Re: Real-time file access and organization -
you just need a database, for starts; and the ability to, in the db, associate tags with the files---then you need a layer that lets you query, and some sorta interface chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You know, Alan, I have been having this same issue with my sound work and how much raw material I have created. Once upon a time it was all on tape (and I still have at least 150+ hours of recording on tape), but I've been recording digitally since around 2004 or so and I find that the sheer number of files becomes completely unmanageble. I have tried different naming conventions and that process failed miserably for me. There's never enough in the name to really convey what is contained within. So for the past 2-3 years, I have been going with nothing but TIMESTAMPS. Each file is named after the Year/Month/Date/Time that it was created. My recording software does this automatically, so it's easy, and having a stamped time on the file makes it much easier when I come to questions like, What was that recording I did right around Halloween of 2005? It's more useful for me than any other way, and it helps maintain a chronological record. Not sure if that would be a viable naming convention for you and your working processes, but it's the only way that seems to work for me. Chris On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Alan Sondheim wrote: Real-time file access and organization - Here is the problem, as anyone following my work can attest - there's too much of it. I'll be at the Openport festival in Chicago the end of the month, doing a symposium, talk, two performances. So I'm attempting to organize files for the last, and it's difficult. I narrowed the video/ audio work to 900 files - and these are edited from the mass of my video/ audio work in general, running I think around 2500. I've placed the files in two folders, Performance 1 / 2. The names (titles) of the files convey nothing. I'm still naming from the film years when one produced pieces with such. So there are 900 names, and I forget what most of these things are. It's not even easy to tell by extension - there are sound files for example ending as .mp4, and some of the .mov are set for no framework and loop; these are most often converted .mp4 in disguise. The problem with .mp4 in performance - the compression uses a lot of CPU cycles; the result is that it's actually more difficult to run a number of parallel .mp4 files (which are quite small) than to run the same from the original very large .mov or .avi files. Thumbnails won't do - they would be too difficult to manage, would clutter up the screen, wouldn't handle audio. I think of code - G for Geneva, D for dance, GG for Gruyere, GA for Aletsch glacier work - but then the individual pieces are still left behind. I've tried brief 2-3 word descriptions in the titles, but that doesn't seem to help; there are variations, some of the work is indescribable in terms of a few words, and so forth. In any case, the directories have to be on the screen when I'm performing - that's the whole point of it - the ability to choose video/ audio on the fly. I'm not sure where to take this - memorizing indices, mnemonics ... The total number of still images that I work with (i.e. not family) is about 1. The total of everything is probably around 14000. I swim in these. I need a directory structure for everything, coupled with a search engine; I need keywords and a way to delimit and present files during performance; I need a system which is easily understandable on the fly. I'm speaking of approximately 200 gigabytes of material here. I've been sitting going through file after file; it's a real impossibility! If the equipment holds up (I've been having difficulties with Quicktime retaining its preferences which are critical), things should run smoothly - they'll be more out of control than ever, the semantics of the perform- ance trying to keep up. But the presentation will, internally, be somewhat scattershot. I work with laser scan, motion capture, dancers, mappings and remappings of the human body, landscape, very low frequency and shortwave radio, filtered and unfiltered recordings of various musical instruments, images from the problematic of 'wilderness,' video and audio bounced and transformed across the country, material from Second Life performance, materials from programs like Netstumbler (tracking wireless), modified travel footage, local histories and architectures of early mass transit, sexuality, the 'edges' of languages, choreographies, interactivities, codework and codework software, Mathematica, and video/audio noise across the Net, offline as well. All of these areas are subsetted; they spread like tentacles across my workspace, (in)(co)herent, lost and found; now when I perform, I'm part audience, seeing the (re)presentation for the first time, trying more desperately than ever to hold everything together. This is a world of the forgotten
Re: Real-time file access and organization -
