Hi,
Very interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing. I have been digging down my sound
library in the last few months, working with metadatas. A lot of websurfing
and
programs experimentation and I am still figuring out the easiest way to go.
Here are few discoveries and impressions I have done so far.
As Rob mentionned, Tim Prebble sorted out the entire program list in the
previous email, another one of interest is:
http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/you-and-your-metadata
Soundminer V4 Pro is very interesting. The more I learn the tricks to play
with
batch Metadata, the more I see it being flexible, but it does not do
everything. It can be quite dangerous if you hit the wrong keystroke.
Filename
corruption problem. It can be fix on the Finder. There are many ways to do
the
metadata changes in SM. There are few tricks I got doing it. Search engine
is
very good, fast.
When you start describing a sound with words, beside writing it or pasting it
from an other, you could have a predefined list of choices of categories,
seasons, species, descriptions, perspective, emotions, particularities, sound
properties that we could use in the futur searches. I recently started to list
down all the words we commonly use in sound Description, I already have 600. I
will eventually end up with a definition and a translation. Some sort of
automatic category build with keywords. I read few studies very interesting
about that (look at links at the bottom) The use of synonyms and other search
criterias help drastically when it's time to find the right sound fast. This
could theorically be done exporting the text file and do it outside the SM box
but how? Many new experiments ahead...
On the soundminer site, they strongly suggest to get a text editor, Text
Wrangler I understand why, SM only accepts a specific TXT. Wave Agent is
doing
what it is suppose to, play but you don't have access to the Description Field.
You can use the Notes field (here) and then copy it to Description in SM,
another turnaround. I discovered RNAME. for batch renaming. Simple. I also
needed some kind of Interleaver because if the soundfiles are Multiple Mono
Files without the .L .R setting, SM does not recognise them as being a stereo
file. In SM, You have to write every soundfile with the .L .R, it can become
long. Once recognise as a stereo or multiple track sound, SM can easily
Interleave in batch. I am still looking for something to batch link the files
together without going through that process. As an alternative to SM I tried
BWF MetaEdit, free and MAC and PC. It is working but has few bugs, nothing
automatic, nothing batch, no player but a plain editable list, simple. A
combination of Wave Agent and BWF MetaEdit is the cheapest way to go. There is
AudioFinder, Snapper 2, they need OS 10.5 and up, I am still 10.4, grrrr. I
did
not try those.
You will see that it's a lot of learning and time to properly catalog your
sound
library but it will eventualy payback every dime and more when you will search
for something and find it in seconds. You take time now that will save you
time
everyday after.
Martin Pinsonnault
other links of interest:
Dictionnary:
http://www.onelook.com/?w=roar&ls=a
Tips and Tricks Soundminer V4Pro:
http://www.soundminer.com/assets/v4pro_MetadataTips.mov
Words and Sounds research Taxonomy of Sounds:
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asmp/2010/654914.html#B13
https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/k808q52528254084/resource-secured/?target=fulltext.pdf&sid=s4osilnkwnh2faf1yfgnw52u&sh=www.springerlink.com>
The subject of Taxonomy of sounds is an interesting subject to explore.
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