Mass Video Asset Management in Lightroom 4 - Watch as I Test (Flail and Fumble)

The Project is to: catalog, keyword, manage, rate, and organize over 3400 video clips (AVCHD clips re-wrapped as MOV files) shot in 30 days in Costa Rica. The shoot was purely run and gun -total guerrilla style. As we were unable to do much transfer and review in the field, I came home with a huge project to complete before editing videos. I've limited the choices of software for asset management & organization down to Lightroom 4 or CatDV. Ethically, I feel obligated to say that I"m pulling for Adobe since I use the entire suite, and there are some nice fringe benefits keeping everything "in house,"
First Step: All video files are AVCHD files which are re-wrapped (by ClipWrap) into MOV files. This step is crucial, since AVCHD does not include/store metadata in the video file itself.
Second Step: Files are stored on the MAC-OS level into folders corresponding to the dates the shots were taken
Third Step: Get the 3400+ files organized, weeded, and prepped for editing
@#$!)~*(*&%^ <-- That's what a record scratch looks like in the digital age
I started examining software solutions and gave each a couple of good tries to narrow the choices down to TWO packages of software:
OnLocation - Couldn't feel it and it looks like it's meant to work for a different flow. No.
Cosmos - Couldn't really do much of anything with metadata. No.
Bridge - Almost there, but pretty limited and not dual screen friendly at all. No.
CatDV - Now there you go...almost. Everything is in a catalog meaning you have to go between this software and Premiere. Definite maybe.
Lightroom 4 - Comes with heaps of background in organizing stills, how will it work for massive amounts of video? Definite maybe.
CatDV and Lightroom 4 both imported everything just fine.
I'll post more as I get into it. Soon, if anyone cares to read more.

Lightroom 4 has completed the task of importing 3440 video clips. CatDV (fully functional 30 day trial) crashed again on the large import. I'm going to try importing 10 folders at a time in CatDV.
As I start to play in Lightroom4 with asset mgmt:
PROs
Slick relatively tweakable user interface
Keyword buttons are great (wish we could have more on the surface)
Nice "twirl-down" flow that Adobe uses in the product line -I love this
CONs
Lightroom4 video previews are horrifically sluggish at best, and at this point is unusable for a large collection
The scrub over (video thumbnail) preview is a huge resource hog and would benefit from a disable option
Second Monitor pane has some issues/incongruencies with the main monitor pane:
Grid view will not allow multiple files to be graded/keyworded/etc simultaneously
Loupe view will not play video files and treats the video file preview like a photo
This is all for now. More on CatDV when I get it going.

Similar Messages

Tapeless video asset management

I am an underwater videographer with hours of footage currently stored on mini DV tapes. I have just converted to a hard drive based HD system, and realize i need a digital asset management system. I am a small scale one man business, looking for a solution to be able to store, tag and retrieve video files that integrates with Final Cut so I don't need to input data more than once. Any ideas?

There's also FootTrack. And Frameline.
Maybe Final Cut Server?
Finally, Aperture now supports importing video. So this might be something worth looking into. IMHO, what it has over Lightroom is that it's a better DAM solution. So maybe Aperture for video cataloging?

Video asset management ideas

I am an underwater videographer with hours of footage currently stored on mini DV tapes. I have just converted to a hard drive based HD system, and realize i need a digital asset management system. I am a small scale one man business, looking for a solution to be able to store, tag and retrieve video files that integrates with Final Cut so I don't need to input data more than once. Any ideas?

Wet Lens wrote:
I am an underwater videographer ..
.. with an excellent nic!
.. looking for a solution to be able to store, tag and retrieve video files that integrates with Final Cut so I don't need to input data more than once. Any ideas?
no pun intended:
iDive
http://www.aquafadas.com/en/idive-digital-video/index.php

Video Asset Management

Looking for suggestions.
We are a small business with 2-3 people editing on FCPX in the same room all on separate computers with separate versions of FCPX working on generally separate projects. We are all plugged into the same hard drive storage to access video and photo assets.
We would like to create a system to save certain stock clips that we can tag and have this database be searchable and accessible by everyone.
What’s going to be a nice solution? Some DAM software? Some way for us to use the FCPX Library?
Thank you.

