Media Management is...

rmack350 wrote on 1/21/2006, 10:24 AM
While hunting around for other things I came accross this thread over on the Cow:
What is media management?

While the thread devolved into a flame war there were still some intersting points. A few of the features listed as "media management" are in Vegas, a few others can be made to happen in Vegas with a little clever strategy or forethought, some can be had through scripts, and some things just don't exist.

The one thing that became apparent is that "media management" isn't just one monolithic tool that does the job. It's a whole set of features that constitute media management - and sometimes on top of that there is a monolithic tool.

This explains, at least to me, why it has always been a kind of vague term. People want "media management" but I've never seen it defined here. And now I see that it isn't a single feature but a whole class of features that various NLEs have in some measure or another.

So I thought I would start up a list of things that can be counted as Media Management and indicate what I think Vegas does or doesn't do. There will be many things of which I'm ignorant or just plain wrong. Since this is a thread I'm sure that people will chime in with additions and corrections.

I'll start the list in the next post so we don't have to skip through this long intro over and over.

Rob Mack

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 1/21/2006, 11:24 AM
1. The monolithic media manager: Tracks all media files and keeps track of what projects they were used in. Allows for metadata to help tag and sort files and projects. This is a database application. The media manager should be a "cross-project" tool.

Vegas has this. It's a V.1 tool and I expect it to fill out as it matures.

2. Media clip movement/consolidation: The ability to move or copy and trim all the media associated with a project to a new storage location, either for archiving or for transport to another edit station.

Vegas has this on the single veg level but I think it is flawed because it creates separate wav files where none existed before. I don't know if this feature sweeps in nested veg fles. I also don't know if the Media Manager offers anythig along these lines.

3. The ability to recapture offline clips. (Yes)

4.The ability to search for clips that have been moved (Yes)

5. The ability to recapture and uprez clips in the process (Yes and No. It seems like this could be refined a bit.)

6. The ability to replace one clip on the timeline with another. Vegas does this as Takes but it might be nice to have a tool tool that makes it easier to do this with a hundred events. Takes is a really great feature.

7. The ability to mangage several timelines as a project, using global settings. (Vegas doesn't do this yet. A feature like this would also affect how you save and trim project media. I think a lot of the parts are there - nested veg files, a database.)

8. Ability to export and import presets (as file objects) so that you could send them to other Vegas editors.

9. Ability to capture a tape as one file and then break it up into smaller files without recapture (maintianing timecode and other data)

10. Ability to take a set of smaller files that are adjacent on a tape and consolidate them into one clip for recapture.

11. The ability to moove bins between projects (Yes)

12. The ability to move sequences between projects. (Yes and No. You can certainly copy and paste a set of events. Does everything about them get copied? Added to this I'd like to be able to select that set of events and convert them to a nested veg file, then copy that to new timelines.)

13. Ability to save and manage render templates. (easy to save, not so easy to manage)

14. Ability to create and save batch render jobs.

15. Ability to manage prerenders (convert a prerender to a pool object, for instance)

16. Ability to delete unused media (Yes)

17. Ability for the capture tool to track dependencies. (If you try to delete a media file from the capture tool it should tell you if the file is still listed in any veg files.)

18. Ability to place the Media Manager on a separate server on your network.

19. Subclips with a certain independence from the motherclip. You should be able to apply mediaFX to the subclip without affecting the parent. (Yes, I think)

20. Ability to un-nest a nested veg, putting the events directly onto the current timeline.

21. Ability to create hard and persistent relationships between clips. For instance, if you line up files A and B for sync it would be very useful to tie them together so that when you can recapture them later, especially when you recapture and uprez. For instance, if you shoot HDV and use a separate recorder for sound, you want to edit a DV25 proxy first and then uprez later. You need to be able to keep the sound files in sync. Perhaps you could create a subclip that consists of the separate picture and sound files?

All of this stuff falls into the realm of media file management. Vegas actually has a lot of it and scripts make up a bit more. And V5 and V6 introduced some of the building blocks for more - subclips, nested veg files, a database, the start of a new capture utility. I think Vegas could use a multi-veg project manager and some general refinement of the other features.

