making spottinglist folderstructure persistant

[Alexander Weuffen]

Hi,

I created a complex folderstructure in my spotting area to easily categorize and access favorite soundfiles. Because the folderstructure is not written into the soundfiles I am a bit worried, that it may get lost in case of a exchange of the harddisk where my soundlibrary resides. My question is, what is the best way to hardwire that folderstructure to my soundfiles? My first idea was to write the spotting-path as tags into a free metadata section of my soundfiles, so that it can be restored from there and it will also make my foldernames keywords that will be searchable.

Would this be the best way to do it? How can this be accomplished and do I need another version of SM instead of V4.5 that I already own?

Thanks, for your thoughts,

Alex

[Steve Pecile]

Folder structure is purely a system organization.  there's no way to write that into a file.

If you wish to replicate your folder structure on output you can using the Build folder structure in the spotting list submenu.  However, this simply makes a whole new copy upon transfer and creates the same folder structure.  It has nothing to do with your original material.  This is apples and oranges so to speak.

If the folder structure is itself desired metadata then why not add that to a field, although I'm not quite sure I understand the value.

steve

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[Alexander Weuffen]

Hey Steve,

thanks for your answer. There are mainly two reasons why I want to write my own structure somehow to the metadata of the file.

First I want to make sure, that this information doesn´t get lost if I have to rescan the soundarchive for any reason or the disk it resides on is exchanged.

Second I want to make the foldernames searchable by adding them to the file.

I used the spottinglist to make my own custom folders like /Transport/Car/door/open_close.wav

with only my preferred sounds. But I don´t want the real folder structure to be that way because I want to keep the possibility to improve and change the structure easily at any time.

Moreover I really would appreciate the possibility to search only in this structure for "car" and "door" and find only the sounds I have picked and organized there. So in the end it would be amazing to be able to find sounds by going down the path of virtual folders or to search for any keyword in the folder names.

[Steve Pecile]

Alexander

The 'structure' in the spotting list is always virtual.  To make it physical you need to mirror out or transfer.  Then it is part of the database.

Recanning the archive affects a database NOT your spotting list.  If your organization remains only in the spotting list it is wholly separate from the files and the database and as such will  have no real bearing on a rescan(if paths change you will have to relink).

The spotting list is a 'virtual' set up that is not reflective of anything but a free form organization at the project level.  If this is so critical to you, back up your databases and spotting panel.

You do not search in the spotting list generally but when you move items from a folder over to be viewed in the browser you can search metadata in that content.  You seem to be confusing properties of a database and properties of spotting list.

I used the spottinglist to make my own custom folders like /Transport/Car/door/open_close.wav

with only my preferred sounds. But I don´t want the real folder structure to be that way because I want to keep the possibility to improve and change the structure easily at any time.

then this entire enterprise remains virtual and not based on a database or metadata.

Moreover I really would appreciate the possibility to search only in this structure for "car" and "door" and find only the sounds I have picked and organized there. So in the end it would be amazing to be able to find sounds by going down the path of virtual folders or to search for any keyword in the folder names.

Frankly, this seems a very contrary way to work inside our system.  Our system is based on metadata.   if you add the association in the metadata and I believe you can use category subcateogry to this effect, you could view:

Plus the system is designed so you can use full boolean to search, so if you need 'car door (open,close)'  you could easily just do it with metadata boolean search

The organization is metadata driven in the database.

[Jeremiah Moore]

Also:

- it's possible to browser the database via sounds-on-disk folder structure in Metabrowser Summary/Pathname/...

- You can add "Pathname" to Search Indexes (Database menu, "Modify Search Indexes" and any text in the path is included in search by default.  I do this for all my custom stuff, which can be indexed by folder name, even if I have not had time to describe the individual files in depth.  The enclosing folder hierarchy contains a lot of info... for instance a car-by from a particular film can be found almost instantly by the film's name.  (By using "project" keywords)

- Computer filesystems are very good at maintaining folder hierarchy. It's a critical function.

- If you really want to stuff "pathname" information into file metadata, go ahead.  You can use "Pathname" as a source field for field build, or export and manipulate data in Excel or Filemaker or such.  As for re-ordering the files later, I once wrote some scripts to do this for a project in which I needed to flatten a hierarchy of files and later expand them, it's doable...  A UNIX guru or someone conversant with Python or such could figure it out if it's important enough.  

-jeremiah

jeremiah moore  |  SOUND

jmo...@northstation.net
http://jeremiahmoore.com/

m (+1)415.577.0045

The TANK: new space for sound arts

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[Alexander Weuffen]

Thank you again. I know that the way I work with the spotting list is a bit apart from what it is supposed to be used for, but it was a quick way to get to my favorite sounds selected and categorized in a fast manner. 

I understand, that when I want to transfer that structure to metadata tagging, for better searchability I will have to do a mostly manual process.

In any case I want to avoid mirroring my structure, because I don´t want du dublicate files I just want to categorize them.

So I think I know how to get along now.

[Alexander Weuffen]

Hey Jeremiah,

thanks for your detailed answer. I think the suggestions you make will work for a 'real' filesystem based folderstructure. In my case, where I only have this virtual pathes in SM I guess there got to be a solution within the system.

All the best,

Alex

[Jeremiah Moore]

Ah I misunderstood.  

It's an interesting point because the spotting panel behaves like "bins" in a video system (avid, premiere....) or like "collections" in Lightroom. 

In that:  A given sound can be in multiple places.  Whereas in the file system only one place is possible. 

-Jeremiah 

[Alexander Weuffen]

yeah, thats one of the benefits and moreover you can easily move elements around and reorganize things without always dragging files around. And most important in the physical folder structure, everything stays ordered by origin.

So my system means: Spotting structure is arranged to adress the purpose of a sound and filesystem order is reflecting the origin of soundfiles.

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