Hi Mkobliska,
Welcome to the Support Communities!
The Managing Media with Final Cut Pro X Libraries white paper (PDF) at http://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Media_Management.pdf covers strategies for sharing external media.
I hope this information helps ....
Happy Holidays!
- Judy

Configuration docs for Asset Management

Hi.
Does anyone have configuration docs for Asset Management
thanks
Tom

Go to http://help.sap.com/ and click on SAP Best Practices. Look for Building Blocks Library under the Additional Information on the right side of the page. In the Building Block Library, look for J10- Asset Management. Click on that and thereafter, under Technical Documentation, click on configuration guide. There you should have all the information or at least some of the information you need on Asset Management.

Lightroom V2 replace Iview as Digital Asset Management software?

I need software that will allow me to locate images that are stored on DVD's. For instance, search for image "JFP-TurnerAgency-134", find a preview of the image, and then see that it's located on DVD #759. I'm using Iview currently, but don't like it.
The "volume management" feature appears that it might work but no one is really talking about this feature. Will Lightroom V2 accomplish this and work as DAM software (digital asset management)?
Thanks,
John Fulton

I need software that will allow me to locate images that are stored on DVD's. For instance, search for image "JFP-TurnerAgency-134", find a preview of the image, and then see that it's located on DVD #759. I'm using Iview currently, but don't like it.
The "volume management" feature appears that it might work but no one is really talking about this feature. Will Lightroom V2 accomplish this and work as DAM software (digital asset management)?
Thanks,
John Fulton

Bridge/Prelude/Premiere/Encore, Arrrgh! Workflow/Asset Managment overload! Help.

I've been viewing a tutorial series in addition to some random one's on the web, mostly covering functionality, but what isn't clear to me (yet) has to do with asset management and workflow. I know enough to understand that these two areas are the most important aspects of the whole process; without organized asset management and an orderly, systematized, hierarchical approach to accomplishing tasks the creative side of things will suffer dramatically at the worst time.
Regarding asset management, I have three separate drives for for audio, video, and stills. All the files reside in their original locations except for video files that I originally had stored on my stills drive. These video files were copied to my video drive into the Adobe Folder> Premiere Projects Folder> Project Name Folder. In addition, I have a folder on the video drive called "Raw Footage" that I'm using for random footage unrelated to any project; sort of a personal stock footage resource.
As a practice project for the tutorial series I'm using assets from a 45 day Rail Pass tour I took a few years ago. Assets include SDDV. m2ts, and mov, files with different sample rates, in addition to jpg and psd files.
Where would the following programs come into play and at what point in the workflow does the transition from one to the other begin and/or overlap?
Bridge
Prelude
Premiere
Encore
Where does Bridge come into play and when?
There are folders with m2ts files on my stills drive that I've copied and pasted to my video drive. Should I have used Prelude to ingest and "Transfer Clips To Destination" ("destination" being my video drive)? Should I have transcoded to a less resource hungry format and, if so, does Prelude create an EDL that can be used to conform the final edit replacing the low rex clips files the the original higher rez files?
I know I have to capture SDDV as DV (not HDV) with Premiere but what else do I need to know about such capture? As far as actual editing goes the tutorials are covering a lot of that.
Eventually I'll use Encore to author a proper DVD that is compatible with every DVD or Blu-ray player. Right?
I guess the question could be, "What is yout multi asset workflow?"
I feel like such a noob.
Thanks.

