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AMA (Avid Media Access)

 

 

 

Overview

Stop transcoding, rewrapping, importing, copying, and/or moving media and start editing now. AMA (Avid Media Access) is a revolutionary plug-in architecture designed by Avid that will forever change how you work with tapeless video formats such as XDCAM, P2, and now new GFCAM support. With AMA, you can simply connect a supported card/disc or device and begin viewing and cutting footage right away — no need to transfer media or use other software to view or extract the clips. 

As a standard feature in Avid Media Composer 3.5, Avid Symphony 3.5, and Avid NewsCutter 7.5 and higher software, AMA greatly accelerates your workflow, giving you more time to focus on what’s most important — telling a great story. In addition, you get even better project and media management, as AMA supports and displays all metadata associated with the clips.

Highlights

  • Get direct access to file-based video without moving, importing, or transcoding media
  • Instantly view, edit, and play back clips, with access to all clip metadata
  • Cut multiple media formats together in the timeline without converting clips
  • Offers XDCAM/XDCAM HD/XDCAM EX, P2/AVC/DVCPRO HD, and new GFCAM support
  • Plug-in architecture allows for future format support

 

Details

Imagine what you could be doing instead of having to spend time copying and converting media to edit it. That’s the beauty of AMA, a powerful timesaving feature only available from Avid.

The Waitless Workflow
With AMA, a tapeless workflow becomes a waitless one, giving you the fastest project turnarounds and playout*. Spend more time crafting a compelling story and polishing your work instead of transcoding, rewrapping, importing, or moving media.

For post production, AMA lets you focus more on being creative instead of dealing with file format bottlenecks. With direct and immediate access to a variety of tapeless media formats — not to mention you can mix and match formats — you can start editing right away and deliver final projects back in the same media. And if you’re working on effects- or processing-heavy projects, use Avid DNxHD to maintain the highest quality throughout the entire editing process.

In the broadcast world, news can’t wait, and AMA offers the fastest route from shoot to edit to output, so you can make it to airtime in practically no time. With end-to-end XDCAM HD support; full native P2, XDCAM HD/EX, and GFCAM media support; and the ability to juggle formats, you can focus on delivering the best story for playout, without worrying about how to get footage and data in and out of the system.

Built for the Future
Since AMA uses plug-ins to provide support for different camera file formats, you won’t need to wait for the next version of Media Composer, Symphony, or NewsCutter to get support for new or additional formats. As new plug-ins become available, you’ll find details on this page and downloads on the AMA Plug-ins page; just choose what you need, install, and you’re ready to connect and cut.

Under the Hood
AMA is a plug-in-based feature in Avid Media Composer 3.5, Avid Symphony 3.5, and Avid NewsCutter 7.5 and higher software that allows you to directly edit* tapeless media housed on a connected XDCAM, P2, or GFCAM card/disc or reader. AMA works behind the scenes, automatically linking clips from the device to a bin in your software. You get immediate and direct access to all AMA media just as you would when working with clips stored in the Avid Media Files folder.

What’s more, AMA Virtual Volumes work with any hard drive full of XDCAM, P2, and/or GFCAM files too; just connect the drive, choose File > Link to AMA Volume, select the desired content, and the media pops up in a bin, ready to view and edit. AMA media functions like other video clips too. Need to consolidate all of your media? Just use the Consolidate command to offload footage and put that camera or card/disc back in use.

Supported Formats
Working with XDCAM and P2 media is easy, as AMA has supported these camera formats since the feature’s launch. Now you can work with the Ikegami GFCAM format with the new AMA GFCAM plug-in, a release with which Avid makes good on its promise to deliver timely support for industry-standard video codecs independently of a product update.

  • GFCAM — Get direct access to Ikegami GFPAK media** and full native support of the GFCAM format with the AMA GFCAM plug-in. Available as a free download, this new plug-in opens up new GFCAM workflows, eliminates having to transcode or copy GFCAM media before editing on an Avid system, provides full metadata support for better clip and project management, and allows you to deliver final masters in GFCAM format.

    Download the AMA GFCAM plug-in

  • XDCAM — Get direct access and full native support of Sony XDCAM, XDCAM HD, and XDCAM EX formats*** with the AMA XDCAM plug-in, included with all AMA-supported Avid editing products. With fast and flexible XDCAM workflows, you can edit your way, right away. Edit SD and HD footage directly, get better clip and project management with full metadata support, import footage over FireWire, and deliver final projects in XDCAM formats.
  • P2 — Get direct access and full native support of P2, DVCPRO HD, and AVC-Intra media and metadata with the AMA P2 plug-in, included with all AMA-supported Avid editing products. Experience the fastest, most flexible P2 workflows as you edit footage directly from a P2 card or drive, mix and match media, work directly with P2 Store Drives, and deliver finished programs to P2 media (Windows only).

* Playback speed and the complexity of edits and effects possible may be limited by the inherent bandwidth restrictions of the disc/card. Moving material to higher speed storage as an AMA Virtual Volume will resolve this issue and free up the original media for further recordings.

** The download version of the GFCAM plug-in supports the GFCAM 50 Mb/s format only.

*** AMA does not provide support for XDCAM proxies. If you want to use XDCAM proxy-based clips, use the classic proxy workflow of editing lower resolution clips and then using the batch import workflow to import the full resolution clips.

Please note that AMA is a processor intensive application, and older platforms may not offer optimum performance.


 

AMA Plug-ins

Got Avid Media Composer 3.5, Symphony 3.5, or NewsCutter 7.5 or higher software? Accelerate your tapeless workflow with these AMA plug-ins: