Having undertaken a long stream of media organizing projects for myself and
others I can offer:
- consider the future of your work and the data you generate. Portability
may be key: if you're locked in to a certain app, and your needs change or
the app ceases to be developed 10 years from now, that may be a painful
experience. At the least, make sure you can export your tables.
- Will descriptions be stored in an external database, or in the files
themselves?
- Consider maintenance and how the library will (or won't if that's the
case) over time
- Consider simplicity
Personally, I'm a big fan of standardized embedded metadata. However, it
doesn't exist or isn't mature and supported for every format, and the tools
may not be free or cheap. For uncompressed audio, it's Broadcast WAV BEXT.
Personally I use (and really this only relates to sound, not images or
video)
Storage: All media stored as files on drives (i.e. not residing internally
to databases) sync'd to back up drived using rsync (unix) scripts
Databasing: Soundminer for audio. Various custom Filemaker Pro databases.
Metadata: All audio metadata is embedded into the files. Additionally,
when designing databases I view the file's path (location in folders /
subfolders) as a form of metadata, and a simple way of gathering and
generating information about your files, simply by placing them in certain
folders. For instance, sounds in a folder called "Burma Trip" would have
the words "Burma" and "Trip" added to their keywords. Lately, I'm using
long filenames (up to 255 characters) to contain descriptions. (there are
caveats to this approach - notably that some filesystems don't handle long
filenames.)
Some of the others' suggestions are great! Ultimately, it's whatever works
for you, and in my experience it can take an iterative process of
approaching and adjusting to develop your best system.
my inflation adjusted US$.02
-jeremiah
(cross posted)
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 8:03 AM, Andy Wilson <> wrote:
> greg
>
> some of the high-end audio editors include such audio database (actually
> more cataloguing) facilities - I know that Wavelab does, for example, as
> that what I use.
>
> a
>
>
> Greg Simmons wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'm looking for a media database that will allow me to catalogue all
> > of my sound recordings and their related images and so on. Over the
> > past few years I have collected many recordings from Nepal, Tibet,
> > India, Borneo and Australia, along with zillions of accompanying
> > photos and some video footage.
> >
> > I'm looking for something that I can type, for example, "tibetan nuns
> > chanting" and up will come all of my sound recordings of Tibetan nuns
> > singing/chanting, along with any pictures/videos that I might have
> > taken (or otherwise collected), and anything else related to the
> > recordings. It would all be accessible from within the database
> > without requiring me to delve into folders or manually launching other
> > apps. So for the search example above, the sound recordings could be
> > auditioned directly by clicking on them, the pictures would be
> > thumbnails that could be clicked on to view full size, and so on.
> >
> > I realise I'd have to do much of the initial indexing, creating key
> > words and so on, but that's unavoidable.
> >
> > From what I can tell, this is known as Digital Asset Management (DAM).
> > I have found many apps that do it, but most are either designed for
> > corporate/network use (and thereby expensive, requiring dedicated
> > servers and so on) or are focused almost entirely on photographic and
> > video use.
> >
> > Does anyone here have any recommendations based on personal experience?
> >
> > - Greg Simmons
> >
> > P.S. I'm also posting this on the phonography list, sorry!
> >
> >
>
> --
>
> [][][] Andy Wilson | Mob: +44 (0)7739 908 253
> [][] Managing Director | Tel: +44 (0)20 7729 7060
> [] [] LShift Ltd | Web: http://www.lshift.net
>
>
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jeremiah moore | SOUND |
http://www.jeremiahmoore.com/ professional site and reel
http://babyjane.com/timeweb/ personal site
http://northstation.net/ music project
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