I've just started looking into HDA/OTL … sorry if this seems like a simple question.

My question pertains to the locking/editing of OTL's. Once an OTL is created & saved in the libraries, what prevents another artist from editing the contents and saving over top?

I know about Operator Type Manager -> Configuration -> Safeguard Operator Definitions which turns off the option to edit contents but the artist could simply toggle it off and then get access.

Is there another way to lock the asset? I think I missed something in the docs. thanks in advance

AFAIK there's nothing there that will literally stop a *malicious* user from editing assets, if that's what you mean. I mean, you could set permissions so that end users cannot change that option you mention in their prefs which would address that, and of course setting permissions on any disk-based otls is always a good idea, if only to prevent accidental overwriting.

The notion is that you can adjust the security of your assets about as far as you want to take it based on the level of security you take your facility to. Certainly by default it's assumed everyone's on the same team and when an asset is saved locked, it's not intended that you alter and then save it. Having users prefs locked so they can never edit assets is handled by permissions on the preferences files.

Cheers,

J.C.

I have some pretty string opinions about HDAs…
one of them is that if an artist is working with an HDA and they unlock it 2 things are true at that point:
1 - they are working outside the pipeline
2 - the HDA is broken - in the sense that it's not matched to it's definition, and in the sense that the only reason to unlock and HDA (unless there is a workflow reason) it to change it - and to me that means it's not built to do the job and therefore it's busted.

using the config section is a start…
we publish HDAs to an asset manager that write protects the files…
we have some other tricks to unsure that people don't monkey with HDAs…but since everything is in someone's hip file they can pretty much do what they want…I try to use a gentle hand to guide people to do the right thing…