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Automatic AMA Linking from AAF
I posted this over at the Avid Feature Request forum, but I wanted to relay it here for discussion. Am I the only one that could use something like this for fast interchange? I would love to see XML or some other API provided for things like this, but for now AAF is the closest equivalent. Otherwise, we are having to consider a sidecar workflow to grab selections from CatDV, transcode the media to MXF/DNxHD, and do something like place the media in the Avid Mediafiles folder, so that it will see the media, though this is not ideal.
Here’s what I wrote, viewable here as well: https://community.avid.com/forums/t/100617.aspx
Our Facility needs the Avid to give us the ability to interpret AAF packaged clips as AMA clips, and automatically attempt to bring them online without us having to “Link to AMA Volume” or “Link to AMA File” as a side process.
Our rationalization for this feature:
We use Squarebox’s CatDV as our Asset Management System, and have developed workflows for the Final Cut Pro workstations that we have at our facility. An editor picks his clips that he wants to use, and drag them to a representation of his open project in CatDV. A second later, the clips appear ready to use, with all the metadata that was logged in CatDV intact.
CatDV translates to FCP through direct XML, they speak the same language, so the roundtrip is effortless.
Our Avid systems get the lions share of our high end work, and the demands for b-roll and beauty shots are high. CatDV doesn’t yet have a direct method for sending clips to the Avid, so they designed a product called MME (mme.tv) to translate FCP XML to AAF. This allows sending FCP sequences and clips, and also CatDV selects, and translate them to AAF for the Avid to use.
This solution works half way. I see the offline clips in an Avid bin after sending the Avid an AAF, but it does not automatically link. I have to hunt down the media, mount it separately through AMA and then do a manual relink to the AAF clips afterwards, which creates too many steps, and isn’t a solution for our workflow because the media in our library isn’t designed to be hunted and pecked by editors manually outside of CatDV (Discouraging users from exploring filesystem) because it’s library managed.
The AAF clips in the bin provide complete information about where the media is located, it’s format, and all the great metadata our loggers have added in CatDV. The Avid doesn’t really care, and there’s no way for me to tell it to “Just pretend it’s AMA and online it!”
Avid would put our Media Composers in top spot again for our facility if they could provide a solution to this problem. More focus is being put on the Avids in our shop especially with FCP’s current future, but the Avid is currently second class citizen with our asset management system.
This would solve a huge problem for us, and help us avoid having to design costly sidecar processing trips to manipulate media to be readable in the Avid with few editor steps.
You know, this would also be a great help for tools like Automatic Duck that require multiple steps to get your media online.
Matthew Penn
Post Production Supervisor
Citi -
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