Hi,

     I'm working on a shoot where an ALE was created with tons of camera metadata that will possibly be used by VFX.  However, there was no DIT on the shoot and no transcodes were done.  So, I will have to transcode the material.  I can't relink the files to the ALE.  So don't know how to make use of all the metadata in the ALE.  Michael Phillips, on Creative Cow said that an ALE merge could be done.  However, I don't really have any clue what he's talking about.  I looked it up in the manual and there's no mention of an ALE merge.  There are mentions on the net, but no explanation of how to do the procedure.

     This is what Michael said on Creative Cow (but I can't follow it at all)

"You can do a "merge ALE" into your AMA clips. In order for that to work, TAPE, START and END to match exactly. When using AMA, there is no value in the TAPE field, and source ID is being tracked in the SOURCE FILE column. In the ALE, edit the TAPE name in the "column" section of the ALE to "Source File" and the merge should work the same way."

      Can anyone tell me how to use the ALE with the AMA files?

Just figured out how to do this, primarily through an entry in Steve Hullfish's Avid book.  Basically, you highlight your AMA clips in a bin that matches the ALE file.  Then go file>import.  Click on the "options" tab in the dialog box that opens up.  In the Shot Log tab, select "Merge events with known master clips".  Then your ALE data will be merged with your AMA clips.  Sometimes you may get errors and only some of the data will be merged.