Re: Multiple video formats to Avid: AMA or transcode?

Yeah, 5400 drives certainly won't help you there. 7200rpm has always been the recommended minimum and, really, the faster the access the better! ...of course, we don't all get to pick and choose our budgets though :)

As for the AVCHD, you could always create high res versions in FCP to create new masters to use however you want to in AVID. Also, if you do go the AMA route, you can re-link a sequence to the original AMA clips from low res transcodes.

Thing to keep in mind if you do this is that if you low res AMA transcoded media goes offline for some reason, it is tricky getting it back on-line, as there is no real (that i know of) connection between the two, so if you just re-transcode from the AMA media it won't make the missing media come online again as its created an entirely new clip. You may be able to select transcoded media and batch import it, but i think you have to specify which clip to link it to as, as its transcoded material, it has no memory of an external link...so if lots of stuff goes offline this can be a bit of a pest having to do it manually one by one.....