Media Manager Problems

RNLVideo wrote on 4/21/2005, 8:08 PM
Trying to get my head around two problems with Media Manager. I'm hopeful that I can get it to run reliably - seems like lots of potential here!

#1: When I search my C drive, Media Manager crashes - I didn't write down the error, but it doesn't occur on my other drives. Is this a case of Media Manager having difficulty when it comes across its own files?

#2: When I point Media Manager at a specific folder ("Projects" in this case) where I know there are hundreds of files (.veg files in this case), it only returns with 21 files found when I search on "File Format" (Vegas Project), "Name" (*.veg) or "File Extension" (.veg). Search results are obviously wrong, but how to I get it to achieve accurate results?

Even without formally tagging, the ability to quickly search on file name based tags from within Vegas is helping w/ productivity - IF - the results are reliable.

Rick

Comments

RNLVideo wrote on 4/22/2005, 3:58 AM
Grr. Another crash while searching an external drive. No messages, just a hung app when I woke up in the morning.
B_JM wrote on 4/22/2005, 7:11 AM
are you running any software firewalls and/or antivirus ?

and if so - what ?

I think I may see a pattern here with mssql based on some other applications that use it ..

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/22/2005, 7:20 AM
You can add veg's to the media mngr? I can't. No option (I still have the origional version off the CD, not the update).

I'm searching my C drive now.. to see what happens. :)

So far I think the media mngr is great. I just wish I had a second monitor hooked up to put that on to alone!
B_JM wrote on 4/22/2005, 7:22 AM
you should be able to drag one in .... that works here
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/22/2005, 2:25 PM
He said he did a search. Nevre thought of a drop/drag.

Well, my C: search crashed @ 93%. :( Not sure why (I started it before I went to work). It could of searched it's own files.

Maybe sony will give us an answer.
vitalforce2 wrote on 4/22/2005, 2:56 PM
Total guess, but the only time my NLE related stuff starts crashing is when I've put an MPEG-2 file on a drive which doesn't have the right properties.
SonySCS wrote on 4/22/2005, 3:03 PM
1. About searching for veg files. Are they being scanned into the library and then not found in the specific searches? Or are they not scanned in and then (naturally) not found on searches?

2. You said you didn't get details with the external drive hang, did you get any crash details with the C drive crash? If you can repro and if here are any details, will you grab them and post them here?

Thanks,

Suzan

RNLVideo wrote on 4/22/2005, 8:22 PM
Susan -

About #1: Yes - I scanned that drive and then scanned the specific directory containing my .veg files. I know that they are there, but most of them are not found in searches. I haven't confirmed this yet, but it seems like .veg files created in Vegas 4 and Vegas 6 are found in searches while .veg files created in Vegas 5 are not (I'm basing this on the fact that the search produced some of the very first projects I made and all of my V6 projects). Again - I'd need to confirm this more specifically.

About #2: Will do - but it may be a few days. I'm pretty sure I can repro the C drive crash since it's happened every time I try to scan the entire drive.

Rick
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/22/2005, 8:45 PM
I searched my Veg templates folder (contains lots of projects from the vasst site) & it didn't find any of them in he media mngr search. But, there's no veg file type option for me. I have "Audio Video Images Midi" as search choises (all checked).
RNLVideo wrote on 4/22/2005, 10:00 PM
In the "Advanced" area, click on the small green icon (brings up the Search Criteria Chooser). Double click on "File Format". This adds the option to the Advanced criteria. "Unknown" is default; click on this and scroll down to "Vegas Project"; click on it and then click out of the box. Check this box (be sure no others are checked) and see if it finds your .veg files.

Rick
RNLVideo wrote on 4/23/2005, 1:07 PM
B_JM -

No software firewall and I'm running Norton AV.

Rick
jwf wrote on 4/23/2005, 1:14 PM
If you are searching your entire C: drive and are running Windows XP, we have found that there are a few flash files that are down inside c:\windows or c:\winnt that are part of some sort of Windows XP Tour. Those files can give our flash plugin fits and cause some issues (they tend to work, but take forever to scan in and use a ton of memory in the process so as a result they can cause crashes).

Try scanning areas that you know you have media files in, but avoid the actual windows directory.

