Re: Avid Media Composer and sharing media on a SAN

Hi All,

The problem with AMA linking is that Avid strongly suggests transcoding. The AMA workflow is fine for basic assembly, but it's likely you won't be happy long-term with the performance of an AMA timeline, regardless of the storage system.

Avid uses a database file in a media directory that is owned by a single workstation. When multiple workstations write to the same drive, additional media directories have to be created so that the databases are unique for each workstation. This can be achieved to some level by tricks and virtualizations on the server side, but it's best to let the Media Composer do the creation, which it will do when the media directory lives on a Unity/Isis. This is the same for the bin locking/project sharing feature.

Facilis offers the native media and project sharing that normally only exists when using Avid SAN solutions. We do this through an emulation mode that presents our Shared File System volumes as if they are native Avid storage. It works, it's cross-platform Mac and Windows, and it's been shipping since 2009.

Jim