You know, Alan, I have been having this same issue with my sound work and how much raw material I have created. Once upon a time it was all on tape (and I still have at least 150+ hours of recording on tape), but I've been recording digitally since around 2004 or so and I find that the sheer number of files becomes completely unmanageble. I have tried different naming conventions and that process failed miserably for me. There's never enough in the name to really convey what is contained within. So for the past 2-3 years, I have been going with nothing but TIMESTAMPS. Each file is named after the Year/Month/Date/Time that it was created. My recording software does this automatically, so it's easy, and having a stamped time on the file makes it much easier when I come to questions like, What was that recording I did right around Halloween of 2005? It's more useful for me than any other way, and it helps maintain a chronological record. Not sure if that would be a viable naming convention for you and your working processes, but it's the only way that seems to work for me. Chris On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Alan Sondheim wrote: Real-time file access and organization - Here is the problem, as anyone following my work can attest - there's too much of it. I'll be at the Openport festival in Chicago the end of the month, doing a symposium, talk, two performances. So I'm attempting to organize files for the last, and it's difficult. I narrowed the video/ audio work to 900 files - and these are edited from the mass of my video/ audio work in general, running I think around 2500. I've placed the files in two folders, Performance 1 / 2. The names (titles) of the files convey nothing. I'm still naming from the film years when one produced pieces with such. So there are 900 names, and I forget what most of these things are. It's not even easy to tell by extension - there are sound files for example ending as .mp4, and some of the .mov are set for no framework and loop; these are most often converted .mp4 in disguise. The problem with .mp4 in performance - the compression uses a lot of CPU cycles; the result is that it's actually more difficult to run a number of parallel .mp4 files (which are quite small) than to run the same from the original very large .mov or .avi files. Thumbnails won't do - they would be too difficult to manage, would clutter up the screen, wouldn't handle audio. I think of code - G for Geneva, D for dance, GG for Gruyere, GA for Aletsch glacier work - but then the individual pieces are still left behind. I've tried brief 2-3 word descriptions in the titles, but that doesn't seem to help; there are variations, some of the work is indescribable in terms of a few words, and so forth. In any case, the directories have to be on the screen when I'm performing - that's the whole point of it - the ability to choose video/ audio on the fly. I'm not sure where to take this - memorizing indices, mnemonics ... The total number of still images that I work with (i.e. not family) is about 1. The total of everything is probably around 14000. I swim in these. I need a directory structure for everything, coupled with a search engine; I need keywords and a way to delimit and present files during performance; I need a system which is easily understandable on the fly. I'm speaking of approximately 200 gigabytes of material here. I've been sitting going through file after file; it's a real impossibility! If the equipment holds up (I've been having difficulties with Quicktime retaining its preferences which are critical), things should run smoothly - they'll be more out of control than ever, the semantics of the perform- ance trying to keep up. But the presentation will, internally, be somewhat scattershot. I work with laser scan, motion capture, dancers, mappings and remappings of the human body, landscape, very low frequency and shortwave radio, filtered and unfiltered recordings of various musical instruments, images from the problematic of 'wilderness,' video and audio bounced and transformed across the country, material from Second Life performance, materials from programs like Netstumbler (tracking wireless), modified travel footage, local histories and architectures of early mass transit, sexuality, the 'edges' of languages, choreographies, interactivities, codework and codework software, Mathematica, and video/audio noise across the Net, offline as well. All of these areas are subsetted; they spread like tentacles across my workspace, (in)(co)herent, lost and found; now when I perform, I'm part audience, seeing the (re)presentation for the first time, trying more desperately than ever to hold everything together. This is a world of the forgotten, unorganized in relation to 'the clean and proper body,' inert to deconstruction (which is collapsed by error, circles of confusion, exhaustion, loss), open to Levinas' existence and existents. Never do I
Re: Real-time file access and organization -
