PMW-200: exporting clips for import into Avid. Advice?

[Malcolm Hamilton]

Yes it seems to work perfectly in editing.
So even for a project that I'm shooting and editing over the course of a few months, this is as good (and dependable) a way of doing things as the 'old' way (of importing, which converted all the files to the mxf file type that Avid likes)?
Regards, Malcolm

[Chris Medico]

Yes, as long as you don't move the files around on your drive the links will remain.

If you do loose the links and your media becomes "offline" it isn't the end of the world. Just link to volume again and you will be right back in business.

I use it all the time and no longer transcode anything other than h.264 media which is not edit friendly. Even with h.264 media I AMA link it then transcode to DNxHD. That is a workflow with a higher quality end result than doing a straight import.

[Malcolm Hamilton]

Thanks once again for all your help with this Chris.
I'm now back in editing mode!
Regards, Malcolm

[Chris Medico]

You are welcome Malcolm.

Report back when you have had a chance to get used to the workflow and tell us how it is going.

[Bill Ward]

Chris:

If you have a project with multiple SxS cards...please describe the workflow you would use to bring in the files via AMA and then, bin by bin, convert them to permanent media files inside the AVID.

Thx!

[Chris Medico]

I can do that. I won't be able to do that till tomorrow evening. I have a production meeting tonight that will eat up my evening.

It will be best to show it with some screen shots.

[Malcolm Hamilton]

I'll wait for Chris's formula... but if I can add one little bit that applies to me, anyway (I'm not in news; no fast turnarounds; no need for offline/online workflow). This is advice from someone who doesn't shoot with our cameras, but knows a lot about editing in Avid:

transcode rather than consolidate

Consolidating, he says, would just rewrap the original long gop structure of our clips. Transcoding converts them to the DNx (or J2k) codec, that Avid likes.

We'll see what Chris says though!
Malcolm

[Chris Medico]

This is going to take 2 posts due to the number of screen caps.

First you have to get your media into your system. I took a large project that I worked on to show how this works with a generous amount of xdcam media shot over a couple month period.

You can step through the attached screen grabs and see what happens pretty easily. In the AMA Result image I did arrange the bins like that. They don't com in arranged in a flat view. Also if I had chosen "Single Bin" in image Create Bins all the media would have been in one bin with in this case hundreds of video clips.

So this is step one to getting your media into the system. If you are using XDCam you can get right to work editing with no problems with performance. There are a few export features that aren't available to you when using long GOP media but those are easily handled with another trick I can show you in another post if you need.

Now one thing I want to point out here is in the attached graphic - Media Works - the media before I started this was OFFLINE because I had deleted it all out to show how AMA linking works. When I relinked everything the system recognized it was the same media even though it was now in a different location on my computer from when the sequences were created (I brought this project back off my archive server for the demo).

Another thing you may notice is there were some folders on the directory tree in image - File Location - that didn't come into the project. Those are folders with Canon dSLR footage. You must use "Link to AMA File(s)" to pick up those.

On to the next part.

[Chris Medico]

Here you can see some options for what to do with the media. For most types of projects you could get to work where I stopped on the last post.

If you do need to transcode things you have some options. You can transcode files in a bin as you can see with attachment #10. This transcodes everything you select in the bin. Depending on your project that may not be an ideal situation. I chose this project to demonstrate that because it is a dramatic piece and has several takes of the same thing. I may not want to convert everything and tie up that much hard drive space with less compressed media that I'm not going to use in the project. At 35mb this project is 300GB of RAW video. It would be easily 1.5TB if it was transcoded to DNxHD.

To trim down the media to just what I plan to use I drop it into a sequence and do a rough edit. I'm not worrying here about a final result. Just doing some housekeeping. You can see a sequence loaded in attachment 07 and the transcode dialog. The drive on the list you see there in BOLD is where the AMA linked media is currently located. A quick note here - If you are going to transcode media make sure you do it to some OTHER drive. Don't have AMA linked and identical transcoded media on the same drive. That can lead to confusion as to which media you are working with. It also makes it harder to go back and relink to the AMA files for final render if you wish to do so.

Once you transcode the sequence you can see in attachment 08 that Avid has created the new transcoded media and a new sequence with the new media. It will be functionally equal to the sequence with the linked AMA media. If you don't want a new sequence with the new media then simply uncheck the box "Create new sequence" you can see in attachment 07.

That is the basics of how to do it. We can continue the discussion as to why you might do one over another if you have any thoughts or questions about that.

XDCam is a very mature codec. I would recommend giving a direct AMA (non transcoded) worflow a try. If you don't like it you can easily transcode your sequences and not loose any editing work.