Ez is repeating himself---I will withold judgement on the media manager until I start and finish a major project that I am ready to edit.

I like the Media Manager. No crashes so far and it resolves an issue I've been screaming about since 3.

News Flash: if you're having problems with it, turn it off.

- jim

I will say this with regards to media manager. It is heaven sent. I have officially shelved my Avid, which was the only reason I was still using it. I have not had any problems with media manager and I have no fears of security risks. It works and it works very well.

Marty, don't keep on about MYSQL. It's not what they're using and you paint yourself as a crackpot when you're not.

You can turn the media manager off if you don't like it.

Rob Mack

Hey, I'd like to use it if the demo would stop locking up when I launch it. If I reboot it will load till it gets to the point that it starts the media manager then it locks up. I have ZoneAlarm installed could this be the problem? Also how do you turn off the media manager if you can't launch Vegas?

People that don't know how to manage their media or any of their files for that matter outside of Vegas in my book haven't even mastered basic Windows skills.

Hint: #1 I number my graphic files in the 100's of thousands. Never had and never will have any trouble managing them OUTSIDE of Vegas.

Hint #2 A video editor isn't suppose to be a database

Hint #3 Those that are oblivious to Windows Security risks probably never visited the newsgroup appropriately named alt.hackers.malicious

With Zonealarm you can allow all the Vegas parts to launch just this once and then turn off the media manager. I think it's a checkbox at the bottom of the general prefs tab.

I don't know this for a fact but I expect that Vegas is communicating with the sql server over a tcp port, so if you block it on the local interface then it can't communicate at all.

Rob Mack

"Hint #3 Those that are oblivious to Windows Security risks probably never visited the newsgroup appropriately named alt.hackers.malicious"

Perhaps us oblvious ones know how to protect our systems or dont have a net connection o a production box. Maybe thats why we are oblivious.

People can't hack into a computer that isn't connected to the internet. I do video for a living and my editng machine rarely if ever gets connected except for instances of software registration.

The media manager, I believe, should be used on a project by project basis for quickly finding close up shots, medium shots, whatever other shots you need.

This media manager, if mxf gets supported soon, would mean that in terms of xdcam I could even cut PDZ1 out of the chain when on location due to its ability to add metadata to clips. If it would read the metadata from mxf files that again would be brilliant as all clips marked as good takes during a shoot would be instantly accessible.

OK
here is part opf my problem I have 6 USB SmartMedia devices installed on my system.
If I disable these things seem better, not great, better.
best wishes,
marty

I don't get what's the big deal about MSSQL. Microsoft has had a disclaimer since Win95, right in the manual, that says straight out it is an insecure platform. They SAY this. They also have Outlook default to loading messages into the preview pain (which is a no-no), had no plans to release a more secure version of IE for at least another year (how long have we been on v6 for now?), Windows user restrictions have no impact when a Unix based copmuter access it (Unix/Linux gets FULL system access to a Windows HD)... the list goes on.

Does anyone expect them NOT to say their software is a security flaw in itself anymore? And if it was as big a deal as you're saying they make it sound, it should of been pulled off the market & never used anymore.

But obiviously MS thinks that it's no problem selling software they don't recomend (it's the company ideology).

A couple of things regarding this thread --

Marty - what gets better when you disconnect Smart Card readers (USB) ?
And when you say you have 6 - do you mean one of those multi-card readers on one USB port - or literally 6 diff. usb inputs?

And I have to agree with BillyBob - so far, no Media Manager or built in browser (even Photoshops halfway decent one) has fully implemented or replaced the Windows Explorer functionallity that I find essential to good file management - I always have one or two open when working anyway so as to perform tasks that none of the others can perform - so in general I find it easier to just use it for all file management. With Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player (or other) and the Vegas Explorer I can accomplish all I need.
Furthemore , having tried Media Manager in both Acid and Vegas, they are a bust as far as I am concerned - I didn't let it do a full scan of any of my drives and it still ate up so much ram that I had to close Vegas one time, and fully reboot another time to get it back to normal.
Maybe I am doing something wrong but given what I said in the previous paragraph I am giving up on it - it is not why I upgraded anyway

If you are really unhappy with it you can also disable one or both of these services:
SQLAgentSONY_MEDIAMGR or MSSQL$SONY_MEDIAMGR one of these might be for ACID I believe - I had to do this once to retrieve some ram

David

Well, if you're an Acid user then you already got a glimpse of the Vegas media manager. I agree, I've been managing my media successfully using Windows since I've been using a PC. This is Sony's new break through technology. You know Sony's design strategy for their new releases 1. Some overdue features, 2. Improve on old feature and work enhancements 3. Followed by things no one expected that nobody else does.

Well the Media manager falls into that 3rd category. Maybe I'm just not getting it, maybe it's one of those features I'll eventually grow to love?

The good thing is you can choose to turn it OFF. How about that? Pay for an upgrade so you can turn the new features off, because they're an annoyance? Now wouldn't it be nice if we had a similar switch to turn features ON falling into category #1? I sure wish I had a switch to turn ON Rewire. I guess I only have the big switch which is to turn the entire Version 6 OFF. Enjoy the new release.

