Tag--you're it

February 18, 2009 8:15 PM

How can I tag my large collection of video files for easy searching?

I've read this question but it's two years old and doesn't specifically solve my problem of different formats. Picasa catalogs every media file on my hard drive (as opposed to the one folder I'd like to catalog), except it inexplicably did not include more than 700 of the files that I WANT to tag, even though the formats are supposedly supported.

What's new since 2007 that might help me? I have basically the same requirements:
1. free for Windows XP
2. save the tags and descriptions in the video file itself
3. have a decent user interface (like photoshop album or something similar)
4. small and fast memory footprint
5. Bonus points for a portable app that could be run from a thumb drive

Thanks!

posted by peanut_mcgillicuty to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Lifehacker did a Hive-Five about movie cataloguers last week. You might be able to find something here. Make sure to check the comments, I think the first one might be helpful to you.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 9:14 PM on February 18, 2009

Well, there are a lot of options depending on what you want to do. One idea which is often not considered is something you can do without any software at all and that manages to save the tag. Simply right-click on a file, choose properties, and in the description area you can fill in your own tags. Then, to find a file, just search for it by pressing F3, and do an advanced search for your tags.
posted by mateuslee at 11:46 PM on February 18, 2009

Well, there are a lot of options depending on what you want to do. One idea which is often not considered is something you can do without any software at all and that manages to save the tag. Simply right-click on a file, choose properties, and in the description area you can fill in your own tags. Then, to find a file, just search for it by pressing F3, and do an advanced search for your tags.
posted by mateuslee at 2:46 AM on February 19 [+] [!]


Is that metadata a Windows-only thing? Can it be read by other operating systems? Is that data stored in the file itself or in a *.db file somewhere?

My biggest fear is losing metadata across reinstalls or across operating systems. You spend quite a bit of time tagging everything, only to find it was all erased when it changed filesystems or it was buried in some directory you didn't bother to backup. My solution to this problem was writing a small VB frontend that would allow the user to select or input tags and append them directly to the filename. (The program is full of bugs, has a horrible UI and I lost the source code so I have no plans to distribute it until I can rewrite it.)
posted by Ziggy Zaga at 10:25 AM on February 19, 2009

Well, the right-click properties thing was what led us to looking for a new solution in the first place. It's too time-consuming to be practical (we're talking close to 2,000 videos here) and even then the tags don't wind up being sortable, only searchable. And I am afraid of losing the metadata across reinstalls or operating systems as Ziggy Zaga suggest.

I'll check out Lifehacker, thanks!
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 2:55 PM on February 19, 2009