Questions on Media Pro
I'm considering buying Media Pro 1 --I already use Capture One for all my image editing (or most of it, really), and I'm thinking about going into the entire workflow model using Media Pro. But, I have some questions...
1. I have a large catalog of images already sorted by year/month and some other stuff. It seems like if I'm going to use Media Pro, I'm better off to dump my copies of processed raw files, and just keep things organized by year/month, then use tagging as I get time to sort things so they can be searched better. Would this be a good line of thought?
2. I'm pretty limited in my hard drive space, so I need to be careful with this. I run a laptop with an SSD, and then connect to a NAS for my "main storage." All my images, etc, are stored on the NAS. Given this, how large is the catalog, in terms of space usage, and can it be stored someplace else? Can I have multiple catalogs?
3. Can I tell MediaPro to leave certain directories alone until I'm ready to mess with them? I have several places where I store image clipart, icons, and the like --and I don't really want MediaPro to even catalog those until I can sort out how to fit them into such a catalog.
4. I assume that since MediaPro is using the CaptureOne engine, i can set up fixed ratio crop sizes like in CaptureOne? I shoot a lot of images for videos, so having the ability to set up a 16x9 crop ratio as a reusable custom setting is something I really rely on in CaptureOne.
5. When exporting images from MediaPro, once they've been processed, is it possible to set the resolution as well, in terms of actual pixel size wide/high?
Is there anything else about MediaPro I need to know?
Thanks!
Russ
1. I have a large catalog of images already sorted by year/month and some other stuff. It seems like if I'm going to use Media Pro, I'm better off to dump my copies of processed raw files, and just keep things organized by year/month, then use tagging as I get time to sort things so they can be searched better. Would this be a good line of thought?
2. I'm pretty limited in my hard drive space, so I need to be careful with this. I run a laptop with an SSD, and then connect to a NAS for my "main storage." All my images, etc, are stored on the NAS. Given this, how large is the catalog, in terms of space usage, and can it be stored someplace else? Can I have multiple catalogs?
3. Can I tell MediaPro to leave certain directories alone until I'm ready to mess with them? I have several places where I store image clipart, icons, and the like --and I don't really want MediaPro to even catalog those until I can sort out how to fit them into such a catalog.
4. I assume that since MediaPro is using the CaptureOne engine, i can set up fixed ratio crop sizes like in CaptureOne? I shoot a lot of images for videos, so having the ability to set up a 16x9 crop ratio as a reusable custom setting is something I really rely on in CaptureOne.
5. When exporting images from MediaPro, once they've been processed, is it possible to set the resolution as well, in terms of actual pixel size wide/high?
Is there anything else about MediaPro I need to know?
Thanks!
Russ
0
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I went through the process of trying CaptureOne (C1) with MediaPro (MP). But I was very unhappy with the workflow principles and features between these two tools from the same company. I had similar questions as you and experienced a couple of big drawbacks and bugs. Meanwhile I am using IDImager (IDI) together with C1 and everything works perfect. I was very suprised that IDI with C1 works better for me than MP and C1.
Originally I purchased Lighroom (LR), MP, C1 and IDI. After painful tests I decided to leave LR and use IDI+C1 for digital image management+processing and MP for all the other media files (as you mentioned).
Some answers:- Your yyyy-mm-dd directory sorting is perfect. No need to change anything.
- Yes, the catalog can be saved elsewhere. The size depends mainly on preview definition. I would recommend a very small preview size to reduce catalog size. This also because MP can become very unstable with large collections.
- In principle this is possible, but I would recommend to define parallel subdirectories which are not visible in MP directory view. But why don't you import anything and do then the rest within MediaPro? I have done this for my unstructured clip collection and with MP features it is much easier and faster to clean and sort everything.
- Using CaptureOne renderding engine with MP is unstable and very slow. I changed to WIC and FastPictureViewerCodec. But most of the preview benefit of MP+C1 are lost with this.
- MP has limited ability with export (e.g. no DNG export, but only DNG-preview export). I decided to use only C1 or IDI for such purpose.
A couple of above points converted me to IDI for digital image management. However for general media file DAM, MP is very useful and even better than IDI.
For good flexibility with PC, Notebook, NAS, USB, SDD and local drives I recommend strongly the definition of virtual constant drive letters with all DAM software. Your situation looks quite similar than my environment. I am using batch files with "subst" and "net use" DOS commands to configure the appropriate constant drive letters for all my music (m:\), photo (p:), video (v:\) and media collections. With this you are very flexible, when you have to replace or relocate software and hardware. All good software supports such drive letters (I know only LR, which does not!).
Regards from PhaseZero0 -
Thanks for the detailed reply --I hadn't thought about the size of the preview image. Do you have any idea how large the database is per, say, 1000 images, or something like that? 0 -
Okay --I picked up a copy of IDI --I should have tried it before buying it. It requires a completely separate installation of MS SQL server, which won't install on my machine because I haven't ever been able to get Win 7 SP1 to actually install, and MS' only answer is to format my hard drive and start over (again --because I've already done that once, and SP1 still wouldn't install).
So, IDI is a no-go, unless I can get SP1 to install, which doesn't look like it's going to ever happen.
Anyone want an unused license for IDI? I'll sell mine cheap...
Russ0 -
Hello Russ,
regarding MediaPro catalog size with specific preview size I can give you following examples. Due to regular crashes of MP the reduction of risk and increase of speed is most important for me. That is why I define always the smallest preview with 160 pixel. For 20.000 JPG image files, the MP catalog size is about 190 MByte. For a collection 10.000 mixed media/office files, my MP catalog has about 20 MByte size. In the second example, the reason for small database is certainly the high number of media files, which do not have preview (audio, most videos, fonts, office files, ...).
Regarding IDI installation, may be you did choose the wrong version? I did not need to install SQL. But this is certainly no topic for this forum here.
Best Regards from PhaseZero0
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