Avid AAF export with Smart Relink

Parse the AAF timeline, stream only the clips you need from the cloud.

Watch Sanbila in action

AAF conform against huge archives is painful

Finishing an Avid project against a 30 TB archive usually means copying every MXF back to a local or Nexis drive just so Media Composer can see the media, even though the cut only touches a fraction of it. That restore runs for hours, often overnight, before you can even start the conform, and it has to happen again every time the edit changes. Deep-storage LTO or cloud archives make it worse, because the whole bin has to come back before Avid will relink.

Avid does not need the whole archive back to finish. It only needs the clips actually on the timeline, and it needs them to look like local MXFs.

Binary AAF parsing, targeted streaming

Sanbila ships a native binary AAF parser. It reads the Microsoft Structured Storage (CFB/OLE2) inside your Avid AAF, pulls every referenced clip name out of the UTF-16LE streams, and matches them against your cloud archive in seconds. Smart Relink then streams only those MXF clips from cloud storage over a local mount and switches the timeline clips to them, so Media Composer reads them as native MXFs in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1/ structure and finishes at full resolution. Nothing else comes back: a 30 TB archive conforms by streaming the handful of clips the cut uses, not by restoring the whole thing. The originals stay in the cloud with a redundant backup copy the whole time, so there is no overnight restore and no deep-storage round trip before you finish.

Native AAF parser

A binary CFB/OLE2 reader pulls clip names from the UTF-16LE streams inside an Avid AAF in seconds, no export round trip.

Only the used clips stream

Smart Relink streams just the MXF clips on the timeline from the cloud and switches the timeline to them, nothing else.

Avid reads native MXFs

The streamed MXFs appear in the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1/ structure, so Media Composer links and finishes at full resolution.

No archive restore

Skip the overnight copy from LTO, deep storage or Nexis; the conform pulls only what the cut touches.

Sanbila by the numbers

Real specs from the live Sanbila product, not marketing claims.

NLEs supported (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Avid)

Proxy presets: from 540p H.264 to 1080p DNxHR LB

File formats supported (MP4, MOV, MXF, R3D, BRAW, WAV…)

up to 85%

Less disk space with proxies vs editing on the full-resolution originals

Zero egress fees: stream originals at no extra cost

Parallel cloud connections on macOS (4 on Windows / Linux), 4 MB block cache

Frequently asked questions

How does Sanbila read an Avid AAF?+

It parses the AAF as Microsoft Structured Storage (CFB/OLE2) and reads the clip names from the UTF-16LE streams. That lists every clip in the timeline in seconds, with no export or round trip through another tool.

Does the whole archive have to come back to conform?+

No. Smart Relink streams only the MXF clips the AAF references from the cloud and switches the timeline to them. A 30 TB archive conforms by pulling the handful of clips the cut uses.

Will Avid see the streamed media as native MXFs?+

Yes. The clips stream into the Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1/ structure Media Composer auto-discovers, so it links them as native MXFs and finishes at full resolution.

Do I still need Nexis or an overnight restore to finish?+

No. The originals stay in the cloud with an automatic backup copy, and the conform streams only the used clips, so there is no overnight copy from deep storage or Nexis before you finish.

Conform in minutes, not overnight

Upload the AAF, run Smart Relink, Avid finishes at full resolution.

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