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ama angst
I’ve embraced AMA, from the very beginning ( 5.3 ? whatever ) it can save a significant amount of time at the start of a project but the longer I use it the more time I end up losing at the end of projects, trying to find work arounds or just ending up in dead ends, for procedures that were common place before AMA.
I edit high end national television ads, where my avid is basically a very powerful offline machine. Although my edits are extremely finessed, my process is still to Colour Grade, and Online at specialized facilities.
My most recent frustration….. ( I’m using version 6 on a Mac)
My project is a campaign for a financial institution, beautifully shot with the Arri Alexia, I link several days of pro-res QuickTime’s via AMA. 4 spots are cut and approved and colour graded, The resulting Graded footage is layed off to HDCam SR. We have 4 days of flame work scheduled to begin in 3 days time, but the Client has a showing in one day and would love if I could rebuild my edits with the new colour grade. “No problem” I say. Wrong.
I go to decompose my edits and recapture the footage from the tape, something I’ve done hundreds of times, and….
First off you can’t decompose ama files ,(like you can’t export AAF file when cutting with ama ), so I figure out to transcode the edits ( then you can decompose ), Then I select the shots and go to batch capture, and receive the prompt, nothing needs to be captured.
The long and the short of it is the avid will not allow for batch capture when using ama file based media, so short of digitizing, eye matching, and reapplying my may effects for four edits, there is no work around?
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3 Replies
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I say this all the time to people…post it several times a week on this site…this forum:
Use AMA to ACCESS the media, just as the name implies, “Avid Media ACCESS.” Use that to bring the footage into Avid. Then TRANSCODE to Avid media. It with that. ALWAYS transcode to Avid media if you are going to do anything that requires sending files outside of the system in any sort of collaboration. Always. If it is a quick edit that will all be done in house on one machine, fine, edit the AMA footage native, if it isn’t too sluggish. Otherwise, transcode.
Avid still works best with Avid media. Transcode.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hey Shane ,
I hear what you are saying and I agree, but avid would be a better tool if you didn’t have to transcode. Why can’t we have full functionality in AMA mode?
Also, I did transcode, the sequences in question, and the avid still would not let me batch capture. -
AMA has a ways to go before it is on par as what we have come to expect with “tape based” workflows over the years. Now some of that functionality is no longer needed, but offline/online, multicamera, AAF, etc, needs more work. That being said, batch capture assumes a tape based workflow and needs values in the TAPE column. If you look at the TAPE and SOURCE FILE columns, only the SOURCE FILE has metadata.
A workaround is to create an EDL, import EDL which makes TAPE sources (legacy function) and you can batch capture from tape. Note that AMA will create an EDL where each source is its own filename, If you want other “reel” based type sources, then enter that in the Camroll or Labroll columns and use that as source when creating an EDL.
v6 allowed for relink between SOURCE and TAPE based when a sequence points to either SOURCE FILE to TAPE, and the assets point to the other. But it has some issue as well, like not working with spanned files.
Try the EDL and see if that gets you any further along.
Michael
Michael Phillips
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