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Creating an in-house stock footage library…
Hey all,
I’m looking for some ideas here, as i’m just not sure the best way to go about this.
Basically we’re a production house, and we have built up a substantial library of “stock” footage of our local area, cutaways, aerials etc..
Currently, job 001 gets shot, rushes get filed in it’s project folder and it sits with all other job elements on a raid5 box.
We rely on memory for where the good stock shots are – which is getting a little hard the more and busier we get.Does anybody have any ideas for how to set up some sort of library, without doubling up on all our rushes. Keeping in mind these projects will potentially move/be archived as space becomes an issue…
I guess similar to a lightroom/aperture library?I have had trouble trying to do similar with FCP7, the project file ended up way too big and would constantly crash – and caused a lot of footage corruptions in the process.
I’m not seeing how it would really work without dedicating a storage device to it and duplicating footage as it’s shot, hence why i’m asking.
Cheers,
Matt -
6 Replies
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I would use Adobe Bridge. However, if you regularly move assets, I’m not sure that there’s any solution which will automatically relink when stuff is moved (although it’s pretty easy to update locations in Bridge). Here’s an article I wrote for the COW Magazine a couple of years ago on that topic:
https://library.creativecow.net/bourke_joseph/magazine_27-Adobe-Bridge/1
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Thanks Joe, I will have a read of the article 🙂
I have been curious about Bridge but haven’t as of yet had the time to sit down and learn all about it and what it does!
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One of the really great things about Bridge is it’s ability to create what is called “Smart Collections”. For example, if you have a keyword set called “Exteriors”, and you want to keep it up to date, you create a Smart Collection called Exteriors, and make the search keyword “exteriors”. The Smart Collection knows when a new clip with the keyword “exteriors” is added (without making any duplicate files), and automatically adds the clip (or clips) to the Smart Collection. I use it for all sorts of searches, from audio clips which are a specific number of beats per minute (I add the bpm to the file title), to files I’m working on for a specific project. By keywording the project name, I can create a Smart Collection which automatically puts all of my footage in one virtual bin, without moving anything around. The key to making it all work is setting up a keywords system in Bridge, and sticking to it.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Joe,
Do you know of a way to add multiple sources to a Smart Collection?
This would be perfect if possible. That way I could tag all of our Rushes as they come in and wherever they end up they will work in the smart collection…
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Hi Matt –
I just looked this up, and it appears that Smart Collections now tracks the location of the file(s), following them as them move. If you’ve got a removeable drive, it will give you an alert that the files are missing (if you undock the drive, for example), and you can click Fix to find the files when it’s redocked:
I’m still on CS6, so I’m guessing this feature is new to CC versions of Bridge.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Thankyou Joe,
As it turns out when I started loading up Bridge with some Smart Collections and keywording some rushes it started to crash, and lost a bunch of keyword tags in the process.
I ended up going with MacOS’ tags, and I’m able to then search the entire computer for any combination of tags i need. So far, so good.
Thanks for your help and the links, I appreciate it!
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