i have lived in hope from the introduction of hdv that andreas winter, creator of scenalyzer would rewrite for mpg...

obviously dealing with mpg isn't that easy. pity cause nothing matched scenalyser EVER!

At one of the recent NABs SCS were demoing a 3rd party asset management tool that worked with Vegas and other NLEs, whatever happened to that?

Bob.

Nick, I with you on this. A while ago I submitted a list of needed MM improvements to SCS but it seems to be pretty much orphaned.

/jerry

There's a killer media management app just begging to be written by some bright spark. Big hole in the market. Or even a Vegas add-on.

ushere, Scenalyzer was an amazing app, and brilliant for browsing and previewing videos. It didn't do any media management as such, but programmers would do well to imitate its clip viewing capabilities.

farss, I had a look into that and from what I found it was seriously big bucks and not for most of us.

There's really a big niche here for one of the add-on gurus to jump in and fill the hole that SCS is leaving open. Any of you guys at VASST or Vegasaur etc. know much about databases? Vegas Project Media integration would be nice, but even a decent standalone app would be a start, as long as clips could be dragged into Vegas from it.

I agree. A working Media Manager would be a great asset. I had MM working on one of the previous versions, and before we really learned how to make good use of it, it quit working.
I have been unable to make it work since VP9 and I'm not interested in some of the steps in the "suggestions" to make it work.
The idea of tagging clips and being able to find and retrieve them based on those tags holds a lot of appeal.

I posted my request for a major update to the Project Media Window and/or MM here :

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=778044&Replies=25

I have abandoned the completely inadequate Project Media Window in favor of just using Windows to preview and add assets to the timeline....

Thanks Nick. I figured out the permissions thing too. I needed to give myself permissions on the second computer and now I can open the library on both machines.

What about Adobe Bridge? I haven't explored what it can do yet.

rocky

TeeTime, I'm not sure what you consider to be a Media Management app, but I created something that I believe falls into this category; and it's free for anyone to use.

Timeline Tools is my first Sony Vegas Pro Command Extension Utility. Extensions are a more powerful version of Scripting that Sony made available to developers that extend and enhance the built-in editing capability of Sony Vegas Pro. Extension support was introduced starting with Sony Vegas Pro version 8.0.

Timeline Tools provides a set of editing features that makes working with Vegas Events, Media, Markers, Envelopes, Points, Plug-Ins and Groups a snap. This package is stuffed with many hard-to-find scripting features that Vegas users could spend hours searching for. Timeline Tools has been tested and works with both 32 and 64 bit Sony Vegas Pro, versions 8.x, 9.x, and 10.x.

http://www.nfatoys.com/moasoftwarellc/

Give it a try, it might be close to what you're looking for. And after you have had some time playing with all of it's features, send me an email and let me know what you think.

Gary ...

"TeeTime, I'm not sure what..."Ha, wrong Jerry, I believe. Over in the Scripting forum - Vegas Pro Extension Design, I suggested Gary might want to take a look at this thread because of the excellent work he did on on "Timeline Tools" and that it appeared to me that a new and improved version of the Vegas Media Manager would could be developed as a "Vegas Extension"

The Vegas Media Manger "...maintains a database of your media, including file attributes, ACID metadata, and tags that you can assign to classify your media."

My thoughts were that given a knowledge of Visual Studio, .NET, C#, Vegas Extensions, and MS SQL, one could have all the tools needed to create a new-and-improved Media Manager (I could be wrong).

Sorry if I created confusion.
...(the other) Jerry

I have started using Lightroom 3 for videos. Pretty basic functionality, but easier than MM IMO.

Xander, can you describe your LR3 workflow with Vegas? I currently use LR2 and would upgrade to 3 if this is a viable alternative to MM.

/jerry

LR3 does not integrate directly with Vegas at all. I use LR3 simply to search for videos and/or pictures. Once I have them selected, I will export to a folder, which what I then import into Vegas.

