This isn't so much a question as a criticism of the unstable nature of AMA (unless anyone has any helpful suggestions).
This occurance makes me very fearfull of using AMA and points to every other NLE on the market having superior file linking abilities.
I start up Avid and open my AMA linked timeline only to realise the drive containing the footage was accidentally offline. If AMA behaved stabilly, I could just reconnect the drive and restart Avid and all would be linked. However, this doesn't happen. Everything becomes permanently unlinked. Then, I have to go through and try to relink with very mixed results, bit by bit, altering the confusing relink options to get relink "hits" as I call them. Some files relink/others don't with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Then there are innevitably some files which just simply won't relink at all and I have to manually re-edit bits of my show. No other NLE is like this.
All for a simple mistake - opening my timeline without my external hard drive connected, my show is ruined and precious time needs to be spent repairing it. This has caused me to obsessively save copies of my entire project folder throughout the day. A saved copy made before the project was opened without the drive connected will relink, but one opened without the drive is corrupted.
Some will point to the attic. However, when this unlinking happens, it's not just the bin containing the edits that's affected, but every single footage bin as well. So, every single bin must be retrieved from the attic. It can be very confusing if your project is big and old and has many footage bins.
I just don't understand why AMA doesn't work yet. I've spoken to television and feature film editors who say that they simply can't afford to not transcode to Avid managed media for this very reason. However, transcoding takes time and seems redundant in this day and age.
It's almost as though Avid is saying, "We want you to do things the old "Avid way" and just to make sure, we've sabotaged AMA to be flakey to scare you into doing it that way":-)