Only Vegas pro comes with a 'media manager', so in VMS, you have to be careful about creating folders, naming tape (when capturing) and naming files.

I also am new to Sony VMS 8.0c. Could you elaborate on your response.

Only Vegas pro comes with a 'media manager', so in VMS, you have to be careful about creating folders, naming tape (when capturing) and naming files.

This was the mesage of interest.

Hello to all!

Eugenia,

I appreciate your response, but I differ in my opinion. In the interest of keeping the thread on-topic, let me give some more details of my workflow:

When I capture I do create new folders for each tape. SVMS splits the tape into scenes for me. I use the default numbering scheme Tape <n>, because not all my tapes are of one event exclusively.

Once I capture it to my hard-disk, I could move the scenes around into other named folders. For example, I could move all scenes related to Event A to one folder, others to Event B, etc. Or I could leave them in the same folder, Tape X. This is not particularly the problem.

For each of the scenes within any folder, I like to make notes such as:

1. Date of event
2. Name of file & folder location
3. Length of scene
4. Comments on the content of the scene (e.g. my son walks for the first time, night shot experiment, UFO captured on tape, etc.)
5. Have I put the clip in a DVD.

Not all clips need to be on a final DVD project- some just aren't worthy, some related clips will go into separate projects, and some will go into multiple DVD projects. So I think I also need to store:

5. Have I used this clip in a SVMS project? Path/name
6. Which DVDs is this clip used in? Could be more than one.

My interest in keeping all this information is to extract information when I need it:

a. Work on new SVMS projects as I get time: when I do that I want to know, which scenes haven't I used yet from my collection? Maybe by date, or event description.
b. If I'm making a DVD, I may be looking for certain scene content, e.g. my son waking for the first time. Which scene file contains it?
c. Which finished DVD contains a particular scene?

The list of queries can be expanded, but at this point my current method of keeping the info in a spreadsheet (or text file if you are averse to spreadsheets) isn't adequate. I am interested in some kind of a content management system, so using additional software is not a burden, I expect the software to help me. Again, it's not just file/folder management, I also want to make notes about the content.

Does that help clarify what I am looking for? Any suggestions along those lines?

http://hv20.com/showthread.php?t=6710

That was depressing - checked out that thread and noticed that
my favorite utility - scenalyzer - doesn't handle the new formats.
Well, guess I'll stay with my Sony D8 for now !

mikey

But I need to know which DVD I've used the clip in, or if I haven't, etc.


This may be way off, but. . .

Your Project Media tab has the info for the clips in each of your projects. Right above the Project Media window is the View button, and the dropdown menu has Details, which tells you more about each clip.

Himanshu,
I understand. The media manager in Vegas Pro does exactly what you need, but it is a substantial investment, of course.
Though it is not ideal, my cheap solution is the following: download and install Google's Picasa. It is free and aimed for images, but also deals with video and has extensive labeling features. Point Picasa to the folder where you keep all your video files stored. (Do NOT use the import feature, but just add the folder (under 'File').) Picasa allows elaborate tagging, and this is what you'll have to do, but the rewards will be great. Tagging or labeling in picasa is now called 'album'. So you will basically be creating lots of 'albums' which in the end will allow you to query for the files you need. You can also add a lot of description under 'title'. When you do a search in Picasa, Picasa will also search the description. If you are thoughtful about this, you can get a long way. Example: adding the word 'both' to your description could mean that both your kids are in the scene. When you do a 'both' search in Picasa, it will show all the scene with 'both' your kids in it.

Ever make use of the Media Bins in VMS or Vegas?
VMS and Vegas has a handy feature similar to cataloging using the Media Bins.
I put my media and projects in this database area.

When in the "Project Media" view the left pane says "Media Bins", right click on it to create a new bin.
You can make the Media bins traverse like standard directories, bins inside of bins. To copy, paste, rename just use the built-in windows commands. (Copy -> Drag & hold the left <CTRL> key).
I have all my audio collections cataloged in this database, as bins and sub-bins.

