‘Keep It’ (KI) by Reinvented Software only appears to allow its users to store data within the local hard disk or iCloud. Unfortunately, that means either burning up precious iCloud storage or system disk space, if you have large source files.
My hope is that I could use KI to manage video and photographic files in a more specific, user-friendly manner. That is, provide an interface that has just a bit more detail on these files and lends itself to management of the files and its associated data.
If KI is unable to manage data on external disk outside of the two persistent storage options I mentioned, would the Mac Power Users folks have any experience specifically addressing this use case?
FileMaker Pro looks like it could work, but has some learning overhead.
Tap Forms could work, but I don’t know enough about it to comment.
Other ideas?
I am going to send a link to this post and will hope that the developer replies back directly here or I may cut/paste his response.
You should check out DEVONthink Pro Office. On my Synology, I keep a directory of my Blu-ray ripped files and DEVONthink indexes that directory. I’m able to make notes in the comments and tag films as well as give them a folder structure inside of DEVONthink that doesn’t exist on the Synology.
I’m not sure you can index external files with FileMaker, due to it being a true database application everything has to live inside a FMP database. That being said I only just began using FileMaker at work for a specific project, so I’m a novice.
FileMaker is a database, it will keep information on your files but can;t really mve them around for you.
DEVONThink can keep informationa nd be used to handle them in their locations but again it’s not going tomove or manipulate them for you.
Data associated with the files would to me mean details on the contents of vides, the creater and copyright and camera info on photos etc. That is exactly what Lightroom is for. I’d look at the metadata options in Lightroom and see if that’s what you are looking for.
First, I want to share a response I received from the developer of ‘Keep It’:
"Hold on Command + Option when the app starts up to choose where Keep It stores its files.
This moves all the document files that you add to the app, but not its library database, so this will allow you to store those files on an external disk or NAS, but you can’t use it to share a Keep It database between computers, users, or via something like Dropbox (only iCloud is supported for syncing)."
Thank you both for the suggestions and assistance!
DEVONThink (DT) / Lightroom both seem like applications that have a high learning curve. KI seems to have a simplicity. This will allow me to prototype my concept.
I should clarify that I do not wish to move files around with whatever tool I choose. I realize I intimated that notion, so I want to back up and indicate that is not my goal.
@joshsullivan,
The folder structure you create in DT seems analogous to what KI can achieve. Unsure if you have access to the ScreenCastsOnline (SCO) service, but @podfeet recently covered KI.
Agreed on the learning curve. However, one thing to consider is if you expect to eventually need the power of a real image/photo management system you might be better served by starting at the end solution to save overall time in learning a simple tool only to hit the wall with its capabilities and have the long learning curve anyway when you eventually switch. Depending on the tool much or all of the work you do in it won’t be portable. You can easily prototype a subset of your files in a full featured tool to verify it will work for you.
For DEVONThink a small database to play with gets you a long way to learning about it. I also got a lot of useful info from Take Control of DEVONThink. Howrever for image files I cannot recommend it as a solution.
In my mind the only real solution for proper image file managment and metadata is Lightroom. Yes it does have a learning curve but it’s really not that bad to learn the Library functions and that seems to be what you are after. Where it takes a long time to get good is in the develop portions where you manipulate your photos or publish them to other platforms. For LightRoom learning I can highly recommend Victoria Bampton’s (aka the LightRoom Queen) books. Her Missing FAQ and her editing books are invaluable as are the forums she manages.
Another good resource before you embark on a big photo file/documentation project is to look a Peter Krogh’s DAM books on Digital Asset Management. Some info is a bit outdated but it’s critical to look at now when you are just beginning. Think how many of those files you may eventually end up with.
I’ve only been keeping digital picture and video files since 1998 and have only got files since 2008 in my LightRoom catalog and I’m already over 20,000 separate files. When all is said and done (all existing digital files are cataloged and all the old video, photo, slides, negatives, prints etc are scanned and cataloged I expect to have something over 200,000 individual photo or video files in my personal database.
Perhaps I should be a bit less vague in my goals. Let me share them with you:
I wish to manage photographs of items I plan to sell via online tools (craigslist, eBay, etc.). I have many items to sell, which is why I am turning to software to manage the information.
I wish to manage videos shot while riding my bicycle. I have three cameras rolling while I am riding. It creates several files to manage, as a result.
Hopefully, this provides a bit of clarification on my intentions.
For the photos of things you plan to sell what I would do is use LightRoom with special keywords and smart collections.
So for example:
If you have a pictures of a left handed special widget that you plan to sell on eBay I would keyword it @Ebay and in the caption or title of the metadata put the price and date listed
I’d also have keywords for @listed, @Craigslist, @sold, @paid etc. Basically fgure out how you want to search for your images and use appropriate keywords.
As for the video files, LighhtRoom’s video editing tools are rudimentary at best but it’s great at cataloging. So not understanding what you mean by Manage I can’t say whether it would work for you or not.