Soundminer Databases for Commercial Libraries?

[BrianJArmstrong]

Hello,
I apologize in advance for the off topic question, but I'm sure someone in here can help or at least point me in the right direction.

I have taken on the task of organizing a massive sound effects library containing (among several non-commercial libraries) several commercial libraries. I'm looking to find a soundminer database for these commercial libraries as I know they must exist somewhere.

I'm not sure if a list would be helpful, but they are plenty of popular libraries (20th Century Fox, BBC, etc.)

Thanks,
Brian

[Frank Kruse]

If you rip them with soundminer ripper it will automatically inject the metadata.

You can also use merge to bring in external customdatabases and connect them with your existing ones.

Check the manual for this process.

Contact the seller of your libraries and ask for a CSV database of the libs you own.

Frank.

[airon]

If you're on a PC, I advise you to use Exactaudiocopy in secure mode and a decent drive for ripping complete images of those CDs. The result is a .cue and a WAV file. You then mount them with Daemontools and have Soundminer Ripper rip from that device. This is much more secure than trusting the ripping capabilities of Soundminer Ripper.

I state this from my own experience of ripping dozens of libraries for a facility with Soundminer Ripper, because that application is almost certainly nowhere near as secure a ripping application with the variety of drives as Exactaudiocopy is.

I've had the misfortune to use libraries at facilities where this kind of care was not taken. Digital errors, manifested in severe clicks and pops are the result when the ripping process produces errors.

Should you be able to use this procedure on the Mac, do it. I do not know if .cue and image WAV files can be mounted on OSX, but you may want to find out before making a final decision on how to proceed. If that is possible, rip on a PC and image-rip with Soundminer Ripper on OSX to get the audio files extracted and tagged.

[tamasdragon]

Also, though it's not soundminer, but Basehead's injector injects metadata if you've already ripped your material without it.

[BrianJArmstrong]

The material is all on hard drives already.

Its a massive, massive undertaking. I can only assume they've all been bought appropriately, so I will try to contact the manufacturers. Sometimes, that's harder than it seems. Search "BBC Sound Effects Library" and see how many sites sell that collection!!

A lot of sites have a pdf track list that has a lot of the info I would like to incorporate. Is there a way to get info from a pdf into an excel or csv type form?

Thank you all for your suggestions.

[Craig F]

SI use to have a way of exporting tab(or colon) delineated csv from there self contained Filemaker app that covered everything they rep.

[david liversidge]

Originally Posted by BrianJArmstrong

The material is all on hard drives already.

Its a massive, massive undertaking. I can only assume they've all been bought appropriately, so I will try to contact the manufacturers. Sometimes, that's harder than it seems. Search "BBC Sound Effects Library" and see how many sites sell that collection!!

A lot of sites have a pdf track list that has a lot of the info I would like to incorporate. Is there a way to get info from a pdf into an excel or csv type form?

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Get Soundminer Ripper, then burn your SFX to Audio CD then Rip back onto the Hard Drive. You will then get the metadata embedded in the .wavs. Otherwise ripper does have the track info which can be exported out. It will be a huge job though!

Good Luck

[airon]

Before the burn orgy, contact the Soundminer guys. They'll help you in a flash with 100% accurate information.

For example, if you have track files, you might be able to use Soundminer with those. Or you could use the Basehead Injector application ( baseheadinc.com ). Those are all options you need to consider.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by david liversidge

Get Soundminer Ripper, then burn your SFX to Audio CD then Rip back onto the Hard Drive. You will then get the metadata embedded in the .wavs. Otherwise ripper does have the track info which can be exported out. It will be a huge job though!

Good Luck

I have said before that you can easily embed external databases to your files in soundminer. Look up "merge" in the manual. No need to burn to CDs.
SI has almost all of their libs as CSV data on the website.

frank.

[friendlybunny]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

I have said before that you can easily embed external databases to your files in soundminer. Look up "merge" in the manual. No need to burn to CDs.
SI has almost all of their libs as CSV data on the website.

frank.

Is this with soundminer v4, or with the ripper program?