You know, a program eating up RAM isn't necessarly a bad thing. I've got a program that prefers physical ram to a swap file & it normally leaves me with 10mb physcial ram left. Vegas & it open at the same time have no noticable slowdown. Even with a web brower (multiple instances) I don't notice a slowdown with almost no ram.

If ram wasn't meant to be used then we wouldn't buy it. We'd still be using 640k because everybody would prefer a swap file then using up that 512mb/1gb/4gb of ram they've got in their system. Makes no sence to me.

|If ram wasn't meant to be used then we wouldn't buy it. We'd still be using 640k because everybody would prefer a swap file then using up that 512mb/1gb/4gb of ram they've got in their system. Makes no sence to me."

Reminds me of something Bill Gates once said. "What on the earth would someone need a meg of ram for? No one will ever need a meg of RAM in our life time."

And besides - one of the things I always appreciated about Sonic Foundry stuff (oophs - Sony) - is it's low profile when opened. So what is 10MBs extra ram you ask, my friend -- the machine starts slowing down way before that. I like (need) to keep other apps open as well, i.e. Photoshop - a real memory hog. Without Media Manager I can keep Photoshop, multiple instances of Vegas, and DVDA open - no prob... Media Manager trashes the whole flow .. And this is definitely not to denigrate those who have all these video clips for which Media Manager proves useful - just not my thing

When a lot of RAM is used for "media management" then there is that much less RAM to run Vegas or anything else. Databases that create thumbnails can be memory hogs. I haven't downloaded V6 so I don't know if Vegas has overcome this hang-up. If not, then it seems media management is self-defeating unless you have a small number of files to manage is which cause memory management within Vegas really becomes redundant.

I kind of get some satisifcation since I told you so, that already those wishing for media management in less than 24 hours are already suggesting turn it off, which begs the question since this is one of the big ticket items, then why upgrade?

For those that have used it are all you getting is cute little thumbnails or is it searchable by keyword and does have anything else useful?

"...have anything else useful?"

Nobody noticed the AUDIO side of MM?
If you have Loops for Acid, Sound FXs, music beds, etc., wouldn't you like to just search for specific sounds instead of going through all your media?
Seems to me that it would increase productivity quite a bit, no?

Mario

"wouldn't you like to just search for specific sounds instead of going through all your media?"

Uhhh..that's why there's folders in Windows.

Parent Folder=Sound FX's
Sub Folder 1= Gun Shots
Sub Folder 2= Shot Guns
File Names, Loud_close_Firing_SG.WAV, Shell_PumpLoad.WAV, etc.
Click on file in Explorer window to audition. You like it? Add it to the media pool, no need to have a 5000 files in the media pool view you're not using.

Really is it that hard, where you have files scattered all over your hard drives? If you do then you should be more concerned with performance issues, like render speeds, and playback stuttering, because you have media files fragmenting every drive, scattered all over on your OS drive, etc.

What I need someone to create a media manager

it's not about where files are stored... Do you have a seperate folder for, say, animal sounds? Do you duplicate those sound files if they fit in another folder such as scarry sounds? No, that would be just crazy.

That's where media managment comes in. I've got 6,632 loops & SFX. All sorted into folders. However, when I'm looping for a heavy metal like loop, I don't have a folder for that. The loops are sorted by pack or instrument or type of SFX. I have to go through each loop/sfx to find what I want. But, if I wanted, I could tag certain loops "heavy metal", search for that tag and I've gotten all the loops that I want w/o using the others.

Someone already created a media manager. Windows Explore. It's manages where things go.

I agree with BB: people wanted this & now nobody is happy with it. I'm the person why said "who cares." :)

My audio files aren't scattered all over the hard-drives.
I have about 22,000 Acid Loops. Like you it's set up like a pyramid.
For me though, MM speeds up the finding process when putting together an Acid project.
I rarely use the Explorer window in Acid anymore to look for my loops.
I would think V6's MM would help when it comes time for the soundtrack for a project.

Mario

Using windows explorer doesn't really answer the need that sometimes u know what u want and just can't remember where it is? Sometimes those who have thousands of files, some of which named the same eg. drum loop, or christmas video may like the ability to just get a file, not explore for a file. Even if organised in folders, some folders can contain thousands of files... shotgun not auditioning every file.

Having scattered files all over you system makes no differnce to fragmentation. i can have thousands of loops on different drives and sometimes in the wrong folder and still have a defragmented box.

Some of us do not have terrabytes or raid setups to allow for tens of gigabytes of sample sounds or video or even captured video files to be on the same drive. I think this new media manager is a step forward, at first i wanted to turn it off, but little things u learn like dragging tags to the file have answered my gripe about what to do with untagged files and not wanting to go through each and typing in what it is.

Search functionality is gonna revolutionise our desktop, not just in vegas. Google has done it, apple has done it, windows is next and vegas will be ready to implement it.