This setting affects the playback quality of the proxy media, so depending on your computer’s RAM and graphics card, choosing Full may impact how smoothly your footage plays. Under the Linked Source Scaling/Quality drop down menu, I generally choose Half (Best Quality), but you can choose whatever you’d like. In most cases, you’ll want to select the “Keep source’s frame rate” option so that you don’t have any issues relinking back to the high-resolution media. Under Target Video Resolution, select DNxHR LB, which is a low bandwidth, lightweight codec. In this example, I’m working with 4K RED files. 1/4 is usually a good choice (and allows us to best take advantage of the timeline’s proxy mode, explained later on), though it will depend on what frame size you’re starting with.
This will determine the frame size of your proxy media. Once you’ve selected your target drive, choose an option under the Raster Dimensions drop down menu. You can always copy your proxy media to a different drive later if you change your mind. But if you don’t have a separate drive available, or are transcoding for performance rather than portability, you can transcode to the same drive as your source media. That way, I can easily take my portable drive with me. I prefer to transcode directly to a portable drive so that my source media and proxy media are in separate places. If you’re not sure if you’ve already installed a specific plugin, you can check by opening the Project Window (⌘9) and clicking the Info Tab. You can find a list of downloadable plugins on Avid’s AMA page.
Though a few standard plugins come bundled with Avid, like one for Quicktime Media sources, most have to be installed manually, which allows camera manufacturers to update them with each new camera release.
Installing AMA Pluginsīefore we can actually link media, we need to download and install the correct AMA plugin for our source media. In some cases, linking also provides more control over your media, like with RED footage, where linking with AMA allows you to access and edit color profiles for the raw media. When working with high-resolution camera media, it’s generally best practice to maintain the original folder structure, especially if you’ll be color correcting in another application like DaVinci Resolve.
Importing source media creates new MXF files that are placed and managed within the Avid MediaFiles folder, on whichever drive you’ve specified in your Import Settings, and does not maintain original file and folder structures.