Metadata and File Management
 

I'm curious about tools that support smart archiving of content. Sure, you can create a Cineform Master of your final edit, store that, and render distribution versions. You can re-cut your masters into demo reels. All this can be done manually.

But what if you start to build a library of cool shots? Maybe you shoot fifteen seconds of something cool but use only two seconds in your target production. Ideally, one would snip and archive the full usable part of those 15 seconds, back it up in multiple locations, and add metadata so you can search tags and quickly find it. This is especially important for corporate, news and doc shooters who might build up a heterogeneous collection of re-usable assets.

I attended the HPA retreat earlier this year, and workflow items like these were a dominant part of the discussion. Video-centric organizations are struggling with formats, storage space and costs, backups, tagging, search, remote locations, etc. There are similar challenges on the back end where studios might produce 200 to 500 versions of a given production to provide the full set of languages, closed captions, special edits, formats, resolutions, and DRM schemes.

In fact, the whole workflow and data management topic might deserve it's own category here at DV Info. As I see it there are three phases: wrangling data during production, managing assets in the modern digital tape vault, and managing assets for distribution.

Anyway, I'm interested in tools for the second phase. I want to be able to organize my assets, tag them, and back them up so I can have them at the ready for future edits.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Metadata and File Management
 

I've been thinking for some time that there should be a section of DVINFO for this king of subject. It comes up so pften these days.