Importing Folders as Media Bins

ABPerson wrote on 5/19/2019, 10:05 AM

TL;DR: I want to be able to import a folder into Vegas Movie Studio Platinum and for it to be turned into a media bins, with all of the folders inside of it as well.

This is an incredibly important feature that I am amazed does not exist in Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 16 (I think it also doesn't even exist in Vegas Pro!)

You can have media bins to organize your media files, and these media bins are absolutely CRUCIAL for large projects with a lot of media files. The problems come with getting all of the media in those bins. I have all of the media already in folders on my hard drive, ready to put into Vegas. But, then, I realize there is no way of putting those folders in as bins.

Let's say (this is just a very simple example) I have a folder named "Phase 1", and another folder named "Phase 2", and both of these have "Bathroom" and "Bedroom" folders inside them, each of which contains lots of media files. What I want to be able to do, is just drag the "Phase 1" and "Phase 2" folders into the Project Media, and then for exactly the same structure to be kept. So, I would then have a media bin named "Phase 1", and a media bin named "Phase 2", each of those media bins would contain "Bathroom" and "Bedroom" media bins and so on.

But no, I have to recreate all of them manually and then drag and drop the media files back into each bin, which, once again, for very large projects can lead to a lot of time wasted.

So, I went online to search for some ways of achieving this, and I found this: http://vasstsoftware.com/product/mediatool/
But, that is just ridiculous, you can't seriously have to pay more money just for something as simple as this. This sort of thing would literally take about 5 minutes to program.

With that last point in mind, I thought I would try programming it myself, then I also realized that there's no way of scripting in Vegas Movie Studio - that's only available in Vegas Pro (which I don't really have the money for).

So, there are two things that I'm asking here:

1. Is there any way of suggesting a feature to MAGIX? I haven't been able to find one, but, if there is, could you link me to it so that I could request this very simple (but incredibly useful) feature.

2. Are there any (free) ways of achieving this that you know about?

Thanks!

Comments

vkmast wrote on 5/19/2019, 3:03 PM

1. The advice from the development team is here. Remember though that scripting is not a Movie Studio feature as you've discovered. About the only exceptions are those VASST FasstApps script-like extensions.

2. You might try and create a New (Media) Bin in Project Media. Then Add Media and open the relevant folder, select all files there and click Open. The files will appear in the New Media Bin. I guess that may not be convenient enough for your workflow, so just mentioning this.

ABPerson wrote on 7/22/2019, 12:41 PM

@vkmast Thanks for the response - I saw it ages ago but I clearly forgot to reply 😂

I'm not entirely sure whether you fully understood what I wanted based on "#2".

Let's say I have this in my files:

https://abworld.ml/download/example1.png

I want to be able to import the entire folder "Outer Folder" and for VEGAS to add everything including the sub-folders, like this:

https://abworld.ml/download/example2.png

I want this ability since if I have a very very large project that has hundreds of video clips and I've already organized into a folder structure, I don't want to then painfully go through and recreate that same structure in the VEGAS. Instead, I would like to be able to take an entire folder, import it, and for VEGAS to import all of the sub-folders as well, just as shown in example 2. I think this would be an incredibly useful feature for helping people keep their projects more organized easier.

However, right now what I have to do is manually recreate the folder structure using "New (Media) Bin" and then go through ALL of those individual media bins (and there are lots) and drag the correct media into each one. Which is very incredibly time-consuming and tedious. I'm not sure if anyone who works on VEGAS will actually see this (I mean, it's been two months), but if you do, could you please consider adding this as a feature.

Thanks.

vkmast wrote on 7/22/2019, 3:43 PM

@ABPerson Feel free to make a Feature request on the forum in the dev team does not catch this thread. Include "feature request" in the title of your new Post.

3POINT wrote on 7/23/2019, 2:00 AM

Why not use the already created map structure of Windows Explorer to import into your project. I never create Bins, because for creating the same bin structure as the map structure you have to import all the files first, which makes Movie Studio unnecessary slow and makes project loading very slow. I import just from the already created map structure in the explorer and only the used footage on the timeline shows up in the project media bin.

ABPerson wrote on 7/23/2019, 9:18 AM

@3POINT I suppose, for the time being, you're right, I could do that.

Although putting the media into bins does provide benefits.

Dragging a clip in from the explorer (that I haven't dragged in previously), would then mean I would have to wait for it to generate peaks and proxies, which really takes me out of the flow of editing. Whereas, if I put it into project media, I could get it to do all of that before I start editing so that I won't have to wait while editing.

Also, in the project media, you get a preview where you can set in and out points and all sorts like that.

But yeah, I suppose I could do that for now...

3POINT wrote on 7/23/2019, 12:33 PM

The generation of peaks takes just a fraction of a second. Proxies is another story when you really need them, but can be done manually, means building of proxies can be done during a pause and just for the clips used on the timeline. When importing all clips of many hours footage into the Media bin, peak and proxie creation can take hours before you can start editing. Also you may waste time by creating peaks and proxies of footage that you may never use in your project.

An automatic preview like in the project media bin is also possible in the explorer. Setting in and out points goes more accurate in the trimmer or directly on the timeline.

OndrejPopp wrote on 7/25/2019, 8:47 AM

Ok, I found out about exactly this feature implemented in Edius, Here,

Edius is developed by GrassValey and distributed in Germany by Magic with a 'c' and not a 'x'. Yeah that's kind of a weird coincidence if it is really a coincidence... I found out about Edius when I googled for "nested timelines" one of the new features in the upcoming Vegas pro 17. I wanted to know a little bit beforehand what that is all about. And if it is anything like in Edius, then it's going to be a cool feature, in the context of managing complexity and hierarchal design.

Now, concerning content management, for years now I always wanted to have a clip catalog, so a place where you can see all the clips you created in all your projects, including the trim points and a thumbnail, and where you can drag these clips in both ways, from your bin to the catalog, and from the catalog to your bin. At first I thought Edius would have this, and if that would have been true then maybe I would have considered a switch but as it turned out Edius doesn't have this either. They only have it in one way, from their catalog which they call Mync, it has also story boards the new Vegas 16 feature, but not the other way around, so from your bin to the catalog. Still that's a feature I would really like. Now I have been thinking about this for a while, that maybe you could extend the Explorer to graphically display or represent the .sfl files that to my knowledge hold the clip information as clip thumbnails in the same way as you see them now in your Project media view and bins. If that would work, you can then simply browse your project folders and drag the clips you want to your current opened project. Together with this feature requested here to be able to import Folders as bins you may have a very cool feature for the upcoming Vegas 17? Or 18? But then of course I would have to pay for two upgrades to get it, but still maybe I would do that.

Now, if you want to you can read my comments on that YouTube link, and why in the end Edius didn't really work out for me, and so I have decided to have a look at Vegas 17 when it becomes available. I investigated Edius and I saw how comparable the features are, even the names of the German distributors. Maybe Edius is a fierce competitor of Vegas or the other way around, and so I decided, concerning decency, that if I would have switched I would not have mentioned this here, but now I have not, then I think maybe its ok to make this comment over here.

When I watched the Edius tutorials from that YouTube link, I could really see that these are really professional broadcaster guys, or something like that, that use Edius. I also learned what happened in Susan, the children, orphaned in this civil war and living in a refugee camp, where they got some land to live on from the Sudanese government and are getting also education there. And so this author of that YouTube channel, was maybe there, made the video recordings, and is now showing that material on YouTube in a form of an Edius tutorial. And so, you see over there what you see over there. Twice.

And so if anything I wrote here is helpful to you concerning the research and planning of new features and your marketing strategy you are welcome.