Getting organised...

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:43 am

I'm looking for a media database that will allow me to catalogue all of my sound recordings and their related images and writings.

What I'm looking for is something that I can type, for example, "tibetan nuns chanting" and up will come all of my sound recordings of Tibetan nuns singing/chanting, along with any pictures/videos that I might have taken (or otherwise collected), and anything else related to the recordings. It would all be accessible from within the database without requiring me to delve into folders or manually launching other apps. So for the search example above, the sound recordings could be auditioned directly by clicking on them, the pictures would be thumbnails that could be clicked on to view full size, and so on.

I realise I'd have to do much of the initial indexing, creating key words and so on, but that's unavoidable and therefore not worth complaining about!

From what I can tell, this is known as Digital Asset Management (DAM). I have found many apps that do it, but most are either designed for corporate/network use (and thereby expensive, requiring dedicated servers and so on) or are focused almost entirely on photographic and video use.

Does anyone here have any recommendations based on personal experience?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:02 am

I've looked for similar tools for completely different purposes. I came to the conclusion that I was looking for a program to force me to do what I already should have been doing within my current operation system: create a good organizational structure withing my folders and subfolders, give files informative names, etc. Most of the programs that I looked at would have been useless if I was as lazy with them as I was with my operating system. Good organization still seems to be a human thing, not a computer thing.

Of course, I was looking at this stuff several years ago - eternity in computer time. I'll be interested in the responses to see what is out there now.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:22 am

I'm sorely tempted to try to live up to my name here, and offer to code something. However, time and inexperience conspire against me.
Sounds like one of these things which would be simple to do but noone does it.

Do you use Vista? That seems to have decent searching/indexing capability built in.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:30 am

BobRogers wrote:

Good organization still seems to be a human thing, not a computer thing.

Absolutely. I've been tossing up whether or not to simply use Windows Explorer, with its built-in search capability and so on. There's something very Zen about that. It automatically launches apps when required, no problem. It seems crazy to go looking for a database application to sort all of these different files when my laptop already has one built in.

Certainly, up until now that's what I've been using. But now I am finding an increasing need to use a lot of keywords for searching. All of my pics, for example, already have enormous file names that clearly indicate the country, the location, the subject, the name of the photographer and lastly the pic's number (as given by the camera). Very handy, but I can only sort them one way - alphabetically by country name. The names are quite big already, I doubt I want to make them any bigger!

I have been wondering if I can store a list of keywords or search strings in the Properties box. But I'm not sure that I can search on it.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:43 am

Excel could be a candidate for this. (akin to My Big Fat Greek Wedding's all purpose solution of "use Windex" I say "use Excel")

Columns containing all the tags you need, each row is a file. You can select the data and sort it alphabetically based on any column, and all you need to do is set hyperlinks in one column which point to the file, and that would launch it no questions asked.
Unfortunately this method will probably have you busy for months creating a massively complex spreadsheet.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:01 am

Codemonkey wrote:

Excel could be a candidate for this.

That's an interesting suggestion, thanks. I'm going to give it some thought...

I'm definitely interested in using software I've already got!

I've just started playing with a trial version of a DAM program called MediaDex (no relation to Windex, as far as I can tell). It seems quite powerful, but I've still got a lot to learn about it before I can decide if its what I need.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 8:56 am

Codemonkey wrote:

Excel could be a candidate for this. (akin to My Big Fat Greek Wedding's all purpose solution of "use Windex" I say "use Excel")

Can't figure how to take a directory and export the names of the files into an excel column.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:03 am

To me it's a bit of quick VBscript or something like that.

I can't say I thought the practicalities through properly. Sad

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:18 am

BobRogers wrote:

Can't figure how to take a directory and export the names of the files into an excel column.

I would start with dos command to create a text file of the directory:

dir > <i>path\filename</i>.txt

Then import the text file into excel. You might need to use the "text to columns" tool, but it should be pretty easy to get a column that has all the filenames listed.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:27 am

Very nice. I probably could have figured that out back in 1984.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:21 am

Just a thought -
Are you any good with MS Access Simmo?

I've built many a tool along this lines using Access or SQL for various applications. While it is quite possible to launch certain objects from within the database (using OLE object linking), for your purposes, it would probably be best and far easier to simply reference the specific file location or the file itself and double-click to launch its resident app.

