Kicking the tires on Avid Media Access Part 2

ProVideo Coalition by Scott Simmons

AMA has great potential

As the second part to my “kicking the tires” test of the new Avid Media Access architecture I wanted to try and understand how AMA works as part of Avid media management. In case this is your first time hearing about AMA, it’s a new way for Avid Media Composer (as well as Symphony and NewsCutter) to access tapeless media. Currently supporting XDCAM and P2 media, the software natively supports editing these formats with no rewrapping or transcoding. It also allows direct editing of XDCAM and P2 media from their solid state acquisition devices as well as that media off of other hard drives. Avid doesn’t have to copy that media over to the usual Avid Media Files folder on local media drives. It is a near instant process when you use the Link to AMA volume command. The first part of this story is available here.

But since Media Composer no longer has to copy imported media to the Avid Media Files folder when using AMA the first thing I wondered was how well would Avid be able to track and manage that media. We have seen something similar with the Import P2 command in Media Composer for a while. That function would allow you to import media from a P2 card for instant editing. Unfortunately it seemed that when you restarted the software after quitting the media would appear offline and needed re-importing again.

I’m happy to say that is seems as if Avid has provided the best of both worlds with this first implementation for AMA. Read more...