Michael,
I thought that might be the case. Sigh!
Well, as far as I can tell, if I were you, I would offer it with an alI I-Frame option first. That would probably be the easiest to implement cleanly. Those who can shoot that way would probably start shooting that way. Me included.
Then, take the AVCHD from a few of the most popular cameras, Canon, Nikon and of course, the Panasonic DMC-GH3 (my camera) and whatever video cameras are popular right now. Back up to the beginning of the long GOP and finish at the end of the long GOP. There is no need to get too specific with frames for subclips. After all, anyone who does not leave handles on their subclips while ingesting gets what they deserve anyway. In fact, there should be an option to always add one second of handles to every subclip. Personally I would leave that on as a default.
As for me, I recently posted a few videos using different codecs for people to download to test them. The links can be found in this forum post along with a short discussion: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1239519?tstart=0
I usually use 50Mb/s 60p using the MOV format, but if I was to shoot anything serious, I would probably shoot 72Mb/s 24p. Keep in mind, that if Adobe made it possible to ingest subclips without transcoding,I would change what I shot to all I-Frame for almost everything, either at 30p or 24p. And if you did it for my 60fps MOV files, I would be ecstatic.
I don't shoot AVCHD but I suppose that so many people do that the moment you gave the feature to all I-Frame shooters, there would be a huge clamor for AVCHD.
In my opinion, this could be a major game changer and everyone who could would start using Prelude without a second thought. Like photographers are flocking to Lightroom 5, this would be the videographers Lightroom. Reelroom? Naw. Prelude is a good enough name.

Adobe Bridge As A Digital Asset Manager

I've begun to work more with digital stills in my work with FCE. Bringing stills for touch up into Photoshop CS4 is typically part of the work flow. Adobe includes Adobe Bridge as one way to import the stills.
Adobe also suggests that Bridge is a "powerful program for previewing and managing a diverse array of assets." This suggests that Bridge can be used as a Digital Assets Manager (DAM) for stills, audio, swf, and video files.
The more work we do in media development - the more we need to better manage our media. I'm curious if there are any with experience attempting to use Bridge as a DAM and if so, how it has proved as a viable tool for asset management. Please let me know of any experience or knowledge you may have.
Thanks!

I posted it to this group for three reasons.
1) I'm curious if Bridge really does "bridge" well between Adobe and Apple products or is it really just for Adobe products. With Final Cut, we often find ourselves bridging between these competing companies. Id Bridge a viable solution?
2) Are there viable DAM products out there that media professionals are successfully using and if so what are they and is Bridge one of them?
3) Like many of us on this list, I use FC and Photoshop. Have FC users found Bridge to be a viable DAM solution or not for these tools?
Hope that helps to clarify my question.

