Home video organizer/archiver?

[helloguys]

I have a camcorder that records videos in AVCHD format (.MTS files).

In the past, I used VideoStudio Pro to burn DVDs for one purpose: so I have DVD chapter menus (motion thumbnails) to easily identify the scenes.

As I'm using a media PC instead of a standalone DVD/BD player, I don't want to burn discs just for this purpose. In fact, the raw AVCHD (.MTS) files seems to be the best encoding format. I'd like to just copy them from the camcorder and store them on a hard drive.

But the challenges are:

1) How do I manage thousands of video clips so I can easily find the scene I want?
2) How do I mimic the DVD menus (with motion thumbnails) so it can remind me what the video clip is about?

Thank you very much!

[johnmeyer]

I use an Excel spreadsheet: I simply copy/paste the file names of the video files and that becomes the first column of the spreadsheet. I then have several other columns: date shot; location; people in the scenes, etc.

[helloguys]

I guess I'm looking for something more like XBMC/Kodi or a DVD menu (with motion thumbnails) displayed on the screen other than a spreadsheet.

[johnmeyer]

OK, I get it now.

Would Blu-Ray do what you want? You could author a Blu-Ray, but save it on your hard drive and play it from there. Thus, you'd get menus, but wouldn't need any Blu-Ray hardware.

[_Al_]

To look for BD content and to see menu, he'd have to load BD's one after another to see each menu .... and even having VIDEO_TS structure or BDMV structure in PC, to start playback with navigation, just know whats in it, is very cumbersome.
The best bet is to modernize the whole approach, get rid of DVD' or BD structure , menu and instead, starting to archive short clips and put them into structured folders, giving clips name with date , main occasion and subclip name.Also, not to be afraid to have lot's of subfolders, but if clips are named like that they they do not need much subfolders anyway. Example:
2016_07_11 01 Trip to lake Michigan morning.mp4
2016_07_11 02 Trip to lake Michigan On the boat.mp4
2016_07_11 03 Trip to lake Michigan dinner.mp4
Clips could be searched very easily in media players or PC. Clips are automatically played one after another anyway, the whole folder could be played like that, if one wants, there is no need at all to have hours of footage in one MP4 and not knowing what's in it, needing some graphical menu to navigate in. Kodi also creates thumbnail, that can give some idea, but to navigate by date and proper naming, short clips is the idea.