AMA Link

[Shane Ross]

[John Hill] “on my mac I can see under Media heading my Music, Photos, and Movies and I can click on each of those to see their files.”

Media heading? Sorry, I’m not sure what you are saying. Where exactly are you looking? What is the file path of the photo? For example, mine are stored HARD DRIVE>USERS>ME>PICTURES>photo I am looking for. Where are yours located?

Shane
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[John Hill]

Thanks, Shane, I thought that might be my issue. I keep my photos on my raid drive, Qx2. They are there in my Photos Library. They are not on my Mac hard drive. How should I correct this? Does that mean I won’t be able to see them as I can when I IMPORT a file? Maybe I have to put a folder on my desktop that contains the photos I want to use?

[Michael Phillips]

Agreed – the new source browser allows either LINK or IMPORT so there is no reason it cannot navigate and behave like another folder containing media assets. There is something else afoot.

Michael

[Shane Ross]

If you are looking at the Photos WITH PHOTOS open, that is not something Avid can do. You need to know the physical location on the drive.

Shane
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[John Hill]

I can see the Photos Library on my external drive, but to actually see thumbnails of the photos requires so much work that it’s clear that I’m doing something wrong. When I open Photos Library I see 13 folders like Masters, Modified, Originals, etc. If I click on a folder I see many more folders based on Years. Within those folders are many numbered folders, which is not very helpful. I must be doing something very basically wrong. Thanks for your help.

[Michael Phillips]

So if you drill down to the very last folder that contains actual images, you see nothing? One thing to check is to ensure than none of the folder names anywhere along the line as illegal characters like / * , etc.

Michael

[John Hill]

Thanks for your help, Michael…when I drill down and after opening numerous numbered folders, there is always an image when I open a folder. But I have no clue as to what that image will be. Not a sane way to work. What I want is a way to see all the photos in one window. Here is a pix of what I’m talking about when I try to link. And another after choosing to import media instead of using the source browser – which shows Photos under the Media Heading . In that instance when I click on Photos all my photos appear in one window.

[John Pale]

Ah. You mean Apple Photos.

Yes, Apple Photos uses its own deeply nested folder organization scheme tied to a database that only it understands. Avid doesn’t natively understand it, at least as far as AMA Link is concerned, so you have to drill through many numbered folders to find what you want. Would be cool if Avid and Apple could work this out, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it.

From what I understand, you are not obligated to use the Photos Library and Apple Photos can simply link to folders of Photos that you set up (with logical names and organization). You lose much of the iCloud functionality doing it that way, though.

If you want deep integration with Apple Photos, I’m thinking FCPX might be a better fit for you.

[John Hill]

Thanks John, I should have been clearer…I assumed nearly everyone with a mac used Apple Photos but now I’m thinking that everyone that uses a mac and cuts with Avid uses another app to store their photos.
Thanks again.

[John Pale]

I know its possible in Preferences for Apple Photos to turn off the behavior where it ingests the photos into your library. You can select to leave them in folders of your own creation. I dont think they will sync across devices or be backed up in iCloud if you do it that way. If you are fine with that, it should make things easier as far as Avid is concerned.

I’m a Mac (and Apple Photos) user. I don’t think any NLE except FCPX really has the capability to drill into the Apple Photos Library. I don’t think Apple has opened up the Photos library database to third parties, but I could be wrong about that. Maybe its just not a priority for them.