Dragging and dropping files + folders from Windows Explorer to the media manager pane works nicely also. Sometimes that can be quicker.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/23/2005, 2:22 PM
Ive found that scanning C also includes ALL pic's & sounds from your IE, Mozilla, FireFox, Netscape, etc. cache folders, Windows temp, etc. I had 45,000 things in my media lib thismorning. :(

I'd say scanning the whole C drive is a bad idea because of that.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/23/2005, 2:39 PM
that didn't work for me. :( I ended up drop/dragging them in. That worked. :)

I had to disable auto-preview to tag them (it kept previewing...) Is there a way to tell it not to preview for veg files?
RNLVideo wrote on 4/23/2005, 6:44 PM
I'll have to try the drag / drop. I too got all of my internet cache - I sorted the results by the path and removed them from Media Manager.
RNLVideo wrote on 4/23/2005, 6:47 PM
jwf - Any clue why when I scan my "projects" folder (that I know has hundreds of .veg files in it) that subsequent searches only find a small percentage of those existing .veg files?
jwf wrote on 4/24/2005, 6:22 PM
Try to find a .veg file that opens fine, but is not listed in the media manager (should be easy if you say there are tons of them).

What happens if you create a new empty media library and drag and drop the .veg file onto the media manager pane? Do you see it then?

If you simply try to open the .veg file, do you get any errors or warnings from Vegas 6?

RNLVideo wrote on 4/27/2005, 4:47 AM
JWF - Sorry for the delay (been gone a few days)

I dragged individual .veg files that weren't listed in Media Manager from WIndows Explorer and the explorer inside Vegas and dropped them in - in both instances, they now show up in "file format" searches in Media Manager. When dropping one, I got the error "ff6190ce-93da-4877-a397-a5ae2fa47c9b - Transition". This particular .veg was one that I downloaded from VASST, so it could have something in it that I don't have on my machine.

I selected multiple .veg files in Windows Explorer and dropped them in. They all now appear when searching Media Manager.

Last, I dragged my entire "projects" folder from WIndows Explorer into Media Manager. No errors were generated, but the files (other than the ones previously added, recognized & searchable) DO NOT show up in Media Manager searches!

When I dragged a combination of 20 files (mix of .veg and .bak files), they all became searchable - no errors.

When I dragged a combination of 20 files and included .dar files, all of the .veg and .bak files show up when searching for Vegas projects. The .dar files do not show up (expected) and don't show up when using the file extension search (expected).

So - it looks like dragging and dropping is the way to go. I do wish pointing the search tool at a specific folder worked reliably!

Rick
RNLVideo wrote on 4/27/2005, 5:13 AM
One more thing - I selected all of the files in my project folder and dragged them all into Media Manager. The indexing took a long time, the page file use grew to a high of 1.86 GB, and now there are 166 .veg and .bak files that show up when I use the file format search. BUT - not all of the files I selected and dropped show up (I selected a total of 521 objects, about 480 of which are .veg or .bak files).

So - it's still being selective about what it indexes...
jwf wrote on 4/27/2005, 7:45 AM
Thanks for the additional details - very helpful.

The Add Files to Media Library dialog is not including *.veg as a valid extension to search for. This explains the behavior discrepancy between using this dialog to add files to your library vs. the drag and drop behavior. We'll get this resolved in a future update - sorry.

Regarding your file count discrepancy, I think I'm following what you are saying. We may not add some files to the media library - we only add files that we recognize as having an audio or video stream or a still image. e.g. trying to drop MS Word files won't work - we don't add them.

Is it possible that some of the ~40 missing files are .sfk files or .sfl or generally other files that we simply don't support?

If you can find a few specific .veg files or other files that Vegas can open by dragging to the timeline, but are somehow rejected by the Media Manager - we'd like to get those. I can provide you an address to send them to.

The other caveat is that if the .veg file does not have any audio or video tracks in the timeline, we don't add it. The rationale was that we can't decide if the .veg is "audio" or "video" or "still image" media at that point. Could some of the .veg files be explained by this?


RNLVideo wrote on 4/28/2005, 4:52 AM
JWF -

"The Add Files to Media Library dialog is not including *.veg as a valid extension to search for. This explains the behavior discrepancy between using this dialog to add files to your library vs. the drag and drop behavior. We'll get this resolved in a future update - sorry."
- Yes, but it DID find SOME .veg files on the initial searches

"Regarding your file count discrepancy, I think I'm following what you are saying. We may not add some files to the media library - we only add files that we recognize as having an audio or video stream or a still image. e.g. trying to drop MS Word files won't work - we don't add them. Is it possible that some of the ~40 missing files are .sfk files or .sfl or generally other files that we simply don't support?"
- No, it's actually still missing several hundred files when I drop a large quantity of .veg files in (and they are .veg files, not .doc, .sfk, etc)

I'm thinking this boils down more to a resource issue - here's why. When I add .veg files in small quantities or individually, I can't find any that it is rejecting. However, when added in large quantities, it seems to chew up resources (ie page file grows to 1.8+ GB) and then stops processing them. This is separate from the crashes when trying to index the C drive. My machine isn't a powerhouse - 2.26 GHZ P-4 w/ 512 MB of RAM.

Hope that helps!

Rick