File management - waiting for a solution within PT

[cq sound]

Here is something I have been waiting for since PT v1.8 (at the time still ProEdit & ProDeck) and it is called file management or region management. In my humble opinion PT sucks in this part and all the people I talk to here in Hollywood pretty much agree. Now there is this thing called workspace browser with a UI that is as clumsy as any old windows UI but it let’s me search basic stuff and audition but to bring in sets of sounds, larger selections and so on pretty much unusable. Then there is the audio import window, with the search box from OS X built in. Great, but oh well it does not work……Maybe I should just search with the Find command in the region bin. Again very basic search tool and it is limited to….my current session only and on top of it, it has gotten worse since PT5.1 (don’t get me started on that one….. ). Well, leaves me Spotlight….love the speed and results of it but auditioning is a pain.
I would love to see Digidesign make the search box work in the audio import window (plus fix the lag of [command space], this again worked fine before 7.x) plus let me organize my regions in folders, name these folders and built a search engine that can find stuff.
Other than that PT is a fine tool, reliable and pretty easy to maintain (pretty important for a shop with some 200 systems).
Any input is appreciated.

-peter
JUC (just cut it)

IMDB

[Noiz2]

your right. Most peoples solution is Soundminer.

[cq sound]

Yeah Soundminer is nice but it has some issues as well. First it does not come close to the search results we had with our Filemaker Pro app (not yet at least), with a library of over 350'000 online sounds not an easy task. Indexing my drives still does copy the sounds into my audio folder (at least in the soundminer version i have) so this is out of question. Again nice app but... a PT solution is preferable I think.

[Frank Kruse]

"indexing your drives copies the files into your audio files folders"? What does that mean?
You can do referenced spotting with SM no problem.

frank.

[cmaynes]

Yeah Soundminer is nice but it has some issues as well. First it does not come close to the search results we had with our Filemaker Pro app (not yet at least), with a library of over 350'000 online sounds not an easy task. Indexing my drives still does copy the sounds into my audio folder (at least in the soundminer version i have) so this is out of question. Again nice app but... a PT solution is preferable I think.

SM does create a local database, but it does not copy the sound files to your drive when doing an index.

If you have gotten into SM, ProTools pales in comparison for managing a sound library.

charles maynes

[Brandonx1]

I much prefer a a la cart solution. What if PT went with Net Mix. For me Soundminer is the best solution. For someone else, it's something else. I want to be able to decide what I'm using.
Best,
Brandon

[ewoklake]

I have just started to use netmix pro, seems cool. I think skywalker uses it a lot too... Or maybe netmix just wants them to use it because there are a few "skywalker" setting within the program.

[airon]

Point being, the sub-shareware-level region management is a constant threat to efficiency in editing, mixing and designing sound in Protools.

Digidesign have chosen to ignore this. We all know that.

Soundminer is the best librarian for many folks here, not a damn region manager. And DigitechSupport, if you want to impress anyone at all on this issue, just spend the damn engineering resources to get it done at last.

[Andy Caretti]

I still haven't tried SM yet.
But one of the main problem is that we don't have a good tool to search INTO the PT session, and keep it organized.
Why can't we simply put folders into the Region List? Like Avid's Bin!

[minister]

i AGREE about the BIN structure which has BIN asked for many many times over the years. there was even some promise of it being looked into. and then.....tumbleweeds and squeaky saloon doors.....

but the FIND function in the Region Bin is actually very useful. (shift-apple-f). there is even a list of frequently searched for text. i use it all the time.

Digibase and the Workspace need to be improved too. Searching in the Workspace Browser is S-L-O-O-O-O-O-O-W!!