Background Media Processing in Avid Media Composer 7

Avid Blogs by Matt Feury

Although Media Composer’s AMA plug-in architecture allows virtually any file-based source media to be played in real time without first transcoding to Avid’s native DNxHD codec, many times editors will want to transcode anyway to take advantage of the maximum playback performance DNxHD offers. New in Media Composer 7 is the ability to process both transcoding and consolidation operations in the background, freeing you to continue editing both AMA and native Avid media without interruption.

One or multiple media operations can be sent to the Editor Transcode service for processing in the background, enabling you to continue editing and playing media while this happens. The Background Queue window maintains a list of jobs that are in process or completed. During the transcode, new “offline” versions of the AMA clips are created and then relinked automatically to the newly created media.

To make the most of the available performance of your CPU, this new functionality operates as a separate service that can be enabled or disabled at will, and if needed, paused to ensure an optimal experience during more demanding playback situations.

In addition to the new Background Media Processing tools are enhancements to relinking that help accelerate the transitioning of sequences made up of AMA linked media to native DNxHD media.

Rather than having to find and select individual AMA linked clips, regardless of their codec, Media Composer now has the option of only processing AMA media within a sequence. read more...