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When sharing media files in a network drive,  you may need to mount it using different mount paths on different computers. 

For example, a same network drive is typically mounted as a drive letter on Windows (D:\, E:\,..),  but on MacOS it will be mounted under /Volumes, and it can be anywhere else on linux.

If that happens, when loading a Mistika timeline in other computer that is using different mount paths then Mistika will not find the original paths to the media, as they don't exist in the new computer. 

To solve this, if Mistika does not find a media file it will ask you to "Relink" the file to the new locations as seen from the local computer.

You can also pre-define path translation equivalences in a external file to be tried by default. Then, when loading clips with missing media Mistika will try to do the relink process automatically, and if the media is found no question will be asked to the user.

This is the file containing the path translation equivalences (must be local to each system):

SGO AppData/localshared/pathsTranslator.json 

To use all this, it is important this setting activated:  Edit->Setup->Enable Relink Tool (it should come activated by default, but if it does not work this is the first thing to check )

When it is active, if mistika doesn't find a media file it will open a dialog automatically, asking if that clip is in a different location. In this dialog you will find a button "Remember relink rule for future use". If it is active (which is the default behaviour) you just need to select the new location for a first clip (the one asked by the dialog) and it will remember the path equivalence for future clips with similar folder path structures.

Alternatively you can modify the pathsTranslator.json file directly with a text editor./ This is useful to prepare a network of computers before the operators (or render nodes) start working on those computers. Example: 

Let's suppose we import media files in a windows system while having them in the "D:\" drive.  But we plan to open those timelines in a linux system where we will have those media files here:  /REALTIME_STORAGE/SOURCE. 

Additionally,  in the same linux system we also have some media files that where moved from /Vol1/MyMedia to /Vol2/Other/MyMedia, and we want Mistika to look for those files in the new location.   

Then we have to put these two entries in the SGO AppData/localshared/pathsTranslator.json file of the linux system:

[

    {

        "D:": [

            "/REALTIME_STORAGE/SOURCE"

        ]

    },

    {

        "/Vol1": [

            "/Vol2/Other"

        ]

    }

]

This is just a text file (using .json syntax) that is local to each computer, so you can also edit this file manually, for example to prepare a network infrastructure to be ready to find any media files without user intervention.

Please note that the pathsTranslator.json file is only for media files. If you also want to share the Mistika user settings (presets, render predefined paths, display filters, etc) then what you need to change is the Mistika "shared" folder, which is described in this other article

A different case is the path to a .rnd render job or other types of files that are not media files that will be passed to 3rd party applications.  For example if a render job (.rnd file) is created in a different computer than the render node that will do the actual render, then the path to the .rnd file needs to be identical on both computers, otherwise the render manager will not be able to pass it correctly:

- if they are unix computers (Mac, Linux) they should have the same mount path for the network path (or at least a resolvable link to it). 

- if they are windows the network drive should be mounted in the same drive letter on both windows. 

- Finally, if it is a mix of windows and unix it can get a bit complicated, but still solvable.  In Windows there are different ways to access a network drive as a directory, someway emulating what unix systems do. One way could be by using the Windows "mklink" command to make the unix path to exist in the windows system, as a link to the actual location. (if you do it,  make sure to define the the projects folder in mConfig via the mklink path, not the original windows path). 

There are other methods but they are out of the scope of this introduction.  Most render managers also have their own tools for this. For more advanced usage in an heterogeneous render farms  a recommended 3rd party render manager is Uberware Smedge, which also supports its own path translation. You can find more information here.