Integrating barcode asset management and LR

I have discovered to my delight that you can integrate Lightroom and barcode based print asset management. This is a way to:
automate the printing of labels for images without any rekeying of information, and
automate the process of finding the image from which a print was made
Why do this? You may sell prints or just make them for your own pleasure. It is good practice to provide some labelling of prints so you (or the buyer) knows what they are looking at. It can be helpful to be able to quickly find the source image of a print. Of course you can just include the filename in the label and type it in to find the source image. But the labels produced look a bit messy with a sometimes arbitrary filename stuck in there. An option is to include a neat barcode on the label. You can then use your webcam to read the label and direclty insert the filename in the LR search field. Presto! Up pops the image from which the print was made.
Caveat: Apologies to Mac users, I have only worked this out on a PC. I'm sure there are substitutes for each of the things I've used.
What you need to do this [on a PC]:
Lightroom (LOL)
LR/Transporter (incredibly useful for many things)
Excel (optional but part of my workflow)
A way to print labels with barcodes. I use a cheap Brother label printer which comes with the P-Touch Editor software.
A webcam
Webcam barcode reader software. I use bcWebCam which is free
How I do it:
I'll sketch how I do it with the specific gear I have and then suggest how you may get by with other gear.
Simplest workflow:
Set up LR/Transporter to export a summary file from image exports that includes all the fields you may want on your label (including filename of course). Format for comma delimited a CSV file with a header line to define the exported fields. This is saved and reused as an export preset. Routlinely I can then select the images I am printing and export them to a dummy folder which I use for the purpose of transferring Image information.
I use my label printer software with a template that merges the CSV file data onto a label, with the filename printed as a QR barcode. I generally put one label directly on the print reverse and, if framed, another on the frame rear. With high quality art prints I only do the latter to avoid any possibility of problems of with the adhesive discolouring the paper obverse. Here's an example.
Having previously installed bcWebCam, if I need to find an image that needs a bit of a search (only likely if I've not worked on it recently), I load bcWebCam while LR is running, place my mouse cursor in the search field in the library view (having selected the root of my catalogue), and hold the print label in front of the web cam. Presto! bcWebCam inserts the filename in the search field and up pops the image in LR!
In reality, I use excel as an intermediary to read the LR/Transporter data and reformat some items. One reason is the GPS information exported by LR/Transporter has some weird characters in it and they need to be cleaned out. Characters with accents or umlauts also need some special treatment. Excel also lets me define how many of each label I want printed... The label printer software reads the excel file as a database and allows printing of the required number of labels.
If you are interested in this solution you are likely to have tens or hundreds of thousands of images in which case camera generated filenames will not be unique. I add a month and year in import and conversion to DNG into LR to ensure filenames are unique. There are a range of other work-arounds that may suit your workflow better. But remember, you need something that LR will find in a single search. It may be you create a unique identifier in a EXIF or IPTC field - this will work too... Some smart bunny may point out to me there is some foolproof automatic unique identifier for each image built into LR which can be accessed and exported but I am not aware of it. I guess image creation time (to the second) comes pretty close but I cannot see how to search on this from a search field entry...
Where you may need to find some workarounds:
If you are on a PC, the one thing that is not available on the net is the barcode label printer. In the past I used to print labels on multi-label sheets with a laser printer. It's not obvious to me how to translate the unique image identifier into a barcode for this approach but I'm sure there will be one out there. But I came to the conclusion that a dedicated "on demand" label printer would save a huge amount of messing around. I think the Brother model I use is about US$79 which doesn't exactly break any bank. And the continuous paper roll I use means labels end up about 2.5 cents a pop... What makes this or even the more capable models (with auto-cutters) such a great deal is the P-touch sofware which does do all the linking of database to label and info field to barcode. This is worth the price alone I reckon. There are other free and for-fee webcam barcode readers out there too; the one I've noted works for me...
This may sound pretty complex to set up. But the reality is, once export, database and print templates are in place, it's all automatic.

Hi,
Great use of LR/Transporter
The strange characters result from the fact that LR/Transporter outputs files with a UTF-8 encoding. You need to be able to read that so see them. Most applications can read UTF-8 nowadays.
Tim

Asset management solution

Hi everyone.
I'm currently outlining and storyboarding a (perhaps overly ambitious) project on modern cosmology. It will consist entirely of found media. I've now gathered about 600 or so images, a very large number of publicly available lectures and interviews (audio from which will be used as the narration), movies and animations and computer simulations, as well as music, of course. All these assets currently live, unprocessed, in different places. The images are in iPhoto, the lectures and movies are in a single folder in an external HD, etc...
After finishing the broad outline of the film and ordering my general concepts into a linear narrative, I expect to hit a bit of a snag. I need a way to manage all of these assets together in the same place, to attach descriptive text to each piece of media, and to organize it all in a way that will let me group different types of media together.
For example, for each lecture (most of which are about an hour long), I'll be taking snippets of audio from different places in the lecture, and editing them into different places in the film. I want to be able to go through each one and extract my chosen snippet and save it somewhere I can annotate it and group it with the relevant images and video.
I have never undertaken a project this big, and the asset management needs are markedly different from my projects in high school where I just dumped everything in FCP's bin and dragged what I needed into the timeline. In order for the narrative to emerge as coherent and well-woven, I'll need a way to assemble and organize and play around with synthesize all these hundreds of disparate pieces of media well before opening Final Cut. Or, perhaps are FCP users who have undertaken a similar project with lots of found media and think that FCP's bin/media manager are robust enough to meet these needs? Unfortunately I can't figure it out for myself just yet because after backing things up with Time Machine for the first time, FCP is now asking me to reenter my serial number which I've (hopefully temporarily) lost and am trying to find.
Anyone have advice? Please let me know if I can clarify anything else about my project and needs.
Thanks.

maybe, such a simple consumer-level solution is enough for your needs?
http://www.aquafadas.com/en/idive-digital-video/index.php
they offer a free trial ..

