Simple MAM - Post Production

AXLE - Affordable Post MAM for all?
I have long been looking for a cost effective MAM that can help in the day to day running of a Post House. But sadly most of the time this means a complex set up with various servers and worker nodes to allow the creation of proxy files and the like.

Axle, with the announcement of its Axle 2014 Pro software, increases the functionality of this simple MAM by enabling the ability to index Avid Media.
Armed with an i5 Mac Mini and a demo license from Axle I built a demo system and here are some of the points I have found with the system and little gotya's.

Installation
Axle
This was easy to do but you do need to buy and install Episode Engine to use Axle with Avid media and so this is an extra cost you have to be aware of. Also something that's NOT mentioned is that you will also need to download and install the latest Free Avid QuickTime Codecs else the transcode engine would work for Avid Media. I was also using beta build software and was lucky enough to have lots of versions supplied to address issues as and when they arose.

Episode Engine
This was straight forward enough and again if needed you can download a demo version of the software for 30 days to trial it. Its worth noting that you also need to download and install the h264 option as well (which is free) as Axle uses this to create the proxy files.
Axle can supply there Gear system that has a separate encoder instead of co hosting on the Axle server which is highly recommended!

Documentation
As this version is new out the documentation is a little sketchy and there are some areas that are a little thin on the ground but I'm sure this will be addressed soon.

Over all, the system offers a flexible MAM that allows you access to your media via a simple web browser interface, including your Avid media in proxy form, . Added benefits are the ability to archive (to NAS storage) media as well being able to adopt a very usable system at a start price of $5000 or so?

I'd wait a little to see what happens but they should be releasing the gold version of the Pro build now.

As I progress with my tests I'll post more here.  

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