Video Clip Management Software

[azvenigo]

I record home videos on a Canon HG1 HD harddrive camcorder and copy them to my PC. But now what? I've yet to find a single program that would help me manage and organize my clips.
I'd like to be able to sort them easily for later editing.

Any suggestions?

[Krispy Kritter]

Storage and sorting can all be handled by how you name your files.

[azvenigo]

I already manage my clips manually with file explorer.
Unfortunately explorer is a poor interface for managing video files. The clips are extracted by recording date, which is great. But adding information makes the file names rather ugly:

example: 20090123171924 - Tom Meets Emily for the First Time while their Dogs Growl at Each Other.m2ts

Not to mention that Windows doesn't natively understand m2ts. I use VLC for playback but that doesn't let me browse the clips in a natural manner.

Also clipping off the start and end garbage in a lossless way is non-trivial either. (Possible using ImageMixer but not comfortable.)

Thanks for the feedback.

[lordsmurf]

DAM = digital assets management.

Adobe Bridge CS3 and CS4 can sort of be a DAM. It's not quite a full DAM.

Read The DAM Book. It says "for photographers", but the techniques equally apply to video.

It involves software that acts sort of like blogging/bookmarking, in managing files. You end up using tags, in addition to good file ames and folder structures.

[davidtoc]

Krispy Kritter, i couldn't disagree more. Using file names and directory stucture alone really works only if you have a very small number of files--something I learned the hard way. A collection of any real size requires more careful management. How do you attach a description of the video? What if you want to find all the videos that include a specific person/people? Or in a certain location? Or where the subject was of a person performing a specific activity? Etc.

I second Lordsmurf's suggestion of the DAM Book. It is an excellent resource.

[mightyjak]

I hate to re-ask the same question, but is there ANYTHING that works for organizing clips? I need to start a clip archive for work that will be keyworded, sorted by date, sorted by name, sorted by aircraft, etc. I found Riverfold's Clipstart at http://www.riverfold.com/software/clipstart/ but it's for Mac only. I'm running Windows.

In shirt, I'd love to find something like a video version of iPhoto or a PC version of Clipstart.

[mightyjak]

Hey Mightyjak! I found it! Try downloading Videophile II at http://videophile.freeforums.org/lat...0-beta-t2.html

You can thank me later!
Mightyjak

[VideophileII]

For anybody that may be interested, version 1.6.0 was released yesterday...