Bridge - Asset Management (DRM)

Hello All,
I hope this is the right place to to ask this question.
We use Adobe Premier CS 5.5 and and soon going to upgrade to CS 6.6.
We are recording lots of small videos, in a green screen, studio, on-site, off site, and lots of small clips that we collected over time. We have quite a few workstations which are mainly macs, we come from a very strong technological background so our network infrastructure is ridiculously powerful boasting speeds of up to 10 Gb per second and bandwidth in excess of 1200 MB per second. But we are a technology company and we are second nature to this. So when we are moving videos and processing them. We do not have a problem at all. We even have our own render farm with over 100 cores which lease out companies video processing and large automated processes.
But amongst all the good we have forgotten one part.
we gone through the painstaking task of selecting all of videos and labelling them correctly. Unfortunately, we been doing this the wrong way.
We should have been using a video and injecting a lot of meta data into it. which makes sense. But we also wanted to label the videos to make some sort of descriptive suggestion what the video could be.
one of the things that we need and I am not sure if this is the correct term, is a video asset media manager.
Ultimately I would love for Adobe Premier to open up an update all the files under a folder and see if there are new ones. But of course we still need a good powerful search system. So my question
Hypothetically, if we were to have thousands of videos:
How would we use these videos within an asset media manager software and also does such a thing exists.
We do not record videos exclusive to one project, we do make common videos that we use across the range of projects.
If anyone could provide some advice about this I would really appreciate it: I think ultimately we would like the software that we could put all the videos in, description titles about the particular parts and users are able to search them. I guess via the web would be the best because we can have our own internal local server or to stand corrected servers.

Besides the fact Bridge is not a very Good DAM application, as Curt already stated, it is also not very good in use over a network because it is not designed for that.
Maybe the Premiere Forum has better ideas but also look at Canto Cumulus. There is a single user edition but also not designed for use over a network. The full version can do so and even can be customized to client but that also comes at a prize...

Digital Asset management

Hi all,
I've been using idImager to keep track of photos and videos. The one problem I have found with this product is setting it up in a collaborative environment.
I was wondering what people are using to keep track of the digital assests and where they are used.
The things I need to keep track of are:
Images
Video (complete and clips)
Audio files
Cubase and Ableton Live projects (and their assets)
Adobe project files
CC Prelude looks like it is only usefult for video clip pull in.
Any ideas?
I wasn't sure what forum to post this in. If there is a more appropriate area let me know
Thanks
Ian

We use WebDAM for collaboration and digital asset management. Its an awesome DAM Software . For all design activities, our entire team uses Adobe Creative Cloud. They both seem to work really well together. Managing your images, video (complete vids and clips), audio files, projects, adobe files, and almost any file is completly supported. WebDAM also allows us to control versions, edit and control metadata, supports EXIF and XMP metadata standards, comment on assets, automatically convert file formats, set expiration dates, get automated alerts when others work on files, easy search, viewing capabilities, control access, and share/secure/collaborate on our files anytime from anyplace. Its super easy to use. Our team also loves the video module which allows you to serve your videos and clips to various websites, control versions, etc. haha, sounds like a sales pitch. I'm pretty sure Intel, New Balance Shoes, Santa Cruz, Symantec, GE, bunch of design agencies, and almost every college uses WebDAM. Being near Adobe's headquarters in Silicon Valley, I think their software engineers interact with Adobe consultants as well.
But I guess the question is, are you looking for something to use for your entire team, company, or just for personal use? That will determine what type of software you should be looking for.