Rob Mack
rmack350 wrote on 1/21/2006, 11:45 AM
Additions below:

1. The monolithic media manager: Tracks all media files and keeps track of what projects they were used in. Allows for metadata to help tag and sort files and projects. This is a database application. The media manager should be a "cross-project" tool.

Vegas has this. It's a V.1 tool and I expect it to fill out as it matures.

2. Media clip movement/consolidation: The ability to move or copy and trim all the media associated with a project to a new storage location, either for archiving or for transport to another edit station.

Vegas has this on the single veg level but I think it is flawed because it creates separate wav files where none existed before. I don't know if this feature sweeps in nested veg fles. I also don't know if the Media Manager offers anythig along these lines.

3. The ability to recapture offline clips. (Yes)

4.The ability to search for clips that have been moved (Yes)

5. The ability to recapture and uprez clips in the process (Yes and No. It seems like this could be refined a bit.)

6. The ability to replace one clip on the timeline with another. Vegas does this as Takes but it might be nice to have a tool tool that makes it easier to do this with a hundred events. Takes is a really great feature.

7. The ability to mangage several timelines as a project, using global settings. (Vegas doesn't do this yet. A feature like this would also affect how you save and trim project media. I think a lot of the parts are there - nested veg files, a database.)

8. Ability to export and import presets (as file objects) so that you could send them to other Vegas editors.

9. Ability to capture a tape as one file and then break it up into smaller files without recapture (maintianing timecode and other data)

10. Ability to take a set of smaller files that are adjacent on a tape and consolidate them into one clip for recapture.

11. The ability to moove bins between projects (Yes)

12. The ability to move sequences between projects. (Yes and No. You can certainly copy and paste a set of events. Does everything about them get copied? Added to this I'd like to be able to select that set of events and convert them to a nested veg file, then copy that to new timelines.)

13. Ability to save and manage render templates. (easy to save, not so easy to manage)

14. Ability to create and save batch render jobs.

15. Ability to manage prerenders (convert a prerender to a pool object, for instance)

16. Ability to delete unused media (Yes)

17. Ability for the capture tool to track dependencies. (If you try to delete a media file from the capture tool it should tell you if the file is still listed in any veg files.)

18. Ability to place the Media Manager on a separate server on your network.

19. Subclips with a certain independence from the motherclip. You should be able to apply mediaFX to the subclip without affecting the parent. (Yes, I think)

20. Ability to un-nest a nested veg, putting the events directly onto the current timeline.

21. Ability to create hard and persistent relationships between clips. For instance, if you line up files A and B for sync it would be very useful to tie them together so that when you can recapture them later, especially when you recapture and uprez. For instance, if you shoot HDV and use a separate recorder for sound, you want to edit a DV25 proxy first and then uprez later. You need to be able to keep the sound files in sync. Perhaps you could create a subclip that consists of the separate picture and sound files?

21. Ability to import video from unprotected DVDs because client's will stop bringing in their crappy VHS dubs for changes and will start bringing in their (less crappy) DVDs. (Vegas does this.)
Sol M. wrote on 1/21/2006, 5:52 PM
Some good points there. Here's a few media management features I think Vegas users could benefit from:

1) Ability to selectively make source media offline (i.e. delete physical files from disk) from within Vegas without losing references to media in the project/timeline

While you can recapture offline media, you cannot take media offline from within the Vegas environment. If you remove the media from the project, you lose all references to it in your bins and on the timline. Currently, the only way to physically remove media without losing references to it in your projects is to delete it using Windows Explorer. Depending on how your file structure is setup, this can lead to the removal of files you didn't want to delete.

2) True Multiple Timelines per Project functionality

Nested vegs is nice, but it's more of a "close but yet so far" thing IMHO. AFAIK, Vegas is the only NLE in its class that cannot have multiple timelines in one project file (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). FCP, Premier, Liquid, Avid Xpress, etc. all have this functionality. Even lower-classed apps like Media Studio Pro do.

3) Automatic Folder Creation for New Projects

When creating a new project, it would be a time-saver if Vegas automatically created a default folder structure in a user-specified project directory (global and/or on a per-project basis). Captured media would automatically would be placed in the appropriate sub-directory (rather than having to change this in the capture app's prefs every time you captured media for a new project), cache/peak files in another sub-directory, and prerenders in another. Of course, some people would rather create their own folder structure (which is why such a feature should be able to be turned off), but it would be hard to argue that a feature like this wouldn't be helpful in media management.

