And yet there are those like myself and John Rofrano, who couldn't get thru a project without it as fast as we do.
Needing to re-use a lot of library media, and finding it in the midst of say...25,000 pieces of stock media and well over a million loops...and perhaps 1000 lower thirds...it's well worth it to me to use. And doesn't affect rendering whatsoever.
I think MM is finicky in what machines it might run well on and won't, depending on a lot of things, and I'd place the blame for this more on .NET than on Sony, because the web is FULL of people unhappy with .NET.

I'd personally prefer an approach like Adobe bridge where the media manager app is separate from the main app. I don't really like the idea of having the SQL service running all the time either...

I completely agree with you there, Nat. The Adobe Bridge is a VERY nice implementation of media management. Just that it took them 10 revs to get there.

I adored MM when it worked on my machine - But since the update to V6c it wont work. It is working within ACID PRO5. So, .NET or not, it does work in ACID PRO5.

Grazie

There's a checkbox towards the bottom of Preferences>general that will prevent mm from loading. Easier than having to kill it manually each time.

Yes I know I can turn it off. In fact, if you don't install it, you HAVE to clear this checkbox, or you get an error message each time Vegas loads. The reason I choose not to install it at all is to avoid the considerable wasted disk space, as well as the possibility that something may be running in the background all the time.

Part of my feeling of revulsion towards this implementation is that -- believe it or not -- I still use dBase III+ almost every day as my contact manager. The date on the executable is May 27, 1988, and the total size of all the files is 515 KB (yes, less than 1 megabyte). I have programmed amazingly complex relational database applications with this tool. Yes, I cannot do mainframe SQL queries with it, but I sure as heck could keep track of a huge number of media files, with as many attributes as you'd like to apply. Obviously this ancient tool could not be applied to the current problem, but my point is that the bloat that has crept into database architecture over the past twenty years is unbelievable. Despite that, I am sure that Sony could have found MUCH smaller, lighter, faster, simpler tools to have used to implement this feature, but instead just went with something that -- I suspect -- let them implement the feature with the minimum amount of their programming involvement, without respect to what the impact on the end user would be.

We all agree that Vegas is the most unbelievable, best video editor on the planet. Total file size for all of that power is about 55 MBytes. How big is the media manager, which represents just one feature (albeit, for some, an important feature) ??

I know this really isn't about Media Manager. I've got it working and one thing I like is the single-click quick review of each selection and the ease of putting it onto the timelime. But it is a horrible bloat! -- and I still can't figure out how to stop it from adding media to my libraries that I didn't put there in the first place.

I'm back to playing with "Media Monkey" which is an elegant program for previewing and categorizing most of your music and sound effects. I can drag and drop media from it to the Vegas Project Media, but not to the timeline. Since I'm usually previewing music or sound effects I like the fact that Media Monkey has a right-click "send to" that allows you to quickly copy the source file to your Vegas project. A few more steps then Media Manager but not too bad and I'm usually only using 2 to 20 musical pieces, sound effects etc per movie.

Now on to Picassa to preview pictures and movies and maybe I can replace "Media Bloater" with those two!

Picassa is a great tool.

Now THAT'S interesting!

Can you drop 'n plop AVIs directly into Trimmer?

G

Woah! It does in Sony Vegas MOVIE STUDIO! I just downloaded and installed P2, and Drag and Plopped straight from PICASA2 into Trimmer.

It's just "images" at moment. Wonder if there is a P2 setup for ACID LOOPS, Wavs etc etc . . ?

The whole interface of P2 is too Kool! The Timeline options for ALL your image libraries is great.

Paul! Thank you!

G

Your welcome Grazie! I think Picassa is an example of the way software should be designed, easy to figure out with a slick interface.

Check out Media Monkey also. I love the fact that whatever "playlists" you create and whatever tags you add to your media is preserved at the folder level, so that if you have to reload your computer and then re-install Media Monkey, all your hard work is preserved and back.

Picassa also does this, saving information about your editing of each picture at the folder level.

One thing about Picassa, though. If you make edits to the picture, then try to drag that to Vegas, you won't get the edits, you'll just get the original picture. The reason is that Picassa never touches the original, just displays your touchups in the interface. You have to export the picture to another folder to get the changes. However, with Vegas you can just tweak the original in the NLE anyways.

> How big is the media manager, which represents just one feature (albeit, for some, an important feature) ??

The SQL desktop engine only takes up 15MB of memory. Since I have 2GB of memory on my PC that’s 0.75% of my total system memory. (yes, less than 1%) I hardly call that a memory hog. In comparison, Firefox takes 27MB just browsing this forum!

There also is no SQL task running all the time. It is only running while you are using Vegas or ACID. You can change it so that it runs all the time but this is not the default. Recent updates by Sony have made this component even faster loading than before. I defy to you tell if the media manager is running or not on a modern PC. It has no perceptible impact on performance on my PC whatsoever.

I am surprised that you of all people who understand the power of dBase III would not recognize the power of the Media Manager. I would have though that finding media using SQL queries would have been attractive to you.

I suspect you simply can’t get passed your apparent despise of Microsoft. You seemed to have condemned the Media Manager NOT on its functional merits, but merely on the fact that it uses a Microsoft component. Based on this fact, I can only say that your advice to stay away from it is misguided and unwarranted. John, I am not trying to knock you, (I have a lot of respect for you) but that is not responsible advice. User’s should install it, understand its benefits, and then decide for themselves if they want to use it or turn it off.

For those who don’t like installing Microsoft products on their PC I suggest you switch to Linux! Sony made an excellent choice in sticking to native implementations that use shared components. If it helped them bring the function to market quicker, then they made a good tradeoff IMHO.

The Media Manager is an incredible productivity tool for those with libraries of stock media to maintain. It also has the ability to maintain the relationships between media in a project. That means you can find a piece of media you used in a previous project, click on it, and find all the other media used with it in that project (because chances are you might want to use that combination again) Don’t knock it, until you have tried it. Using relational technology to manage media is a brilliant idea.

~jr

> I still can't figure out how to stop it from adding media to my libraries that I didn't put there in the first place.

Go to Options > Preferences > General tab and uncheck [_] Save media-usage relationships in active media library.

~jr