[Michael Phillips]

The ACA is an Avid created consortium as announced by Avid at IBC in September of 2013:

https://www.avid.com/US/press-room/Launches-Customer-Association

The “about” is here:
https://www.avidcustomerassociation.com/mission.html

The main benefits of joining are listed as:

Ongoing interaction, networking and exposure to professional industry peers
Access to insights and shared experiences from the world’s premier media companies
Access to a future ACA portal for association-related discussion, interaction and best practices, only available to ACA members
Access to Avid leadership through focused Advisory Councils
Opportunity to increase influence on Avid Community and industry
Ability to provide ongoing and regular feedback to Avid about specific business and process requirements and industry and company-specific needs

Since that time (and not yet reflected on this page), the ACA has been refined and more “benefits” added to it such as a discount at the Avid Web store. The have created additional councils to meet the needs of the different market segments, etc.

with more detail on this page:

https://www.avidcustomerassociation.com/membership.html

This is an Avid initiative they are dedicated to and even have a full time director level position with the title of “Director of the Avid Customer Association”. They get both manufacture/partner sponsorship as well as membership sponsorship. It would be like watching commercials on HBO –

Now whether any one facility or individual becomes a part of this is up to them. The one stated benefit that gives me pause is:

“Access to a future ACA portal for association-related discussion, interaction and best practices, only available to ACA members”

I would think that best practices is an industry issue for anyone owning or interacting with an Avid product or solution and in my opinion should not be restricted to members only.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

You may also want to look into StorageDNA. I know they have AAF support for retrieveing assets from LTO’s and such, but it may very well work in reverse where it can pull from shared storage from an AAF and back up to LTO with indexing as needed.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

I assumed Media Composer, thus the matrix. Most of those products were derived from MC codec base, so they may share similar requirements. Pro and HD were just marketing names.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

Have you checked the Avid compatibility matrix?

https://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/Compatibility/en267087?retURL=%2Fpkb%2Farticles%2Fen_US%2Fcompatibility%2Fen267087%3Fpopup%3Dtrue%26NewLang%3Den%26DocType%3D1083%26q%3DMedia%2BComposer%2Bcompatibility%2Bmatrix%26x%3D0%26y%3D0&popup=true

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

That’s a question from whomever is passing the files to you. Typically, the bin already has all the clips and the metadata applied and the ALE is just passed along as a deliverable or in case in needs to be reapplied.

If the person delivering the bin has not merged the ALE into the clips for the additional metadata, then that is up to you to decide whether you need that metadata or not.

Once you open the bin, you will be able to see if whatever metadata in the bin has been applied or not. But it really comes down to what has been agreed upon by whomever is supplying the “dailies.”

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

The AAF file does not need to go in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/numbered folder and I would not suggest having files in there that are not expected.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

I have brought this up with Avid several times that the TAPE field truncates at 32 depending on how that information comes in (ALE, EDL import, etc.). I have not seen the issue with AAF import, but certainly merging anything into that from ALE will not work. These long file names are becoming more common with cameras from BMD, or VFX workflows that have versioning. This is something Avid needs to address, but in the meantime you may want to track longer filenames in both a Camroll, Labroll or custom column to not lose it.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

If you have letterboxed finished clip, then look to After Effects to do the resize/scaling. They have added some very nice quality uprez in their latest CC version.

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

I would create that XY in Resolve, conform, color, or whatever needs to be done and then export as same XY. You may need to apply a scale/resize depending on your sources and if they have letterboxing or not (if they are coming from Media Composer).

Michael

[Michael Phillips]

And once you validate proper MXF, you still need to compare values in TAPE for both media and the imported AAF file. If they don’t match it explains why the AAF does not automatically link.

Michael