For me the problem is semantics, not so much syntactical - what's in such-and-such a file. I'm going to have to take some time this summer (if I have time (if there is a summer)) and go through just about everything; I'm guessing I have at this point over 50,00 files of things. It becomes a mess of course. At this point I don't know of an easy way to do these things - I'm going to see what might be possible in linux when I have time. And thanks, Alan On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, chris wrote: You know, Alan, I have been having this same issue with my sound work and how much raw material I have created. Once upon a time it was all on tape (and I still have at least 150+ hours of recording on tape), but I've been recording digitally since around 2004 or so and I find that the sheer number of files becomes completely unmanageble. I have tried different naming conventions and that process failed miserably for me. There's never enough in the name to really convey what is contained within. So for the past 2-3 years, I have been going with nothing but TIMESTAMPS. Each file is named after the Year/Month/Date/Time that it was created. My recording software does this automatically, so it's easy, and having a stamped time on the file makes it much easier when I come to questions like, What was that recording I did right around Halloween of 2005? It's more useful for me than any other way, and it helps maintain a chronological record. Not sure if that would be a viable naming convention for you and your working processes, but it's the only way that seems to work for me. Chris On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Alan Sondheim wrote: Real-time file access and organization - Here is the problem, as anyone following my work can attest - there's too much of it. I'll be at the Openport festival in Chicago the end of the month, doing a symposium, talk, two performances. So I'm attempting to organize files for the last, and it's difficult. I narrowed the video/ audio work to 900 files - and these are edited from the mass of my video/ audio work in general, running I think around 2500. I've placed the files in two folders, Performance 1 / 2. The names (titles) of the files convey nothing. I'm still naming from the film years when one produced pieces with such. So there are 900 names, and I forget what most of these things are. It's not even easy to tell by extension - there are sound files for example ending as .mp4, and some of the .mov are set for no framework and loop; these are most often converted .mp4 in disguise. The problem with .mp4 in performance - the compression uses a lot of CPU cycles; the result is that it's actually more difficult to run a number of parallel .mp4 files (which are quite small) than to run the same from the original very large .mov or .avi files. Thumbnails won't do - they would be too difficult to manage, would clutter up the screen, wouldn't handle audio. I think of code - G for Geneva, D for dance, GG for Gruyere, GA for Aletsch glacier work - but then the individual pieces are still left behind. I've tried brief 2-3 word descriptions in the titles, but that doesn't seem to help; there are variations, some of the work is indescribable in terms of a few words, and so forth. In any case, the directories have to be on the screen when I'm performing - that's the whole point of it - the ability to choose video/ audio on the fly. I'm not sure where to take this - memorizing indices, mnemonics ... The total number of still images that I work with (i.e. not family) is about 1. The total of everything is probably around 14000. I swim in these. I need a directory structure for everything, coupled with a search engine; I need keywords and a way to delimit and present files during performance; I need a system which is easily understandable on the fly. I'm speaking of approximately 200 gigabytes of material here. I've been sitting going through file after file; it's a real impossibility! If the equipment holds up (I've been having difficulties with Quicktime retaining its preferences which are critical), things should run smoothly - they'll be more out of control than ever, the semantics of the perform- ance trying to keep up. But the presentation will, internally, be somewhat scattershot. I work with laser scan, motion capture, dancers, mappings and remappings of the human body, landscape, very low frequency and shortwave radio, filtered and unfiltered recordings of various musical instruments, images from the problematic of 'wilderness,' video and audio bounced and transformed across the country, material from Second Life performance, materials from programs like Netstumbler (tracking wireless), modified travel footage, local histories and architectures of early mass transit, sexuality, the 'edges' of languages, choreographies, interactivities, codework and codework software, Mathematica, and video/audio noise across the Net, offline as well. All of these areas are subsetted; they spread like
Real-time file access and organization -
