Mavericks tagging for sound library

[tdblanchard]

We've been looking into a number of solutions for managing our sound FX library and I keep coming back to the idea of "tagging" as the search mechanism.
It just makes sense. To be able to just enter in "explosion", "rumble" or "gun" and return something immediately rather than having to traverse through some non-forward-thinking hierarchy.

Now that Mavericks is out and makes use of tags, I wonder if the solution might be to dedicate a Mac Mini running Mavericks to act as an FX library manager. We're not upgrading the studio rig to Mavericks yet for obvious reasons but this seems like a pretty swell idea...

Any thoughts?

[paulo m]

As far as I know, Tags is the new name for Labels with some improvements.

But you need to apply Tags to items, be it folders or files before you can recall them. Doing that in a SFX library can be a time consuming task.

Also, Tags will be employed by Finder and not by the Workspace in PT.

Search features on Workspace are greatly improved in PT11 with a new search engine and in my opinion works very well and is very fast. Apparently the system parses your files in the background and presents near instantaneous results on a query.

So in my opinion and based on my personnal experience, your idea is costly and doesn´t add what you want easily.

If you´re not on PT11 yet, have a look at the pdf document "What´s new in PT 11", chapter 4, page 17.

[reichman]

Before you reinvent the wheel, check out Soundminer. Soundminer has very advanced search functions that support tagging, a thesaurus, etc. SM Server will probably do everything you need with no effort on your part.

[tdblanchard]

Originally Posted by reichman

Before you reinvent the wheel, check out Soundminer. Soundminer has very advanced search functions that support tagging, a thesaurus, etc. SM Server will probably do everything you need with no effort on your part.

I guess my point was that if your OS can offer you the same searching features as a $900 piece of software, it's kind of a no-brainer.

[tdblanchard]

Originally Posted by paulo m

As far as I know, Tags is the new name for Labels with some improvements.

But you need to apply Tags to items, be it folders or files before you can recall them. Doing that in a SFX library can be a time consuming task.

Also, Tags will be employed by Finder and not by the Workspace in PT.

Search features on Workspace are greatly improved in PT11 with a new search engine and in my opinion works very well and is very fast. Apparently the system parses your files in the background and presents near instantaneous results on a query.

So in my opinion and based on my personnal experience, your idea is costly and doesn´t add what you want easily.

If you´re not on PT11 yet, have a look at the pdf document "What´s new in PT 11", chapter 4, page 17.

I just looked at that page in the "What's New.." and that Workspace was something I thought they introduced in PT10.
I didn't realize you could add notes and such to the files in there, that's brilliant!

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by tdblanchard

I didn't realize you could add notes and such to the files in there, that's brilliant!

Mind you: Anything you enter in the workspace will only live in there and if your DB gets lost or outdated (happens frequently when PT is updated) all your notes will be lost.
The only way around this is to tag your meta-data and embed that. All else is a pretty "fragile" system because you detach the info from the files. Meta-data was invented to put all that info INTO the files so a simple re-scan brings it all back.

I wouldn't use the PT workspace to keep a ton of notes that you need for ever. The data will live or die at the mercy of AVID's DB management.

The past has shown that very often catalogs didn't convert correctly or at all when AVID updated PT in the past.

As long as PT isn't able to re-embed meta-data into BWAVs like soundminer I wouldn't waste time typing any library info into the workspace.

Frank.

[tdblanchard]

Thanks guys.
I guess then I'm back to where I started.

[timothyd4y]

Interns!

Have them tag the files in Mavericks and add notes in the workspace. This way they get some basic PT and MacOS experience. See which you prefer and go with that.

Soundminer is very good too.

[tdblanchard]

Originally Posted by timothyd4y

Interns!

Have them tag the files in Mavericks and add notes in the workspace. This way they get some basic PT and MacOS experience. See which you prefer and go with that.

I love it!

[MIKEROPHONICS]

And I thought America had ended slavery!

Spend $900 and teach your interns to edit and earn you money!