Hello - I am a PC-based Avid Media Composer editor here and my team and I are in desperate need of metadata when importing files from Basehead (we're currently using the ctrl click + drop into a bin method). Avid MC does not retain any metadata whatsoever when importing audio, regardless of file type. (In case anyone here is familiar with MC and suggests AMA-linking, the option to AMA-link audio and transcode to MXF for the sake of metadata-retention is not feasible, arduous and would slow down anyone's workflow drastically. Especially for sound design.)
Is it possible to implement support for Avid MC via AAF export so audio is transferred as MXF files into a designated AvidMedia Files > MXF > 1 [ or any pre-set folder name containing numbers] and the AAF is dropped into a bin allowing Avid to read and open the files and their associated metadata?
The only other sound library search platform I've been told supports MC integration via AAF export makes their top-tier products exclusively Mac-based and doesn't look too great in comparison to BH 😉. (Our third-party audio and mix contractors would be ecstatic too to have embedded metadata when we turn over our deliverables.)
My team of editors and producers and I are dealing with a sfx library of around 300k+ files and I am currently using BH before implementing and buying it for company wide use in an NAS/Interplay environment. (While we are in quarantine and working from home -- for what is seemingly going to last for the next few months -- we would all buy individual licenses.)Â
Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide or anything you need that may be helpful.
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Hope you all are staying safe and healthy.
Best,
A happy Basehead Ultra user.
Update on this: We asked for help from the people at Avid on the doing AAF export but they decided to just support BaseHead Metadata directly in an upcoming version instead which makes our life SSooooo much easier and your life faster as you won't have to wait for an AAF object to be created just to translate metadata. This is huge and we will let you know more on this as it progresses 
Not sure if they released the version with BaseHead iXML support yet but I saw the BETA and it's working so I am gonna mark this as resolved. 😉
ANOTHER UPDATE: Actually just talked to Avid and the BH reading iXML Metadata version is still not out. Hopefully December or January they said.Â
So we are looking in Media Composer things once again this week. Not because this got one vote only BUT cuz one our biggest user/clients. The big Red N (you can who that is..hehe) has also requested it.....;-)
Anyway....We have reached out to Avid 4 times in the past about Media Composer integration and we never get a straight answer if it's even possible via an API. None of their current SDK's look appropriate for it also.Â
I just got a new NFR from them and can't believe you still can't even drag and drop WAV files directly from and external application to the audio tracks! I would totally slit my wrists using this program....haha
What year is this?? Lol!
We do have some new Avid/MC contacts we got from the big N that we are reaching out to this week.
In the meantime can you post links of videos of that other program doing what you need?
I need to see the EXACT workflow that is desired before I reach out to these again and if another program is doing it I have some ammo to waive in their face. haha So if you do that it will get this one step closer. 😉
We started MXF support years ago but more important things came up so hopefully we can continue this without much pain.
FYI: the Pro Tools API is 18+ years old so I don't have much hope they even have a proper API for MC but we will check again. Maybe they have something in works finally.
Steve
FYI: we added basic MC support in the latest BETA that add xNOTE: to the from the [description] so it shows in the 'Comments' field in the MC Bin. You can now select 'Media Composer' from the Target App list.
We will be adding AAF export from BH come mid May is the plan so most all the metadata will go across to Media Composer then.
We worked with Avid to get it to read BaseHead iXML metadata as it's more streamlined then the AAF approach. They showed it to me working in BETA months and months ago so hopefully the current release on Media Composer has it in there.
Can anyone confirm this is working in the very latest release of MC? My trial of M.C. is expired.  😉