Real-time file access and organization - Here is the problem, as anyone following my work can attest - there's too much of it. I'll be at the Openport festival in Chicago the end of the month, doing a symposium, talk, two performances. So I'm attempting to organize files for the last, and it's difficult. I narrowed the video/ audio work to 900 files - and these are edited from the mass of my video/ audio work in general, running I think around 2500. I've placed the files in two folders, Performance 1 / 2. The names (titles) of the files convey nothing. I'm still naming from the film years when one produced pieces with such. So there are 900 names, and I forget what most of these things are. It's not even easy to tell by extension - there are sound files for example ending as .mp4, and some of the .mov are set for no framework and loop; these are most often converted .mp4 in disguise. The problem with .mp4 in performance - the compression uses a lot of CPU cycles; the result is that it's actually more difficult to run a number of parallel .mp4 files (which are quite small) than to run the same from the original very large .mov or .avi files. Thumbnails won't do - they would be too difficult to manage, would clutter up the screen, wouldn't handle audio. I think of code - G for Geneva, D for dance, GG for Gruyere, GA for Aletsch glacier work - but then the individual pieces are still left behind. I've tried brief 2-3 word descriptions in the titles, but that doesn't seem to help; there are variations, some of the work is indescribable in terms of a few words, and so forth. In any case, the directories have to be on the screen when I'm performing - that's the whole point of it - the ability to choose video/ audio on the fly. I'm not sure where to take this - memorizing indices, mnemonics ... The total number of still images that I work with (i.e. not family) is about 1. The total of everything is probably around 14000. I swim in these. I need a directory structure for everything, coupled with a search engine; I need keywords and a way to delimit and present files during performance; I need a system which is easily understandable on the fly. I'm speaking of approximately 200 gigabytes of material here. I've been sitting going through file after file; it's a real impossibility! If the equipment holds up (I've been having difficulties with Quicktime retaining its preferences which are critical), things should run smoothly - they'll be more out of control than ever, the semantics of the perform- ance trying to keep up. But the presentation will, internally, be somewhat scattershot. I work with laser scan, motion capture, dancers, mappings and remappings of the human body, landscape, very low frequency and shortwave radio, filtered and unfiltered recordings of various musical instruments, images from the problematic of 'wilderness,' video and audio bounced and transformed across the country, material from Second Life performance, materials from programs like Netstumbler (tracking wireless), modified travel footage, local histories and architectures of early mass transit, sexuality, the 'edges' of languages, choreographies, interactivities, codework and codework software, Mathematica, and video/audio noise across the Net, offline as well. All of these areas are subsetted; they spread like tentacles across my workspace, (in)(co)herent, lost and found; now when I perform, I'm part audience, seeing the (re)presentation for the first time, trying more desperately than ever to hold everything together. This is a world of the forgotten, unorganized in relation to 'the clean and proper body,' inert to deconstruction (which is collapsed by error, circles of confusion, exhaustion, loss), open to Levinas' existence and existents. Never do I know where this has gone, will go. But I still need something of a system, something of a path through the dark woods. (And of course any suggestions greatly appreciated.) - Alan
Re: Real-time file access and organization -
I sympathize. And more, I think its vital that you get some sort of system up and running so that others can access your work in a coherent way. Technically, I can imagine a way to tackle the problem using file metadata in the image/movie files, indexing this to database, then indexing the text works to database, and accessing though a keyword search. (Actually, I'm doing just this for a company image database) But of course the problem is how to fund this. Because the coding is just one part (and here the community might be able to help), but you'd have to employ someone (or perhaps even a number of someones) to go through the files and add metadata. (I know, ideally, this person should be yourself) Perhaps other list members have better thoughts on the matter. Geert On 10/02/2007, at 7:03 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: Real-time file access and organization - Here is the problem, as anyone following my work can attest - there's too much of it. I'll be at the Openport festival in Chicago the end of the month, doing a symposium, talk, two performances. So I'm attempting to organize files for the last, and it's difficult. I narrowed the video/ audio work to 900 files - and these are edited from the mass of my video/ audio work in general, running I think around 2500. I've placed the files in two folders, Performance 1 / 2. The names (titles) of the files convey nothing. I'm still naming from the film years when one produced pieces with such. So there are 900 names, and I forget what most of these things are. It's not even easy to tell by extension - there are sound files for example ending as .mp4, and some of the .mov are set for no framework and loop; these are most often converted .mp4 in disguise. The problem with .mp4 in performance - the compression uses a lot of CPU cycles; the result is that it's actually more difficult to run a number of parallel .mp4 files (which are quite small) than to run the same from the original very large .mov or .avi files. Thumbnails won't do - they would be too difficult to manage, would clutter up the screen, wouldn't handle audio. I think of code - G for Geneva, D for dance, GG for Gruyere, GA for Aletsch glacier work - but then the individual pieces are still left behind. I've tried brief 2-3 word descriptions in the titles, but that doesn't seem to help; there are variations, some of the work is indescribable in terms of a few words, and so forth. In any case, the directories have to be on the screen when I'm performing - that's the whole point of it - the ability to choose video/ audio on the fly. I'm not sure where to take this - memorizing indices, mnemonics ... The total number of still images that I work with (i.e. not family) is about 1. The total of everything is probably around 14000. I swim in these. I need a directory structure for everything, coupled with a search engine; I need keywords and a way to delimit and present files during performance; I need a system which is easily understandable on the fly. I'm speaking of approximately 200 gigabytes of material here. I've been sitting going through file after file; it's a real impossibility! If the equipment holds up (I've been having difficulties with Quicktime retaining its preferences which are critical), things should run smoothly - they'll be more out of control than ever, the semantics of the perform- ance trying to keep up. But the presentation will, internally, be somewhat scattershot. I work with laser scan, motion capture, dancers, mappings and remappings of the human body, landscape, very low frequency and shortwave radio, filtered and unfiltered recordings of various musical instruments, images from the problematic of 'wilderness,' video and audio bounced and transformed across the country, material from Second Life performance, materials from programs like Netstumbler (tracking wireless), modified travel footage, local histories and architectures of early mass transit, sexuality, the 'edges' of languages, choreographies, interactivities, codework and codework software, Mathematica, and video/audio noise across the Net, offline as well. All of these areas are subsetted; they spread like tentacles across my workspace, (in)(co)herent, lost and found; now when I perform, I'm part audience, seeing the (re)presentation for the first time, trying more desperately than ever to hold everything together. This is a world of the forgotten, unorganized in relation to 'the clean and proper body,' inert to deconstruction (which is collapsed by error, circles of confusion, exhaustion, loss), open to Levinas' existence and existents. Never do I know where this has gone, will go. But I still need something of a system, something of a path through the dark woods. (And of course any suggestions greatly appreciated.) - Alan
Re: Real-time file access and organization - (fwd)
Hi - Could you tell me how you're doing this? In other words, given a Quicktime movie for example, how would you add metadata - and then how could you search for it? Thanks greatly - Alan === Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. Webpage directory http://www.asondheim.org . Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, etc. =
Re: Real-time file access and organization - (fwd)
The searching yes, that's something else altogether. You d have to find a way to extract the metadata from the movie. For my current project involving image files, I'm using Phil Harvey's exiftool (a Perl script) to extract the data and then I insert the data into mysql. I wrote a shell function to do this recursively, becase there are more than 7000 images to be processed. But actually, xmp/exif data is easily accessed (you could do it with a grep), but the data in the movies is compiled. So you'd have to hunt arond for someone who has already solved this, but it couldn't be too difficult, as any app that can index mp3 files does the same. Geert On 10/02/2007, at 8:28 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: Hi - Could you tell me how you're doing this? In other words, given a Quicktime movie for example, how would you add metadata - and then how could you search for it? Thanks greatly - Alan == = Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. Webpage directory http://www.asondheim.org . Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, etc. =
