When it comes to video and it's attendant files I'm pretty compulsive but Vegas seems determined to bring my best laid plans unstuck leaving me with a growing mess.
I'm looking at ultimately acquiring over 300 hours of footage for 100 projects for the one client. Not really a big drama just lots of storage. I need access to all of it. Tapes all numbered and catalogued in my own system. First few projects I do some audio fixing in SF. First problem, all the audio takes are copied into the same folder as the source files. Trying to find the source files is getting hard and I've barely started.
Second problem. Tonight I start going though some of this footage looking for bits to throw a promo together. Dump it all into the trimmer and off I goes. First I try adding it from the trimmer to the T/L and then think this is goingto become a very hard to work with mess, it's not helping me find anything. So I goto Project Media, oh goodie, BINS. Go back to the trimmer, mark I/O points and create a subclip. Yippee, Vegas sticks it into the bin I just created, looking good so far.
Except now Vegas is dumping even MORE damn files of unrecognisable names into the same folder as my source video. Do I feel lucky, can I move these files elsewhere or will it all blow up in my face. And why the heck does Vegas need to create another .sfk file, it's already got one for the media I created the subclip from.
So me thinks, OK, Vegas is pretty smart, its got its own explorer. So I create another folder to throw these files that it needs into. Except Vegas's Explorer will let me try to move the files except then Windows spits the dummy at me. The file is open by another application! Oh yeah, the one that's trying to move the file. One would think Vegas would be smart enough to see what it's trying to do, take the file offline, move it, update the pointer in the project file and put the file back online.
What'e really annoying is these files (the subclips and audio takes) don't have anything in their names that indicates which project they were created out of. So months down the track when a project gets signed off I've no way of knowing if I can delete these files or not.
If you've stuck with my rantings this far then bear with me, there's more. Backing all this stuff up. Simple projects. All I need is the source tape, the Vidcap file and the project and worst case I can recapture from tape and restore everything. Once I get going on this not a pretty thought but doable. Except what about all those audio takes, what about these other files Vegas is scattering around. The audio takes from SF, well yeah, OK, they'd better get backed up too but what about the subclips I'm now creating?
If anyone's got any ideas they'd be much appreciated. I know over the years many have complained about this aspect of Vegas. In the past for me at least it's been manageable. Just tonight I'm seeing first hand what a real limitation it is. For what it's worth I've also got CS3 and it doesn't seem to fare any better in this aspect. If this client had the money and I had the space I'd contemplate leasing an Avid system, I'm told their Unity system eats this kind of thing. Surely something does this better without the expense, grief and power consumption of going to Avid.
Now one final thought. Media Manager. Ignoring all the potential problems that many seem to have with it I'll pretend they don't exist, it will not spit the dummy on me. It can catalogue media, good start. However it's got to be running, it's got to know what I'm doing and if I'm not doing it using MM it's totally blind to what I'm doing. If I start moving files around for various reasons it will not know about that. The more I think about projects of this scope I realise it's probably best handled by a system that hides the entire operating system and that's no small ask.
Bob.
I'm looking at ultimately acquiring over 300 hours of footage for 100 projects for the one client. Not really a big drama just lots of storage. I need access to all of it. Tapes all numbered and catalogued in my own system. First few projects I do some audio fixing in SF. First problem, all the audio takes are copied into the same folder as the source files. Trying to find the source files is getting hard and I've barely started.
Second problem. Tonight I start going though some of this footage looking for bits to throw a promo together. Dump it all into the trimmer and off I goes. First I try adding it from the trimmer to the T/L and then think this is goingto become a very hard to work with mess, it's not helping me find anything. So I goto Project Media, oh goodie, BINS. Go back to the trimmer, mark I/O points and create a subclip. Yippee, Vegas sticks it into the bin I just created, looking good so far.
Except now Vegas is dumping even MORE damn files of unrecognisable names into the same folder as my source video. Do I feel lucky, can I move these files elsewhere or will it all blow up in my face. And why the heck does Vegas need to create another .sfk file, it's already got one for the media I created the subclip from.
So me thinks, OK, Vegas is pretty smart, its got its own explorer. So I create another folder to throw these files that it needs into. Except Vegas's Explorer will let me try to move the files except then Windows spits the dummy at me. The file is open by another application! Oh yeah, the one that's trying to move the file. One would think Vegas would be smart enough to see what it's trying to do, take the file offline, move it, update the pointer in the project file and put the file back online.
What'e really annoying is these files (the subclips and audio takes) don't have anything in their names that indicates which project they were created out of. So months down the track when a project gets signed off I've no way of knowing if I can delete these files or not.
If you've stuck with my rantings this far then bear with me, there's more. Backing all this stuff up. Simple projects. All I need is the source tape, the Vidcap file and the project and worst case I can recapture from tape and restore everything. Once I get going on this not a pretty thought but doable. Except what about all those audio takes, what about these other files Vegas is scattering around. The audio takes from SF, well yeah, OK, they'd better get backed up too but what about the subclips I'm now creating?
If anyone's got any ideas they'd be much appreciated. I know over the years many have complained about this aspect of Vegas. In the past for me at least it's been manageable. Just tonight I'm seeing first hand what a real limitation it is. For what it's worth I've also got CS3 and it doesn't seem to fare any better in this aspect. If this client had the money and I had the space I'd contemplate leasing an Avid system, I'm told their Unity system eats this kind of thing. Surely something does this better without the expense, grief and power consumption of going to Avid.
Now one final thought. Media Manager. Ignoring all the potential problems that many seem to have with it I'll pretend they don't exist, it will not spit the dummy on me. It can catalogue media, good start. However it's got to be running, it's got to know what I'm doing and if I'm not doing it using MM it's totally blind to what I'm doing. If I start moving files around for various reasons it will not know about that. The more I think about projects of this scope I realise it's probably best handled by a system that hides the entire operating system and that's no small ask.
Bob.