• Avid Media Composer

  AMA workflow, will this work?

  Posted by Ken Geary on May 2, 2013 at 9:43 pm

  We are currently acquiring a PROmax 32TB server for our 1 AVID workstation and shared GFX workstations (and another future AVID).
  We still use tape to archive our final Masters.
  Here’s my thoughts on workflow but having my doubts after reading up about AMA not being what i thought it was:
  – copy form SD cards to archive server (Drobo, in our case) AND to the PROmax sever for edit
  – AVID editor “simply” (?) points AMA to these folders for the project and edits away (NO IMPORT , this is what we are trying to avoid)
  – Video plays back over timeline in real time as well as out of our Nitris box (HD SDI video/audio)
  – we lay off in real time to HD deck (or KiPro as future possible alternative)

  we have a separate encoding station to handle the HD deck to make final deliverable media (mp4, DVD, wmv, etc)

  Will this work? solid?

  side note: I’m considering the KiPro as a rock-solid fast Prores encoder to make all our archive master files, to be stored away and/or transcoded by another workstation on the PROmax network.

  I know this can spur a boatload of replies and opinons.
  Can the simple answer be yes if the project is editing all same type of files? (AVCHD in this example) Will this start to fall apart if we are using mixed media types?
  Isn’t Avid pushing this as the end-all be-all? We are looking for the quickest workflow, justifying the supposed speed of using digital media instead of tape.

  Thanks all

  Ken

  Shane Ross replied 13 years ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Shane Ross

  May 2, 2013 at 10:06 pm

  AMA is simply a way to access the original tapeless media, so that you can import it as Avid media, either full res, or offline res, and reconnect to the source later. Editing with footage accessed via AMA is not rock solid. Far from that. And some formats are worse than others. H.264 from DSLRs…AVCHD (many flavors)…GoPro MP4…those are the worse of the bunch. Trying to edit those formats native would be quite painful, and far from rock solid.

  Mixing AMA formats…even worse.

  Avid is not designed to edit a lot of formats natively. P2…sure. That is shot in the MXF format. C300 does that as well. XDCAM can be consolidated and be the same codec, just in the Avid media database. No, Avid craves Avid media types.

  f you want native editing, look at Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. And get lots of RAM and a graphics card that enables CUDA. This is what allows PPro to do this.

  Shane
  Little Frog Post
  Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

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