LR3 is designed primarily for stills so it is integrated into Photoshop well if editing is needed. That is not the case for video. I only use LR3 to add tags to videos to make them searchable within the larger catalog.

Don't underestimate Windows Live Photogallery. It's has unlimited tagging and search possibilities and can catalog and index in the background. It has the plus of integrating tightly with Windows, too. It is pretty robust existing on msSQL. It handles both video and photos. Handles raw files with plugins. I'd check to make sure it can digest your video files, but handles the basics. Stuff can be dropped directly on the Vegas timeline, something Lightroom can't do.

And did I say: it's free.

monoparadox, that's a very interesting tip indeed. Sadly no XP support though. Would love to know if it can quickly preview HDV / AVCHD / MOV files and show thumbnails for those.

The big problem would not be the database implementation..
Integrating it somehow into Vegas is going to be the challenge. Even Nick's simple request of being able to drag an asset from the database window onto the T/L could be quite a thing.

One person who might be able to get some traction on this is Randall Campbell from Peachrock Production whose been writing the Veggie Toolkit for over a decade. That Vegas automation tool does use a database to handle render queues and does dig fairly deep into Vegas itself.

Bob.

Directory Opus is a windows explorer replacement. Excellent search and preview features and much more. Just drag items to the time line.

Photogallery at least handles avi, mpg, mov, mp4, m2ts,vob. with preview, thumbnail support and dragability to the Vegas timeline.

It does not handle audio files.

This is a bit OT, but one of these days I'd like to hear how you organise your files, Nick. I suspect your library has parallels with mine (i.e. mostly animal based), so do you file things taxonomically, by trip/location or by habitat?

crocdoc, I do it by location and also taxonomically, as well as a few other tags.

First of all I have the scientific name, common name, location, and shot all contained in the path and filename, like this:

E:\barracuda\Sphyraena jello-pickhandle-barracuda\BLRbarracuda-pickhandle7a.m2t

E:\ is my 1Gb drive that has my whole archive.
"barracuda" is the genus common name.
"Sphyraena jello" is the genus and species name.
"pickhandle barracuda" is the common name.
"BLR" is my location code (in this case "Black Rock").
"7a" - means first shot of my 7th sequence of that subject.

As for how I organise things in Media Manager, a couple of pictures tell a thousand words.

Media Manager 1
Media Manager 2

The first picture shows the tag structure up to "Species", and the 2nd picture shows more of how the species tags are organised, along with the miscellaneous extra tags I have under ""Subject"

I keep the species just 1 level deep (except for Anthozoans, which have ended up an extra level deep). For convenience the hierarchy in MM matches the file structure hierarchy, and the MM species tag matches the folder name.

I am still a novice with Media Manager, so the way I have things organised might not be the best way in the long run. One specific thing I haven't done yet is to "Save tags and properties to files". I'm a little nervous with that and want everything to settle down before I do it. Is it undo-able? Can it be updated? Is it dangerous? I would be interested in others' experiences with that.

"a couple of pictures tell a thousand words."

I think that might be unfair to the "catch phrase" when the pictures actually contain a thousand words. :-)

Thanks very much for that insight, Nick! It's always interesting to see how other people sort out their animal-related media and I figured you'd have a huge library. I started off with a tape based system, so all of my files were named by tape and in the folders for that particular tape (just in case I had to recapture the tape, for some reason), and all of my cataloging was done in MM.

Then I went through a period of not being able to access MM (I eventually got it to work again by uninstalling/reinstalling all of my Sony products), but that loss, and a change to a non-tape-based system caused me to change my cataloging style. Now I tend to sort my files physically (in a structured hierarchy of folders) as well as in MM. My main hierarchy is taxonomy based and many layers deep (starting with vertebrate/invertebrate and all of the layers down), probably because for most of the animals I shoot locale is less important than what it is - i.e. I'm more inclined to put together videos of a particular species or group of animals than of a specific trip.

Good point, pixelstuf lol

By the way I've re-purposed the tape name field as the code number of the clip that the stock footage house is using.