NLE Utilities is the “surgical cleanup” panel. It performs targeted, rule-based maintenance tasks for Avid Media Composer and Adobe/Premiere environments: rebuilding Avid MXF databases, resetting Avid settings, and cleaning Premiere cache/autosave/preview artifacts—without requiring you to search through hidden folders or run random terminal commands.

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This panel is intentionally conservative: most actions are destructive (no OS trash), so it layers confirmations, path guards, and safety heuristics to reduce “oops, I just deleted the wrong folder” outcomes.

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What it’s for (real workflows)

• Fix Avid media going offline due to stale or corrupted .mdb/.pmr database files.

• Trigger an Avid database rebuild without launching Media Composer mid-operation.

• Reset broken Avid Site Settings or User Settings (optionally backed up first).

• Clean Premiere/Adobe Media Cache bloat that causes stutters, slow conform, or weird playback behavior.

• Delete autosave .prproj files safely (only inside Auto-Save folders—never your real project file).

• Remove preview/render cache media to reclaim space or force fresh preview renders.

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Hardened IPC contract (no “white screen” failures)

This panel is extremely dependent on filesystem access. It explicitly checks that the Electron preload IPC bridge is present and complete. If IPC is missing or incomplete, it:

• disables all interactive controls in the panel,

• renders a clear “IPC unavailable” warning with missing function names,

• keeps external help links clickable.

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So if something’s wrong with preload/sandboxing, you get a controlled failure instead of a broken UI.

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Non-blocking traversal for big folders

Operations that scan lots of files use a main-process traversal call (expandPaths) when available (fast + renderer stays responsive). If that isn’t available, the panel falls back to a defensive traversal that:

• yields to the UI periodically (prevents beachballing),

• enforces max depth / max files / timeouts,

• skips symlinks and hidden entries by default.

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Presets (repeatability)

The panel supports presets via managed storage (list/read/write/delete preset IPC), plus fallback “load JSON from disk.” That’s deliberate: packaged builds can always load presets even when the filesystem is locked down.

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AVID TOOLS

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Avid DB Delete (MDB/PMR)

Avid’s msmFMID.pmr / msmMMOB.mdb files are indexes. When they’re stale/corrupt, you get offline media, missing clips, or phantom relinks. This tool:

• scans the selected target (optionally recursively),

• deletes .pmr and .mdb files,

• optionally prints counts of MXF/MDB/PMR files per folder (useful to sanity-check scope),

• suppresses per-file spam after a threshold so the UI doesn’t freeze.

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Safety rules

• It checks whether Media Composer is running and refuses to proceed when it is (or warns if it can’t verify).

• It detects non-standard targets (paths outside /Avid MediaFiles/MXF/...) and forces an additional confirmation.

• If you accidentally select /Avid MediaFiles or /Avid MediaFiles/MXF, it will auto-enable subfolder scanning because DB files live under numbered subfolders.

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Avid Rebuild Trigger (dummy MXF)

Avid rebuilds databases when it detects changes in MXF folders. This tool can “poke” Avid into rebuilding by creating a uniquely named dummy .mxf file in target folders, then automatically removing it after a short delay.

• Creates REBUILD_TRIGGER_<timestamp>_<random>.mxf (uniqueness avoids collisions).

• Schedules cleanup so your MXF folders don’t accumulate junk.

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Safety rules

• Same Media Composer running checks as above.

• Same non-standard path confirmations.

• Best-effort cleanup with warnings if removal fails.

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Reset Avid Site Settings

Site settings are under an Avid base folder that must contain both:

• Users/

• Site_Settings/

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The tool validates that structure before it touches anything.

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What it can do:

• optional backup to Site_Backup_<timestamp>/

• deletes common site setting file types: .xml, .pref, .set, .txt

• blocks the reset if .lck lock files are present (classic sign something is open/dirty)

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Reset Avid User Settings

User settings reset is similar, but scoped to a selected user under Users/<UserName>/.

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What it can do:

• optional backup to User_Backup_<timestamp>/

• deletes typical user setting file types: .avs, .xml, .pref

• blocks if lock files exist

• requires explicit user selection (no default “guess the user” behavior)

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ADOBE / PREMIERE TOOLS​

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Clear Media Cache

Deletes known cache artifacts by extension (defaults include .pek, .cfa, .ims, .mcdb, etc.), with optional custom extension filters.

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Scope and guardrails (the important part)

• Scope field: lets you constrain cleanup to a subfolder inside the selected root. The scope is path-resolved and explicitly validated to prevent .. escaping.

• Folder-name safety guard: if the scan target doesn’t look like a Media Cache folder (based on expected folder names like “Media Cache”, “Media Cache Files”, etc.), it forces a second confirmation.

• Optional filters:

  • Skip recent by age (days)

  • Size filter (MB threshold)
    Both are validated so you can’t enable them with blank/0 values and then wonder why nothing happened.

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Delete Autosaves

Deletes .prproj files only if they live in an Auto-Save-like folder. This is a hard safety rule:

• It will not delete project files outside Auto-Save folders even if they match .prproj.

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It supports the same scope + age/size filtering model as cache cleanup.

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Remove Preview / Render Cache Media

Deletes preview/render artifacts by extension (mov/mp4/mxf/etc.) with the same guard model:

• scope must stay inside the selected root

• if the target doesn’t look like a Preview/Render cache location (folder-name guard), it forces a second confirmation

• optional age/size filtering

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Operational safety and “don’t shoot your foot” design

• Actions are destructive and do not use the OS trash. The UI makes this explicit via confirmation prompts.

• Long-running actions use a busy-state lock that disables controls within that section while work is in progress (prevents double clicks and conflicting operations).

• Output is a plain text summary of what was scanned/touched, plus warnings if scans hit timeouts or limits.