15 05 06 20:21Whatever happened to...?
Whatever happened to MediaSift? Well, nothing really - I had a massive HD crash in early January (no, don't jump to conclusions - I have all my source code well backed-up), but I had to reinstall Windows and it kind of broke my momentum (I havn't reinstalled my development software yet).
At any rate, MediaSift needs a complete re-write. The initial version is good enough for my day-to-day needs, but I didn't anticipate quite how popular it's become - I've got responses from all over the world about it (which is pretty cool).
I suppose the motivating factor here is that I'm starting to use MXF files, so it looks like that is a must-have for the next version. As well as network drive support (I'm still not exactly sure how Avid deals with network drives on Unity and Lanshare systems - if it just maps drive letters, that's easy enough, but if it does something more specialized, that may be out..).
Anyways, just a few more things to mention:
MacMediaSift is available for Max OS-X users. I didn't write this version, but the author based it on my Windows version so it works in a similar fashion.
as well as
MDV_Avid (a russian tool I don't know much about). It's lean and it can do some things that MediaSift can't, like previewing media directly.
As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments!
Dave
d_griffiths - three comments - § ¶
29 10 05 02:56Paypal?
A number of people have asked me if they can PayPal me a few dollars for MediaSift - no problemo. I put my PayPal address in the software "about" window, but just re-posting it here because a few people have asked - You can PayPal to dgriff@senkou.com. If you are unable to use PayPal, but still want to say "thanks", I'm also open to just about anything else - postcards, any sort of goodies from your company that I can proudly display in my office to show my colleagues that people are actually using MediaSift, or just about anything else you can think of - surprise me :).
If you want to mail me something, you can send anything you like (within reason) to:
David Griffiths
BCIT - SE10
3700 Willingdon Ave
Burnaby, B.C. V5G 3H2
Canada
But again, no pressure here - I'm just happy that people are using my software.
On the update front: I have another update in store in the next week or so - a few more minor changes and at least one more minor release before I start making some major improvements.
Thanks to Matthias, who's working on his own Avid-related project (to be announced shortly), I will soon be able to read the project data directly from the media files, allowing a seamless "fallback scan" if the index database doesn't match-up with the files on-disk.
BTW: I'll be attending the Avid event at 6pm at the Vancouver Planetarium on Thurs, Nov 3rd, so hopefully I meet some local users there :).
Dave
20 10 05 23:54New version released (v1.1)
Ok, got a few minutes free to crank-out a new version!
You can download MediaSift Setup v1.1.2 here (Oct 20/05)
You can read the documentation (in PDF format) by clicking here
Changes:
- Updated to allow a user to select only certain projects in the list to be "sifted" on the selected drives, rather than sifting entire drives.
- Added more verbose error-checking for non-media files in the OMFI directory, will show why the scan failed (usually non-media files which exist in the OMFI files directory). Will expand on this more later. Also allows users to continue despite an index that doesn't match the number of files on the drive if they desire (doing a sift on that drive may help identify the file that's not indexed properly)
- Added CSV data export.
- Detect empty OMFI dirs (except for 2 index files) and skip them.
- Added "Default OMFI Directory" mode, adds "OMFI MediaFiles" if no directory is chosen on a destination drive.
- Made the copy dialog a bit more verbose - when it says "files skipped", it really means "files skipped because they already exist at the destination", so there's no point re-copying them over themselves.
BTW: One of the comments was asking if this worked on Adrenaline systems - it should work fine, the usual reason for the media index error is because extra files are in the OMFI dir which are not Avid files. For example, if a .JPG file accidentally gets dropped into the OMFI dir, Avid will never index it - but it will cause the number of media files in the directory to no longer match the number of media files in the index, and trigger an alert as a safety precaution.
-Dave
Whoops - just did a quick fix because I forgot to turn a debug setting off - if anyone grabbed 1.1.1 before I fixed it, please re-download and get the new 1.1.2 version instead. Thanks!
19 10 05 00:25Thanks for the kind words!
Thanks to everyone for the kind words and suggestions for MediaSift. I've already incorporated some of the suggestions and I've added a few little tweaks of my own.
I'm hoping to have an update up on Wednesday, however my editing work is getting in the way of my programming work, so it may be a couple extra days before I can finish the testing and re-package it. I'll let everyone know on the Avid forum as soon as it's ready.
Dave
15 10 05 01:19MediaSift Released!
After much programming, writing documentation, and even updating this webpage to a "blog" format to make life a little easier on myself (and get rid of the FrontPage), it's time to release MediaSift to the public!
MediaSift was the direct result of "wanting to make my life easier", with regards to editing projects at home, then bringing them back to a client's suite.
I initially looked at a commercial software package, however it was out of my price range, and having not done any programming for a few years, I figured it would be an interesting challenge. To be absolutely honest, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I was expecting, and what you're seeing here is about 3 weeks of "on and off" work to get it up and running.
You can download MediaSift Setup v1.0.30 here (Oct 15/05)
You can read the documentation (in PDF format) by clicking here
Dave
d_griffiths - twelve comments - § ¶