ESATA Drive To Edit XAVC Format

[Shane Ross]

Don’t edit that format natively. AMA Link to it, but best to transcode. Avid doesn’t do well editing natively with some formats, and XAVC is one of them. But yes, that drive will be fine for editing if you transcode to DNxHD.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Matt Lyon]

Shane, in the past I’d agree with you about AMA, but v8 of MC finally seems to be able to handle AMA acceptably for longer form cutting with some codecs. I’ve done 2 half hour episodes now with 1080p XAVC from an FS7 via AMA linking and it worked very well. We even had some 4K shots in the show too. People have told me that AMA linked pro-res also works well. (I would never have attempted this in MC 7, fwiw)

With AMA linking, I imagine processor speed is a factor as much as hard drives. We are on an HP z820, so it’s a pretty new machine. I haven’t tried e-sata though for drives. Thunderbolt here (and in limited testing, USB3 even worked fine)

Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto

[John Pale]

USB 3 is faster than Esata. Stay away from USB 2. Processor speed and perhaps RAM are more important for this, anyway.

[Michael Phillips]

Editing with AMA linking is dependent on the codec. If the codec is considered native, then the experience will be much better. Which one’s are native? The list of “native” codecs are listed in the transcode window. H.264 is the one that does not count as the Avid streaming codec seems to be unique to Avid’s creations of that codec and not possible in other third party applications (that I have yet to find).

Michael