of a .lck file

2. The .avb is read from storage

Closing a bin

1. The .avb file is opened for writing

2. Changes are written back to the .avb file

3. If modifications were made by the user:

   1. An entry is added to the bin’s .log file

   2. A copy of the bin with these changes is saved to the Attic

4. The .avb file is closed

5. The lock is removed

Other tools

pybinhistory

You may also be interested in pybinhistory for reading and writing Avid bin log (.log) files.