Video asset Motion in chapter menus

I am nearly finished with a large project for a client, where the main movie length is about 90 minutes. I just noticed when going through to check all my menus before burning that it appears that at about the 45 minute mark the video assets assigned to each chapter have all become frozen at a certain point and are no longer in motion.
I'm glad I was able to identify the issue and am hoping there is some easy way to resolve this, so that the motion continues in all the little chapter menus till the end of the film. There are about 24 chapters in all, and the motion stops about half way through these.
Thanks in advance for your help!

I also just wanted to follow up and add that I think the issue is even weirder. I am going through in DVDSP and watching the full length cut from the point at which the chapter menu is giving me trouble and noticing that when I pause it, a freeze frame appears with an image that is not at that moment of the menu, but at an earlier point.
What is going on???? Please help!!!!

What 'Digital Asset Management' system do you use?

I'm researching Digital Asset Management systems that I can use to create a elegant online image and graphic download centres, branded for individual clients.
Has anyone found or created their own solution in this field? I would be interested to hear of your experiences and view online examples if available.
Steve

Steve,
There are literally hundreds of Digital Asset Management systems out there as numerous vendors from a wide range of backgrounds (software vendors, printers, design agencies, video producers etc) all think they have some insight that makes them uniquely qualified for this field. This makes it a bit tricky to recommend a specific option as a lot depends on what kind of asset you're needing to manage. You need to do an assessment of:
What kinds of assets you're most interested in
How many there are (i.e. the scale of the library)
Is it single or multi-users, do you have external suppliers who may need access
If you have IT skills in-house to install and maintain the system
If so, what technologies you prefer, if not to what extent you are comfortable with external hosting and someone else holding the assets
What you want to do with the assets: download, manipulate, integrate etc.
Who will catalogue the assets and what kind of tagging/metadata etc. you want to apply
How the assets will get on/off the system and who decides whether they should or should not
With that information, it's easier to narrow down the list of potential candidates, but you will still have quite a few other decisions to make to isolate the right product for your needs.
If you're interested in information about Digital Asset Management, check our our site: http://www.daydream.co.uk for some reports and articles that are relatively spin-free (disclaimer: we're consultants so we can't claim total impartiality). We're also the original developers of an open source .NET based DAM: FocusOPEN Digital Asset Manager. If .NET doesn't appeal then http://www.opensourcedigitalassetmanagement.org seems to have a good run down of the major options that don't cost anything to get going.
Good luck
Ralph Windsor

Digital Asset Management System

Hi,
I am basically trying to build an application which is similar to gettyimages.com and i want to know does java has support for DAM?
And how much stable and scalable it is?
Waiting for the reply,
Rock

Steve,
There are literally hundreds of Digital Asset Management systems out there as numerous vendors from a wide range of backgrounds (software vendors, printers, design agencies, video producers etc) all think they have some insight that makes them uniquely qualified for this field. This makes it a bit tricky to recommend a specific option as a lot depends on what kind of asset you're needing to manage. You need to do an assessment of:
What kinds of assets you're most interested in
How many there are (i.e. the scale of the library)
Is it single or multi-users, do you have external suppliers who may need access
If you have IT skills in-house to install and maintain the system
If so, what technologies you prefer, if not to what extent you are comfortable with external hosting and someone else holding the assets
What you want to do with the assets: download, manipulate, integrate etc.
Who will catalogue the assets and what kind of tagging/metadata etc. you want to apply
How the assets will get on/off the system and who decides whether they should or should not
With that information, it's easier to narrow down the list of potential candidates, but you will still have quite a few other decisions to make to isolate the right product for your needs.
If you're interested in information about Digital Asset Management, check our our site: http://www.daydream.co.uk for some reports and articles that are relatively spin-free (disclaimer: we're consultants so we can't claim total impartiality). We're also the original developers of an open source .NET based DAM: FocusOPEN Digital Asset Manager. If .NET doesn't appeal then http://www.opensourcedigitalassetmanagement.org seems to have a good run down of the major options that don't cost anything to get going.
Good luck
Ralph Windsor

Mass Video Asset Management in Lightroom 4 - Watch as I Test (Flail and Fumble)

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