File-Based Acquisition Using Avid Media Access

Although tape isn’t dead yet, file-based formats are the dominant way of acquiring footage from modern equipment. Avid Media Access, AMA, is a technology featured in Media Composer that allows direct, immediate access to unmanaged media. You may recall that managed media refers to the MXF files in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/ subfolders. Unmanaged media files are any files that exist outside of those folders, and are typically from a camera’s hard disk, flash-memory stick, SxS card, P2 card or any other such file-based storage device. (Hereafter it’ll be simplified as “flash-memory based storage.”)

AMA allows Media Composer to create a clip that links to an unmanaged media file and read it in its native format. Media Composer will store the location of the file in the clip’s metadata. AMA is implemented partially in Media Composer, and partially in downloadable third-party plug-ins, which are used to support specific kinds of flash-memory based storage formats.