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What Ever Happened to Metadata?
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I see what you’re saying, but haven’t you just made the case for Finder level organisation instead of application-based organisation?
Nothing is impossible (in theory!), but it’s a lot easier to envisage organisation travelling smoothly from the Finder to whichever apps you are using, than to expect those apps to be able to export their organisation methods is a universally useful way.
In a sense, your FCP X organisation is “wasted” because it can’t travel outside the application. (It’s not really wasted, because it’s super useful to FCP X.)
Conversely, if I make folders at the Finder level, these are items that I can usefully “import” into any number of applications with the organisation intact. Similarly with tagging at the Finder level – not quite so universally useful but with KFP and Kyno I can create keywords and ranges that translate to both FCP X and Premiere. OK, that’s not a lot of choice yet but it’s a reasonable guess that these developers might soon support Resolve, etc. In other words, we can already see the start of a process that lets us create universally useful “tags” that flow from the Finder to other applications.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I see what you’re saying, but haven’t you just made the case for Finder level organisation instead of application-based organisation?”
Maybe, maybe not. When I transfer a sequence to Ae, the organization within Ae is lost, no matter what it looks like on the Finder. Ae’s organization is pretty deplorable, though. If any App could stand to have Smart Collections it would be Ae.
With tagged based organization, it doesn’t matter where the file lives (see my musings on Finder and cloud based file abstraction above).
With Folder/Subfolder, you are locked to that organizational structure, no matter if it’s best for the particular app or project you are woking on or not.
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It’s definitely not easy and quite a few of the major applications we use are just not that good at this stuff.
I would certainly agree that tagging is a lot more useful in principle because it travels with the file wherever it goes and doesn’t lock you into an organisational structure in the way the folder structures do. This is where MAMs and MAM-like offerings are starting to offer real benefits.
But for now many if not most applications understand external folder-based organisation and for that reason it’s a useful stopgap until we get something better.
If I drag a folder into Ae, I’ve kept that structure and as things stand that’s a reason for making sure my Finder level structures are fine-grained enough and make sufficient sense to be useful.
Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki -
[Simon Ubsdell] “If I drag a folder into Ae, I’ve kept that structure and as things stand that’s a reason for making sure my Finder level structures are fine-grained enough and make sufficient sense to be useful.”
But for me that would include dragging my entire Finder structure in to Ae which would be nutty.
If I have a project that has 8500 elements, but the timeline uses 600 of those, I don’t see why I need to drag the extra 7900 elements in to Ae to keep my Finder level organization.
Also, typically shoots are organized by “shoot card” in the Finder, and then organized by something completely different and entirely useful in the NLE, let alone all the other elements I have in a typical timeline.
And then there’s conform which creates all new elements from the original elements.
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Another variable to throw on this, as if we needed another variable, is the lifespan (for lack of a better term) of the media being used. For example, on many of my projects the media has a pretty finite lifespan (once the show/documentary is delivered it rarely, if ever, gets revisited) so this keeps me inside the NLE for most of my organizational needs because after a few weeks or months it’s all going to get archived and never touched again. The cost/benefit of using an standalone MAM is very low for these types of projects.
On the other hand, I used to work at a company that covered the video game industry (sorta like ESPN but for video games) and at that place almost every piece of media was evergreen. Taking the time to tag/label and track all that media (and they generated a lot of media) had a very high cost/benefit because a clip first used in 2012 could still be very relevant to a project being cut in 2016. During my time there we tracked things using spreadsheets (kinda sucky but better than nothing) and were experimenting with Final Cut Server, but then Apple pulled the plug on that. I think the company (well, parent company) eventually either went with Fork or CatDV.
As we’ve already assessed there is no one single right answer, but there are number of right answers depending on personal need. On a related note, I have been looking for MAM solutions for my evergreen media (SFX, stock video, stock music, etc.,) but to Bill’s point I don’t want to keep jumping between my MAM and my NLE, but on the other hand I just want to organize all my evergreen media once and be done with it. On another related note, I use NeoFinder to keep scan all my internal and external drives so I have an interactive snapshot of what is where (and I store the NeoFinder database files in DropBox so I can pull them up on any machine). External drives seem to propagate like bunnies and NeoFinder helps me keep that madness under control. It’s also helpful for when I’m working offsite and the client ask “Where’s that one thing you said was on the drive?”. I can just look it up in NeoFinder and then relay the location/file path to the client.
-Andrew
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[Bill Davis] “It’s also one that quite a few high level X editors appear to be enjoying these days.
Ref:
And:
And:
That said, I still prefer the X system that slots search directly inside the editing app. “OK, that’s just weird. Wonder how that happened? Must have been typing in my sleep? Oh well.
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[Brett Sherman] “Slightly off topic. I know this is really about editing application, file system metadata. But on the camera front, I find really almost all the metadata generated in camera useless. Frame rate? Not much there to sift through. This is what I would need at the camera level for metadata to actually be usefu”
In my experience, however, sometimes what I “thought” I needed, turns out not to be what I actually could benefit from.
Case in point, (which I’ve mentioned on boards before) is how after a photographer friend showed me how to set my Owner Name ID in my 5dMkII years ago, I was kinda shocked to find to discover that very info attached to one of my Vimeo uploads in the “Shot by” fields. Basically, the camera metadata had survived all the way from ingest to editorial to share and eventual download.
THIS is the new reality.
Basically knowing what is or is not important, in my experience, evolves.
FWIW.
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[Bill Davis] “Basically, the camera metadata had survived all the way from ingest to editorial to share and eventual download. “
Was it at that point when you regretted using BillRox5000 in the Owner Name ID setting? 😉
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I’m always eternally grateful that WAY early in my “internet self-training” after I watched a vicious exchange between two idiots hiding behind their “handles” on CB Simulator (one of the earliest chat applications) I pledged to myself to ONLY post under my own name whenever allowed – and not write anything online I wouldn’t say to someone in person. I’ve certainly not been anywhere close to perfect about that, but in subsequent years came to see the as a really smart strategy.
As to the critical importance of actively wrangling camera metadata – I now can easily imagine some poor innocent videographer selling their used camera on Craig’s list and some subsequent owner using the device to shoot some extremely objectionable content – the subsequent distribution of which results in an unpleasant FBI visit to the original owner. Not that far fetched a scenario today.
Metadata management matters in the modern era. A lot.
FWIW
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To quote Batman: if you stick around long enough, you end up a troll, a bore or worse, an incoherent evangelist.
https://ogallchoir.prosite.com/
producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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