best Avid canon C500/C300 workflow

[Michael Phillips]

Did you try the uncompressed test just to see?

Michael

[Mary Haverstick]

My decision was made fairly simply by the intervention of the editing Gods.

I was leaning toward consolidating and had tested a sequence that was long and complex and seemed to run well, from consolidated footage on my system. But then I did some simple house cleaning on my hard drives making additional space for any new footage- and even though I did nothing that should have interrupted my existing footage or hierarchies I had one of those buggy days where nothing runs well. In particular I had trouble accessing and linking some of my AMA footage- and that was stressful. I did relink it thru disk permissions, but I hate those buggy days.

Realizing how incredibly stressful that would be should I be 3-4 months into my feature edit- and knowing the AMA links can be more finicky than avid DNxHD I decided the slight, perhaps imagined and viewed on inferior monitors, possible tiny quality drop did not compare to performance headaches that could induce heart attacks near the end of the edit.

Transcoding over 30 hours of Canon footage took only one long day and I am up and running with my edit already. I immediately felt a sense of additional confidence knowing my important footage was now saved and accessible several different ways. I thank everyone of you experts who assisted my decision and I will drop an update on the project from time to time. I hope this thread helps a few who are planning their Canon workflows.