Video files

[Ben Curtis]

Now that some DSLRs can shoot video (e.g. Canon 5d MkII, Nikon D90, lots of compacts..), the issue of how best to ingest a mixture of stills and video comes up. The current ingest does copy the video over fine, but always in the same folder as the stills.

I would like a way for video files to be automatically separated from the stills files and placed in a different folder. It could be:

1. Same folder name as stills but with "(video)" appended.
2. Constant, separate, folder for all video files.
3. Ideally an independently-controlled ingest location and folder-naming structure - identical options to those currently for stills, just separate.
Of course all this should be optional, not forced.

Finally, would it be possible to play videos from within Photo Mechanic instead of having to open in an external editor? The only reason I wonder if this might be relatively feasible, is that I know PM uses Quicktime to render some images, and wonder whether it could be used to do the same for some video files.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Ben

[Ben Curtis]

Bump... Only me who's interested in this?

[michael_1778]

I'm interested as well.  Definitely.

[heavymeister]

I would be interested in it too, since I use PM also to ingest my point 'n' shoot. Some more extended functions for video in PM would come quite handy.

HM

[Brendan]

I agree - also use my point-n-shoot cam and as some photojournalist now do, I also have a professional camcorder, but these files are edited with adobe premiere, but maybe PhotoMechanic can do also in this case something for us    (VideoMechanic)

[toddbuchanan]

Bump...Yes absolutely...File Filter on ingest? But separate folder on ingest would be great!!!!

[csinclair]

Bump again.
I use 5D Mark II, and will use 1Dm4...
Want the same: send to filtered folders with unique filename string function.

[vAfotoriporter]

My Canon G10 videos got ingested into an undated folder missing the sort I used for the photos and missing file rename as well. However I sold my G10 and may move to 5D mk II or 1D mk IV soon so this may be solved for me (but maybe not for everyone).
Just my 2 cents.

[rswinter]

My videos also got dropped into an un-named folder and not renamed.   But only on one of my PC's.  The other followed the same pattern as the photos...  The difference was that I didn't have quicktime loaded on the first machine.  Once I installed that, it followed the same pattern as the photos.

[Kirk Baker]

My videos also got dropped into an un-named folder and not renamed.   But only on one of my PC's.  The other followed the same pattern as the photos...  The difference was that I didn't have quicktime loaded on the first machine.  Once I installed that, it followed the same pattern as the photos.

If QuickTime isn't installed then Photo Mechanic has no way to get any metadata out of video/movie files and as such, those files will be treated like any other non-photo file.

We've added a new variable in version 4.6.2 called {mediatype} which evaluates to one of four values:

still
video
audio
meta

You can use {mediatype} for folder creation directly, or you can use it along with Code Replacement to turn these four responses into any replacement you want, like so:

Code Replacement sample file:

still    Photos
video Movies
audio Photos
meta Photos

Then if you use \{mediatype}\ then stills will go into a Photos directory (along with any audio (WAV) files and XMP sidecar files) and the videos will all go into a Movies directory.

HTH,

-Kirk

[csinclair]

Kirk you da man. PM has always packed much more than other software into a little point update. This is great. Thanks.

[ptakeuchi]

Like the original poster here, I, too, increasingly have moving image content and it would be really convenient to be able to play them through PM, much like you can do in Expression Media (iView). This would make sorting the movies for tagging much easier since each movie's content could much more easily be identified.

[csinclair]

I used to be able to open a .mov file's IPTC field and add a caption, and it would save with the .mov file. But now with 2.6.3 it's not saving the caption info. I simply need to log my video clips for archiving, by adding a rating and caption, and then exporting a text document. I currently set PM to double-click to open in Quicktime, take a quick look at a clip, close quicktime, and return to IPTC pad and enter the caption in, and use the Edit field as the Rating. Then export my text document with the appropriate variables {fbas}{caption}{edit} and it gave me a good list of clips and captions. Now it's not working. So I'm looking for a logging solution for my video clips...Imagine Products has some, but it's super expensive. Canon's supplied Image Browser doesn't offer a convenient way of doing this either. It would be great to click on an image IPTC info, and the thumb in the upper right, if a movie, plays, and then assoc metadata saved with that clip for later output.
Any chance?
Chris.

[Kirk Baker]

Chris,

I used to be able to open a .mov file's IPTC field and add a caption, and it would save with the .mov file. But now with 2.6.3 it's not saving the caption info. I simply need to log my video clips for archiving, by adding a rating and caption, and then exporting a text document. I currently set PM to double-click to open in Quicktime, take a quick look at a clip, close quicktime, and return to IPTC pad and enter the caption in, and use the Edit field as the Rating. Then export my text document with the appropriate variables {fbas}{caption}{edit} and it gave me a good list of clips and captions. Now it's not working. So I'm looking for a logging solution for my video clips...Imagine Products has some, but it's super expensive. Canon's supplied Image Browser doesn't offer a convenient way of doing this either. It would be great to click on an image IPTC info, and the thumb in the upper right, if a movie, plays, and then assoc metadata saved with that clip for later output.

It's a bug in 4.6.3 that is causing this change in behavior.  It will be fixed in the next update.

-Kirk

[csinclair]

Superhero, you're on it. Thanks so much! Look forward to the release.