On another note, is there ANY scenario where AMA doesn’t just screw you down the road?

[Shane Ross]

Use it as it was intended…NOT how marketting tries to trick you into thinking it works.

AMA to ACCESS the footage. Then transcode to Avid media. PERIOD. Only a few instances where you don’t transcode, but rather CONSOLIDATE. Those cases are when the media shot are MXF and very Avid compatible. Canon XF, P2 (DVCPRO HD and AVCINTRA), some XDCAM formats. ProRes you can CONSOLIDATE.

All the rest…TRANSCODE. Avid still works best with Avid media. AMA is mainly the way to allow it to work with more formats…and by work with them I mean ACCESS them. YOu still need to transcode.

Want to work Native? Get Adobe CS6.

And stop listening to Avid marketing.

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

[Pat Horridge]

If you can consolidate then do. If its not an Avid native res then transcode.
cut like that and then remind to the AMA at the end so you can finally transcode to your output resolution.
That’s our preferred way.
But done a number of jobs with weeks of offline done direct to hundreds of hours of direct linked AMA footage.
Works really well.
Do we get AMA files dropping offline? Do we get odd files that won’t relink at the end? Sure we do but even the time lost sorting that is a fraction of the time gained not converting media.
We’ve made significant budget and time savings using AMA for Post work and the AMA functionality is improving all the time.
You just have to manage it right.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
http://www.vet.co.uk | Lux Building 2-4 Hoxton Square London N1 6US

[Chris Tomberlin]

Thanks to both of you. We’re in a somewhat painful transition from FCP back to Avid. It’s changed A LOT since the last time I used it so it’s like starting all over. FCP never worked as advertised either, but it’s the devil we know.

Right now, the most painful issue for me is getting avid playing nice with other apps like Resolve, AE, etc. FCPs use of quicktime (rather than mxf) makes that more straightforward, but it also doesn’t manage media as well as Avid either.

Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures

[David Powell]

It is quite shameful how Avid markets AMA. Considering that most people using or coming to Avid are looking for professional workflow solutions, its downright false advertising the way they say “now you don’t have to transcode! Just start editing!” You can’t do multi-cam with it, you can export a ref file etc…

I think its great for the what its real purpose is, making selects. But you would think one could complete a project relatively smoothly with AMA alone reading the marketing. Even the training materials downplay the limitations to “transcoding may give better performance in some instances”.