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Ama Link Quick Question
Hey Everyone,
So I’m working on a short film, and after two editors dropped the project right after we nabbed them I decided to just edit it myself (this is fine as I’m primarily an editor, I was just trying to avoid writing-directing-editing – wanted the second set of eyes/mind).
Anyway, I’ve been slowly training myself on Avid (coming off of FCP7) and figured this would be a good longer project to do, but I have a quick question about using AMA link. The camera we shot on was a Canon that gave us some gnarly H.264 files, so I AMA linked and then Transcoded all of them into DNxHD115.
However, this took up a ton more space than I expected, prompting the question – can I delete the original clips (the H.264s that were originally AMA linked) from my working drive (dont worry I obviously have these backed up on another drive) or do they need to remain on the drive as well for me to edit and eventually export? Only asking because I need space for the vfx and Audio on the drive.
Thanks in advance everyone, hope I can pay back the favor someday
– Nick
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7 Replies
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Once you’ve transcoded the AMA’s, you no longer need them. So, it’s fine to move them elsewhere. The only caveat to that advice is that if you’re offline editing with the DNx115’s you’ll need to relink to the original AMA’s to do the final master.
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Depending on speed of drives, drive connection, and complexity of edit as far as layers and effects go, you can certainly edit the AMA linked files directly. H.264 is not the most edit friendly codec, combined with the QT decode of AMA linked file, playback performance may be an issue. If it is not, then by all means, edit away and then save the transcode for delivery of just the sequence when done.
If you do need to render something while editing AMA links, make sure you set your codec and resolution in the settings tab of the project window to at least 115 to maintain quality.
If it were a longer project with lots of footage, the alternative would be to transcode to DNxHD 36 first, for offline editing, then relink back to the camera originals for final transcode/finish/delivery.
Michael
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Thank you both for the responses,
Michael, it’s a roughly 25 minute film with a bunch of effects etc so I transcoded all of the footage first just to help the computer handle it all (plus I’m running a MacBook Pro, even decked out this thing can’t rival a tower) especially because it’s an older FireWire drive. So if I understand both you and Bill correctly, if I transcoded everything I can dump the original H.264s until I go to export out a master?
On the same line of thinking, when I relink those do they need to be in the same spot, or could I have them in a different drive (but organized in an identical folder) when I relink?
Thanks for the help, I love editing on Avid but the file management can drive me up the walls sometimes.
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Update on this: Worked like a charm with the above suggestions, went offline with DNxHD 36s for editing, relinked the H.264s and it populated perfectly – had to go through and manually re-link 1 or 2 folders, but that was it. Ended up transcoding the H.264s to DNxHD 175x for export. I never did end up deleting the H.264s from the drive altogether though, just edited on a bigger drive and kept them there.
Thanks again for the help!
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If you come from FCP, you should be used to transcoding H.264’s in order to edit, and be used to the fact that the sizes get larger when you convert. FCP wants ProRes, where Avid likes DNxHD, but the file sizes are similar.
I will say this…nay, stress it: DO NOT EVER DELETE YOUR CAMERA ORIGINALS. Never. NEVER. Back them up to an external drive, LTO…ARCHIVE them. They are the camera masters. The originals. Highest quality format…and they take up very little space, compared to your edit media. So yes, take them off the MEDIA drive, but put them on an ARCHIVE drive.
Shane
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Ah…didn’t read all the way to the bottom. You did it right. Sorry for the rant.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
No problems, appreciate the concern! Should have been more clear anyway: The “originals” I referred to were copies themselves, I have a production drive and a separate backup drive, so these were just the “originals” on the production drive. So I was never planning on deleting them entirely, just from my drive the rest of the project was on. Cheers
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