4) Abstraction of temp/cache/peak files from actual source files

Storing the cache/peak files created by Vegas (i.e. sfk files) in a default directory (either globally or per-project) would aid in media management simply because it would remove the clutter of files not (directly) accessed by the user at any time during a project. Nonetheless, because these files are created in the same directory as the source media themselves, they effectively double the amount of files in a directory of source files that you'd have to scan through when trying to locate a specific file (from Windows Explorer, interestingly enough Vegas' Explorer feels it's useful to hide them when navigating through directories of source files). Of course, one can always sort the files in Windows Explorer so that the SFK files are separated from the actual source files, but this does not help when the file sorting is important. Besides, we're talking about media management issues for the anal retentive. Otherwise, we'd be content with "just edit the project, who cares how it's managed"
rmack350 wrote on 1/21/2006, 10:46 PM
All good points. To abstract it from Vegas a bit:

1) An NLE should be able to take files off line, either by deleting the source media or deleting the references to the source so that the NLE must search for the files again. (This also relates to replacing a media file with a new source file in that file replacement is often the goal of taking media offline.)

(In Vegas, what I've done in the past is to save the veg file as a new file and then use that to delete all the media. Then the original veg will still be full of offline media. It's a workaround.)

2) An NLE should be able to manage multiple timelines in one project file. The ability to open multiple instances of the program is good, but not the same.

3) Edit software usually specifies folder locations for certain types of assets like media, templates, presets, temporary files, etc. If this is done on a per project basis then it's helpful for the program to "hint" the folder structure when the project is started.

Automatic folder hinting makes sense when the NLE can manage collections of timelines in a project file. It's less obvious when the NLE can only work with individual timelines. (And nobody wants to be forced to use a canned folder structure, so such a feature needs to be configurable)

4) Part of automatic folder creation is creation of specific folders for temp files, peak files, etc. Also, certain types of things should be saved globally, others locally. Effects presets are something you might want to make available globally, for instance. If so, they get saved in a global folder.

Rob Mack
Sab wrote on 1/22/2006, 4:16 PM
Jive Said,"2) True Multiple Timelines per Project functionality

Nested vegs is nice, but it's more of a "close but yet so far" thing IMHO. AFAIK, Vegas is the only NLE in its class that cannot have multiple timelines in one project file (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). FCP, Premier, Liquid, Avid Xpress, etc. all have this functionality. Even lower-classed apps like Media Studio Pro do."

Vegas 6 has nested timelines

Mike
Sol M. wrote on 1/22/2006, 6:59 PM
Vegas 6 has nested timelines

That's what I was referring to when I said "Nested vegs (as in Vegas Project files, i.e. timelines) [ed] are nice, but it's more of a 'close but yet so far' thing IMHO".

Nesting timelines is NOT the same as the ability to create multiple timelines in a single project file, least of all from a media management perspective.
Sab wrote on 1/22/2006, 8:16 PM
Agreed.

Sab
JulieR wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:01 PM
In addition, I would like to see the ability to retain subclip names across projects. As it is now, you lose the subclip names if you import a media bin from another project.
rmack350 wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:52 PM
I just created a subclip, applied a mediaFX to it, put it in a bin, and drug the bin to a new project. The subclip name stayed intact but the MediaFX was stripped out. So I didn't repro wht you were seeing but uncovered another problem.

I've spent the last three years listening in to angry phone calls from an editor to another software company. It seems like sometimes a feature gets added at the request of users but the programmers have no sense of why you'd want it or how you'd use it. Maybe that's the case here.

So, good media management (with a small "m") should allow you to move elements from one timeline or project to another and have all the relevant settings move with it.

<...time passes> I just submitted this (losing the MediaFX when you move a bin to a new project) to tech support. I wouldn't quite call this a bug because I think it was intended. I think it just simulates a bug.

And now I see that the subclip name has changed back to the default, so I have repro'd your problem. Now that i think of it this has been pointed out in other threads too, hasn't it?

Rob Mack