I use an Access db to index the contents (or more/less specifically, the projects) on each hard drive. It helps me to be able to find a project. Each hard drive gets a number (which is the Primary Key within the database) and a name (usually referencing the year or portion of a year for which the hard drive was used). In a related and linked table, I list the project contents of each drive (such as Timbuktu Symphony Concerts Jan 2006-Dec 2006).

Folders themselves can be further indexed, but that gets a little more tricky.

It really all depends on:
1 - how good you are with relational databases
2 - how much time and effort you want to put into creating it
3 - how much time and effort you want to put into maintaining it (this last one actually is quite a bit...)

Cheers-
J.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 12:39 pm

WaveLab has an integrated audio file database. I have not fully explored it, however, so I don't know how well it works in practice.

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:53 pm

Codemonkey wrote:

I'm sorely tempted to try to live up to my name here, and offer to code something. However, time and inexperience conspire against me.

Thanks for the thought, but it's better not to bite off more than you can chew! (A problem I often come across and, in fact, am stuck in right now...)

Codemonkey wrote:

Do you use Vista? That seems to have decent searching/indexing capability built in.

I'm assuming you mean the OS for Intel machines, not the infrared telescope in Chile (which has amazing searching capability but I can't vouch for its indexing).

But seriously... No, I'm using XP Pro with SP2 on a three-year-old IBM T43 ThinkPad that's had a hard life and is currently getting crankier by the day - despite my continual fondling and fawning.

I can't *see* myself using Vista for a while yet, it's a *long way off on the horizon* for me, and I'm too shortsighted to have that kind of *vision*. (Sorry, the bad puns and even worse wordplays were coming thick and fast; I've tried to exercise restraint - I mean, I steadfastly avoided the old obvious 'Hasta la Vista, Baby"...)

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:18 pm

Cucco wrote:

Are you any good with MS Access Simmo?

MS Access? I've never used it. In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it is actually installed on my laptop (part of MS Office). I didn't think I had any database stuff. Amazing, and even more proof that I need some way to keep all of my stuff under control!

Cucco wrote:

While it is quite possible to launch certain objects from within the database (using OLE object linking), for your purposes, it would probably be best and far easier to simply reference the specific file location or the file itself and double-click to launch its resident app.

Right... but my goal here is to launch them from within the organizing app. Maybe I've finally got a reason to dabble with OLE?

I'm hoping the organising app can audition/view the files internally. As it is, I often find myself burrowing through zillions of folders to find what's wanted/needed in terms of sounds or pictures, opening them to audition/view, and so on. I end up with windows all over the place, and I find myself getting very confused (maybe that's just part of getting older?).

For now at least, I can still remember where most of the recordings were made when I hear them, and if I can't then I can check the creation date and figure out where I was at that time. But eventually some of those recordings are going to fade out of my memory altogether...

Cucco wrote:

Each hard drive gets a number (which is the Primary Key within the database) and a name (usually referencing the year or portion of a year for which the hard drive was used). In a related and linked table, I list the project contents of each drive (such as Timbuktu Symphony Concerts Jan 2006-Dec 2006).

Which goes to show that there is no substitute for a clever and well-planned file naming system.

I'm thinking seriously about Bob's earlier comment of using Windows itself. One of the highly-lauded DAMs I downloaded a demo of is actually a replacement for Windows Explorer, with better file management capabilities. I looked at it last night and realised that what I need to do can't be too far removed from what Windows can currently do.

Sigh. So much to figure out... Smile

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:26 pm

Cucco wrote:

Each hard drive gets a number (which is the Primary Key within the database) and a name (usually referencing the year or portion of a year for which the hard drive was used).

Actually, I just realised something...

This database is for my location recordings and associated pics/videos only. At the moment my content is growing at a slower rate than the growth of readily-available storage media, so it is possible to store all my location recordings, pics and videos on one large hard disk. Prior to my last expedition (November 2007 to January 2008) I could fit everything onto a 750GB drive, which was the largest I could comfortably afford. Now I am seeing drives over 1TB at similar prices, which means I can probably still store all of my stuff on one drive - everything off the 'old' 750GB drive, plus all the new stuff. So maybe I'll never need to adopt a drive numbering system. It would be very cool if all this stuff can be kept in one place, always, and makes the organising a bit easier.

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