Subject:How does Media Manager tag loops.

Posted by: knowbody

Date:1/8/2005 6:05:26 PM

Well I'm back again with more questions about the Media Manager. I had a hard drive failure and as a result I need to reinstall my entire loop collection. I thought I would start with the non Sony Loop Series loops and tag them first. I have the Media Manger Options set to create tags automatically from the file and folder names. My question relates to this. Does Media Manger have built in criteria for deciding how to create tags from file names? For example I have a file named Metal snyth Bell. Media Manger tagged this as 'metal' but ignored 'synth' and 'bell'. The reason I'm asking is that by chance I discovered that these metal tags show up as a subcategory of the rock genre but they are really SFX One Shots. If I added some rock metal loops would these end up with the same tag? Not very useful. Perhaps I should be doing all the tagging by hand? Those people who are using the media manager how are you using it with non Sony Loops. Feedback on all this would be appreciated.

All the best,

Chris

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: jwf

Date:1/10/2005 11:21:26 AM

When the option "use file and folder names to apply tags automatically" is enabled, the Media Manager splits the complete file path into chunks based on the \ character. It then checks to see if any of the chunks start with the same name as a tag (case insensitive compare). If there is a match, the tag is then associated with that file.

For example, if you had a tag named "Funky" and then you had some loops in a folder named "Funky Riffs" then the Funky tag would be applied to every loop in that folder during the scan.

In your case I'm guessing the Metal genre tag matched because your file name starts with metal.

This feature is handy if you already have your loops loosely categorized in some sort of folder hierarchy. By creating tags with the names of the folders BEFORE you scan, you can end up with fully tagged files reflecting that categorization. Then you can expand out from there by hand tagging in another category dimension (by mood instead of instrument for example).

The true value of the Media Manager is that it lets you categorize in multiple dimensions/facets without forcing you to duplicate files. You can look for loops based on many critera at once vs. the file system which lets you only organize by one criteria (whatever you named your folder hierarchy after).

For more powerful auto-tagging during file scanning there is an unsupported AutoTagPatterns.xml file that will be in your My Documents\Sony Media Libraries folder. Using it you can associate multiple "regular expressions" with any tag. Each regular expression is evaluated against the full path name and each path chunk and if there is a match, the associated tag is applied to the file. However, regular expression syntax is very difficult so modifying this file is unsupported. It would only be worth pursuing if you had a huge library of audio files that were named/organized in a very consistent, specific way.

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: knowbody

Date:1/11/2005 6:22:44 PM

Thanks for the reply.. So if I got your post correctly, if I have two tags one called 'bell' and the other 'metal' and I scan a file called "Bell - metal" , then the tag bell will be added to the file automatically, but not the tag metal?

Cheers,

Chris

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: jwf

Date:1/12/2005 8:56:26 AM

Correct (as long as the option is enabled).

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: knowbody

Date:1/13/2005 4:32:42 PM

Thanks, this means it is worthwhile considering renaming loops before actually scanning them. I see the process as:

1. Thinking of a tagging structure.

2. Deciding on a method to physically store loops, taking care to name folders according to the structure used. In the past I've always stored loops according to the physical media they came on.

3. Renaming loops according to the feature that is most important about them.

4. Scanning them to produce automatic tags.

5. Backing up the tag database and ideally the physical loops.

Have I missed anything?

The one disadvantage I see is that if I rename loops and then try to open up an old Acid Project Acid won't be able to find the loops. I'd really like to see improved searching options for Acid when it is attempting to open an old project and can't find the media.

Chris

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: SonySCS

Date:1/14/2005 1:54:30 PM

I wouldn't go through renaming loops. Depending on how much you want to use your current structure, here are a few suggestions to work within the structure while still setting up a tag tree. You can move things around the tag tree at any time.

1. Rename tags:
Create 2 tags, "Bell" and "bell - metal" (no quotes)
Scan your folders. The files will have two tags (bell and bell-metal)
Now, edit the tag "Bell - metal" to just plain "Metal" (again drop the quotes).
Refresh the library and the files still have two tags, only now they're named Bell and Metal.

2. Isolate and tag:
Create 2 tags Bell and Metal
Scan your folders and you’ll get all the bells.
Check off Bells in the tag tree: this will isolate all the files with tag = bells.
Go through the list manually and add Metal tag to all the relevant ones.

3. Let ACID do some of the work:
Don't manually look at the names, let Quick or Advance Search do it for you.
Search on the name "Bell – metal” (quotes will limit it to just this) or even just Metal.
All the bell – metals will be found by ACID
Just tag that subset
This seems especially helpful when you have 3000 files and you want to find the 7 with metal in their names – you don’t have to go through them all.

4. Just a start, there are bound to be others.

Also: I’m using names as an example. Try Path, date/time stamp, one shot, wav, IDM…whatever makes sense.

-Suzan

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: knowbody

Date:1/14/2005 4:23:34 PM

Thanks Suzan,

The Sony Loops are for the most part usefully named but the Creative Sounds loops, for example, have very unuseful names like, 23_03_05.wav. I was thinking of renaming those.

I like your first suggestion the best. Option 2 is more labour intensive and I don't think option 3 works as well as it should. At the moment the Advanced Tag doesn't allow me to search exactly on a term. Searching on bell (without quotes) yields the same result as searching on "Bell" (with quotes). I get any file with bell in the name. There should be a way to just retrieve all files named bell exactly. Bell?? should retrieve all files of six letters long with the first four letters spelling bell. It doesn't seem to work that way. I don't think the advanced name tag is as useful as it could be.

Chris

Subject:RE: How does Media Manager tag loops.

Reply by: feralfighter

Date:8/13/2005 3:33:30 AM

Hi,

I have just purchased Acid Pro 5 and I organized all my loops with folders that correspond with the tags. For example, Acid Pro 5 has a Genre as "Cinematic", so I created a folder called "Cinematic". Within Cinematic, I have a folder called "Shows" and I created a sub-tag from "Cinematic" to be called "Shows." Some of my loops were not from shows, so I left them in "Cinematic". When I scanned my loops, I turned on the "Use file and folder names to apply tags automatically" option. After the scan finished, I clicked on the Genre "Cinematic", but all I could see was the loops under "Shows." Can anyone help me with this?

Here is a little diagram to clear things up:

ACID > Loops > Cinematic (1) > Shows (1)

- There is one loop in "Cinematic"
- There is one loop in "Shows"

- After scanning in Media Manager, the only loop that shows up in the "Cinematic" Genre is the one loop in "Shows"

Ravi