Being relative new to Avid, I am still perplexed as to the concept of AMA, and am unsure what this is used for, and whether I should be using it.

So far, I am logging and capturing my raw footage from HDCAM and HDV to bins in the active project, as well as importing the required media assets such as audio fx, voiceovers, graphics etc, into my project from our shared storage. In otherw ords, all of my projects can be accomplished without using AMA (so far).

But I continually read - in the manuals and in this forum - references to AMA and wonder if there's something I' missing.

So at the risk of appearing totally ignorant, I ask - can someone tell me what AMA is, and shat it should be used for?

AMA is a means to link to source footage rather than importing it. When you import footage you are committing to a particular resolution and bitrate. When you AMA link you maintain access to your original source media. You can then transcode your source files to proxy media, edit them into the timeline (faster than working with the AMA linked media in many cases) and then later relink your editing sequence to the original source media in preparation for final render (giving you the maxium quality possible as you render from original source to delivery format).

This is just one beneficial workflow of AMA. I would say that programs like Resolve and Premiere work like AMA all the time. Avid's distiguishing feature is that it was originally designed to work with media databases and was all about ingesting media into its database (such as when you capture or import). When they developed the parallel workflow of AMA they needed to distinguish it from the original database model.

I'm sure others will chime in with other attributes of AMA that I have forgotten.

[edited to add] Steve beat me! In my defense, my answer is longer. ;)

AMA stood for "Avid Media Access" and was Avid's fancy name for "link" before they just changed it to "link" in the software.

For your tape-based material, linking is irrelevant. For any material you already have in a project (music, sound effects, voiceovers, graphics, whatever), it is also irrelevant.

Where linking might come into play is if you start using material from a file-based camera, or if you're bringing new file-based material into a project.

For many years, the only way to get file-based material into Media Composer was to "import" it. This would (usually) take a long time, but after the import was finished the resulting Avid media files were the same as media files captured from tapes, i.e. they existed in the Avid MediaFiles folder on your system, so Avid knew exactly where they were, and you were free to move the original material off the system.

Final Cut and Premeire, on the other hand, could (usually) access material immediately, without the long import step required in Media Composer. Avid created the AMA workflow to address this. With AMA, you could link to file-based media, giving you instant access. The disadvantage with linking is you can't move the original files while Avid is linking to them, or you break the links and the media goes offline. (This also applies to Premeire; I have no idea how FCPX works.)

To solve that problem, you can link to media and then transcode it ("transcode" is Avid's word for "convert") to whatever resolution you want to work in, creating Avid media files, allowing you to move the original files. In this way you wind up with the same end result as if you'd imported, but because transcoding is a workflow that was added to the software more recently, it takes advantage of newer processor architecture to go much faster than importing.

So, as far as you're concerned, if you continue to capture footage from tapes, continue to do that as you do now. If you start working with file-based footage, you should consider a workflow where you first link to the footage, and then transcode it to Avid media.

Plus, your answer is more complete (I rushed mine, lol)

camoscato:

Premeire, on the other hand, could (usually) access material immediately, without the long import step required in Media Composer. Avid created the AMA workflow to address this. With AMA, you could link to file-based media, giving you instant access. 

AMA is instant on a good CPU.

Premiere conforms the audio which makes it slower.

George Angeludis:

AMA is instant on a good CPU.

Premiere conforms the audio which makes it slower.

I wasn't trying to create a "Premeire v Media Composer" argument; I just wanted to give an idea of the thinking behind Avid's decision to include a linking workflow in Media Composer.

Question: Does Linking provide bin data that shows the camera original’s shoot date vs. just the Avid “Creation Date”?

You can right-click in the bin column header and select Choose Columns. One of the choices is Shoot Date. Whether or not that will be filled in is dependent upon the plug-in used to link to the media. You could also try looking at the Aux Timecodes and see if any of them have a date-time timestamp.

camoscato:

I wasn't trying to create a "Premeire v Media Composer" argument; I just wanted to give an idea of the thinking behind Avid's decision to include a linking workflow in Media Composer.

Neither my intention Carl, just facts.

DStone:

You can right-click in the bin column header and select Choose Columns. One of the choices is Shoot Date. Whether or not that will be filled in is dependent upon the plug-in used to link to the media. You could also try looking at the Aux Timecodes and see if any of them have a date-time timestamp.

Thanks so much, Dave. I got used to seeing that Shoot Date field empty with the handful of quicktime Plugin AMA Links, from Drones, and other DSLR (no Aux TC) sources but someday I’ll see it listed and remember your reply.