After reading a few recent posts, I would be very interested to hear how many use the Media Manager, so if you'd care to join in, simply update the figures below in your post.
It may even be of interest to the Madison gang.
Here's your starter from me - just increase whichever integer applies to you:
Yes 0
No 4 (Oops. Mahesh beat me, had to change my number to 4.)
From my perspective, the media manager seems to be helpful if you have a very large and varied body of clips that you keep online to be used as needed in many projects. I just don't work that way. My typical work is capture / edit / render / output / purge ... then on to the next. I have a folder for each project as i work on it. I use highly descriptive filenames for my clips. I have no trouble putting my edits together from the explorer window. Then i'm done with that stuff and it's gone from my drives. I see zero advantage in using any management tool other than the file names. Why on earth would i want to index and search clips that i won't have acess to later on?
True, i do have a small persistant collection of background clips, titles, logos, etc. But once again, with highly descriptive names, it only takes a few moments to scroll through that folder in explorer to grab what i need and i'm off and running. I find this much faster than media manager would be.
And ... now that i'm using a new computer and have freshly reinstalled everything, media manager isn't running again. I only got it working before to test it. I'm not even gonna bother this time around. I just disabled and uninstalled it after getting the error the first time i launched Vegas on this PC.
Now that I've got me own SQL Server installed I might see about cracking Media Manager so I can share the database. Seems silly locking it down when there's plenty of tools out there to crack it open.
Interesting question though, is one violating the EULA doing that, it is OUR data, isn't it.
Media Manager needs to be project specific. I don't have any use for a global media database. What I need is a system of organising clips and clip bins that is as good as, if not better than Avid.
Interesting responses. Would I be right in concluding that people above haven't seriously tried it? Like many tools, it requires effort to learn how to use it efficiently and once set up it a real time saver. What peformance hit?
How would I be able to audition simultaneously BOTH music and video and make choices on-the-fly and have those choices repeated, amended, improved, adapted and worked over BEFORE I need to get to the timeline. I can aggregate media without the need to place them in the Project Media. I can copy these collections for "other" projects. And this done over nearly 0.75TB of storage? I'm mostly done with Explorer. Now that I've developed an edit approach that uses MM at its core, I only want MM to be improved.
This has not been said, but if this is a poll to garner some straw poll "evidence" for why Media Manager should be removed then I'm dead against it. Period. But I'm hoping that this poll, is a poll to politely, respectfully and courteously suggest improvements for MM and NOT its removal. If that's the case, then fine, I'm up for taking part.
Madison do a fine, fine job at creating this platform, they should be applauded at every opportunity.
And early in the first half, the Nos jumped out of the mixed metaphor blocks, and looked like running away with things, including a good dribble from Chienworks, but then some stalwart rebound play from Serena and Grazie, reminding us he too can dribble, saw the Yeses put themselves back into contention, only to see pathlight and a powerful Chanimal find a way through their defenses ....
I gave it a fair shake, but a few early lock-ups pushed me away. Even if it's fixed now, I'm not interested until everyone is raving how great it is. It's funny how quickly people's minds get made up on new features. Do the Madison Folks still monitor these boards? I don't recall seeing any posts from them as of late.
A few comments:
* As Serena mentioned, I haven't really explored this feature enough to know what it will or won't do for me. I keep my generic clips (like Digital Hotcakes, for example) on their offline media.
* Is the competition doing something like this?
* Is this one of those features that help an NLE cross the border from being a consumer product to a prosumer or pro product? Some features may only appeal to a percentage of users but can be critical in their usage.
I was asking for this feature, over and over. But when it came out it was bloated, buggy, bloated, badly designed, and did I mention, bloated? The darn thing is bigger than all the Sony products combined -- a bolted-on monstrosity, purchased from some hapless third-party software company.
The words "elegant," "sophisticated," "clever," or "robust" will never be used to describe it. Too bad. BIG opportunity missed. It works, after a fashion, of course, but so did the Ford Edsel.
Buggy and bloated but it seems to be working quite well now after I've installed Acid 6. For Acid it's a must -- so easy to preview loops with a single click.
For Vegas it helps me quickly preview Royalty Free Music and decide whether it fits the action.
I also love Media Monkey, which allows you to organize all your audio media into playlists and categorize. I sometimes use that.