The main bin is called "PROJECTS", most projects I've done in VMS are sub-folders/bins under this Projects bin.
So when I start a new Project I make a new bin under Projects.
Then to add existing audio files or videos to this new project goto the correct bin, select the media and hold down the <CTRL> key to while dragging it into the new project.

My biggest use of these bins is media I re-use or access a lot. All my audio files are cataloged in the media bins, so I don't have to traverse any drives or directories from the explorer window, I just goto the audio media bins and grab the audio files.

My physical method is a book and file cabinet with the tapes & dvd's.

Himanshu
After reading 4eyes message, I looked into 'bins'. I then realised that Vegas' Capture programme also allows intensive labeling and searching. Especially the 'comment' label is interesting. I advise you to look into this before anything else.

Great info...I've used the media bins, but never for tagging/comments or for searching. I just throw clips in there (not very consistently on all projects though). Looks like it will satisfy my basic requirements.

Picasa sounds good too, and I'll download it see what more it can do.

I'll keep looking for a utility (or maybe end up setting up a SQL database) to keep the info outside of any one editing program so I can use it on a machine that doesn't have the application, or even after I no longer use the application.

I am a new VMS 8.0c user, changed over from Ulead due to instability issues.

My desired workflow is to work through many hours of basketball game videos looking for "great" plays. Each .m2t video file (no scene splitting) is in a specific folder on my capture drive. I have created a Basketball project, and created a MediaBin for each girl, and I am looking to capture video segment highlights for each girl.

I cannot think of a way to acheive this editting on the timeline. Maybe with Pro 8 that has infinite timeline tracks???

I recently experimented with Regions, Markers, and SubClips in the Trimmer. I was unable to acheive this workflow.

The issues encountered were:
1. The Trimmer provides a Save Regions and Markers button, but I could find where they were stored. This meant no way of retrieving them. The Explorer provides a Markers/Regions view option. This view option produces a window of informatino below the file selected, but never did see Regions or Markers. From the looks of it, I would expect to select a video clip, and have the above informaiton show up below. No success

2. I could not find a way specifiy the folder for storing subclips. I would actually prefer this subclip workflow, but really need to get video clips in to specific folders. This would be very similar to my previous Ulead workflow.

Any experienced assistance would be greatly appreciated

hazzardm, your questions seem like they should be in a new thread - that way you might get a better audience and attention.

Update - I've played around with the tagging/commenting in Media Bins in SVMS8. The downside of that is that the information is stored in the project as far as I can tell. That is too restrictive, and would require me to tag the same clip twice in two separate projects. For that reason alone, I am ruling out using the the built-in features in the long term. I do like all the information they automatically glean from the clip.

"For example, if I go to my friend John's wedding, I create a sub-folder inside my "video" folder using Windows Explorer named "Johns wedding", and dump all new clips from the wedding in there. This way, I know what each clip is about instantly."

Agreed that this is a simple approach which meets the requirement of easily querying on clip-to-subject relationship. However there's at least two other requirements I've desired that this doesn't resolve:

1) What if a single clip contains more than one subject that you want to tag it for? (Yes you could split these and re-export, which I tend to do; but it would be nice if you didn't have to do that). I'll leave that one alone for now and move to...

2) The questioner raised this requirement, "I want to know which DVDs use which clips...". I've struggled with this same problem.

The essence of it is, how can you quickly query on the relationship of a single clip-to-multiple projects? I.e. "This clip is used in projects....<a, b, d, g, ...>. By simply storing clips in subfolders, the only way that I can think of to meet this requirement is to open each of your projects and look to see if it uses a particular clip. Which is too tedious.

So I too see the value in a mechanism (hopefully simple and streamlined) that will do both: group clips by subject, and also "tag" individual clips with every project that uses it.

Until I find something that does the latter *in an automated fashion*, not a tedious manual approach (like entering into a spreadsheet), then I'm staying with the subfolder-by-subject approach you mentioned.

To help follow your discussion, when you folks refer to clips, do you mean the raw captured video or selectively rendered/edited sections? Part of my dilemma is extracting the 3-4 minutes worth of useful video out of each hour of shot. LOL, 10 year old basketball has lots of throw-away footage.

I will post a new thread regarding Region/Markers.