Catalog / Media Pro Alternatives?
I have absolutely had it with Capture One. After the discontinuing of Media Pro and Capture One telling us to use the catalog feature to manage our media libraries my workflow when accessing my archive is absolutely paralysed. I have spoken to support multiple times about the poor performance issues with the catalogs and get blown off every time. I don't care about any bug fixes now because they obviously aren't coming.
What I want to know is has anyone come up with a good alternative to build a browsable catalog of 100K - 200K images that are able to be edited with Capture One?
I'm at my wits end and my business is suffering.
Cheers,
Tim.
-
Hi Tim,
I won't dare using the Capture One catalogue for such an amount of pictures. There are some alternatives, such as Photo Mechanics or Daminion....
0 -
@Tim: I absolutly agree. I am having so many performance issues since update to 20.1 that I could throw C1 out of the window. I am pondering using Photo Mechanic (now they implement a catalogue) and Photo Ninja/Photoshop for my needs. It´s 5 to 12 for me and C1. I even reimported around 65 K pictures, because support said that would solve the issues. It did not.
1 -
@Christian: It's just so disappointing from this company. I understand if that to upgrade Media Pro from 32 to 64 bit must be a huge task but to continue to tell their photographers to stick with the Capture One catalog and not acknowledge the inadequacies is just luring people into a false sense of security. I have wasted A LOT of time now on this.
I also tried to re import my catalog to the new 20.1 build but it missed half of my images and said the task had been "successful".
So where to now? I think you are on the right path, I'm very interested in Photo Mechanic also as they are releasing a catalog functionality. I've just done a quick test and it seems that any tagging, rating and metadata actions performed in Photo Mechanic will also appear in the C1 catalog when browsing the library so this is looking positive.
I'm thinking that if a catalog can be built and managed through Photo Mechanic, we could access the catalog via C1 and be able to browse everything as one consolidated library. It's very important to my workflow that I'm able to access a consolidated library through C1 to quickly pull images from different shoots.
Hopefully we can get some more of peoples feedback on here and actually find a solution to this ridiculous situation.
Thanks heaps mate.0 -
Hey,
I had the same issue and frustration because I thought Media Pro was the best DAM system for me and my workflow.
I had tried out many other apps and none got close to Media Pro's performance. Then I stumbled across Digikam and I think it is the closest it gets to Media Pro.
It is very fast and can handle a lot of images. Well in my case around 60000 images at a total size of 160GB with no lag at all. A portion of that catalog (6GB) in Capture One is unusable for me and all I get is beachballs most of the time.
Digikam is free too plus you can download and install themes for it so you can change the way it looks in terms of colours.
I guess the most difficult part is creating the same catalogs inside digikam. You pretty much have to do it from scratch and you can only have one catalog inside digikam. But you can have different albums inside your catalog which can be seen as different catalogs.
Also, I am not sure how you use Media Pro, in my case I only worked with catalog sets which are translated to tags in digikam. So having tags inside digikam is like having sets inside Media Pro. Not sure how it works with keywords if you use them in Media Pro but I am sure that will work out to.
0 -
I don't know if I would help, but you might look into On1 RAW as an alternative. Their cataloging functionality and database seems to be pretty quick when I was playing with it.
It also has layers for image work, luminosity masks, etc.....I"m still pondering if I"m switching fully to C1 from it...I needed C1 for tethering and live view...but still trying to figure if I'm going fully over to it.
I do like the color adjustments and all with C1....
Anyway, thought I'd throw that out there as a possibility you might consider.
HTH,
Cayenne
0 -
I also am a fan of Media Pro/iView. I have been using it for 20 years in all of its forms. None of the software suggestions by previous posters are satisfying. But I found a way to use iView on MacOS Monterey. Use Parallels software to install Windows 11. This takes awhile and will eventually cost $75 for Parallels. Windows 11 may also cost something. Then get a Windows version of MediaPro (CaptureOne site should have it). Install Media Pro on windows. You have access to the Mac side using Windows. MediaPro/iView runs fairly well.
I'm a Mac user for 20 years but I have to ask: How come the 64 bit Windows 11 can still run 32 bit software and us Mac users need to scrape for new software?0 -
Here are my comments: MediaPro stands, or should I say stood, head and shoulders above anything else I tried: Apple's Photos, PhotoMechanic, digikam, NeoFinder, NxView, Nikon's NX Studio etc. With regards to the cataloging functions, they all suck, basically. In terms of functionality, versatility and ease of use MediaPro is unsurpassed, and that is amazing, given that this program is several decades old.
In my mind the key feature that elevates MediaPro above all the other competitors is that each catalog is a stand-alone album, whereas most other packages create a database consisting of however many pictures you have to manage. For example, when importing roughly 4,000 pictures into Apple's Photos, it creates a database of almost 70 GB thus using about the same storage space that the original pictures use! In contrast the MediaPro catalogs of the same images just take up 80 MB.
It's just beyond me how Phase One can abandon such a great product, just because Apple has moved to 64-bit architecture. Of course, Apple also deserves some of the blame, because, like my predecessor said, why don't they 32-bit applications to run on their machines?
To sum it up, I would like to suggest that Phase One resurrects MediaPro in a version that is compatible with the latest MacOS.
0 -
I totally agree with you Norbert. MediaPro is the best of all of the photo DAM software and I have tried them all. MediaPro should rewrite MediaPro for 64 bit operating systems. Maybe they figure that this would only benefit 1/2 the market since PC/Windows user can still use 32 bit programs with the latest Windows 64 bit OS.
I am coming close to leaving the Apple reservation. I bought an Android phone(MOTO for $250) and it's great. Good camera and lots of good apps that don't appear on iPhones. In place of FaceTime I use WhatsApp like the rest of the world. Recently when I needed a new computer I nearly went with a PC/Windows machine but was seduced by the Mac Studio which I love.
I am running Windows 11 with Parallel software on the Mac Studio and am able to run an older version of Media Pro but it won't read newer MediaPro files with the "mpcatalog" extension. I still have bugs to work out.In the meantime try XnView DAM software. It helps a little but it's still lacking.
0
Post is closed for comments.
Comments
8 comments