Hi,

 

Im trying to start my clip library. Im just totally clueless how to rename files, make folders per trip/day/site, rename per subject, rating.

All of that. Just wondering if theres any helpful tips from good folks here how to set it up. 

Preferably solution that works OsX and Win.

 

You can do this manually through the standard older system of your Mac FINDER but this is always going to be very clumsy. The better solution is to work through a particular software system that will automate file naming on import and allow you to categorise files in a variety of ways. Lightroom (classic)  which is ostensibly for photos can also handle video files and it makes this process very easy.

 

In the import settings you specify a naming protocol that will be automatically applied as Lightroom copies the files from your memory card onto your hard drive. For example each file might be labelled YEAR-MONTH-DAY-TIME which Lightroom will read from the file's metadata written by the camera. It can then automatically create a folder for each day and save the files inside. 

 

Then within Lightroom you can create virtual folders for whatever personal categories you want (favourites, different dive sites based on their GPS, and so on). You can have as many of these as you like, and clips can be place din more than one without ever disturbing the base level folder structure on your hard drive. 

 

HTH 

Edited March 31, 2025Mar 31 by MikeJonesDive

I do pretty much the same as Mike on Lightroom (LR) but for stills. As Mike has written in another post, aside from being an excellent image editor, LR is a tremendous database which is highly customisable. 

 

Whilst the idea might sound a bit daunting initially, it's a pretty intuitive program ( and certainly compared to Photoshop) and with a little discipline when importing images/video, as Mike explains, they become pretty easy to find at a later date. You can search and find items in all sorts of ways: which camera did I use; which lens; which date; where was I; through keywords.

 

I know there are members who grumble about the relatively new subscription approach and cost, but I've been using the program since it was first released and it has just gets better and better at, I would argue, not unreasonable cost for what it provides.

Regarding the specific use of LRC for I videos, this article gives you an idea of the pros and cons.

 

https://www.lightstalking.com/lightroom-video/

 

TL;DR

It is useful if you take advantage of its powerful cataloging database. Forget color correction or editing for serious work.

 

For how to take advantage of its catalog for photos (and also for videos) I recommend the excellent article of @MikeJonesDive just published.

 

 

I would add that although you can use the suggested plugins and others, DAM specificity for video has the ability to catalog video clips by default based on video-specific metadata: resolution, aspect ratio, framerate, bit depth, and others.

 

@Davide DB do you have a DAM you use, or any recommendations ?

Hi Conrad,

No, in the end, I didn't take the plunge. There were so many options, so expensive and complicated, that I played dead like an opossum in danger 😁

Let me try to summarize what I’ve gathered on the subject.

Let's just say the path branches out significantly depending on several factors. To name a few:

• Local vs. Cloud use

• Personal vs. Shared use

• Windows / Mac / Linux

You also need a tool with specific features for video that guarantees enough long-term reliability. I could spend months cataloging everything, only for the software company to go bust after two or three years, leaving me with a useless database. Working in the software industry for 30 years, I can assure you this happens much more often than people think. Kyno is school case.

My use case was personal use, local storage, and Windows-based. You have to be careful with local use because some products only manage catalogs on a single hard drive. While that’s limiting but still doable for photos, it's simply impossible for video. I keep my videos archived on duplicated, offline drives.

Initially I actually wanted to use Lightroom, since I've been using it for years for my photos and family albums. The major issue was that importing videos took ages because it kept trying to create smart previews for all the files. Not only did it take forever, but it often failed or caused my computer to freeze. It's a real shame because I was already familiar with its powerful tag and metadata management.

Plus, you are tied hand and foot to Adobe regarding a limited supported video formats. I might be wrong, but even now, there's no hope for ProRes HQ and ProRes RAW.

Choosing a video DAM is no easy task. Long story short, for my specific needs, this was the short list:

• Kyno (The "Zombie" is back): After being practically abandoned for years, it’s back with new updates. It’s the only one truly designed for a video-first workflow. It allows for "sub-clipping" (tagging specific segments of a clip) and can inject metadata directly into DaVinci Resolve. It’s perfect if you need to "pre-edit" or cull footage before moving to the NLE.
  

• AbeMeda / NeoFinder (Win/Mac versions) This is the "disk indexer" per excellence. It’s incredibly fast at creating "snapshots" of offline volumes. If you have 20 external drives on a shelf and you need to know which one contains "Clip_0042.mov" in two seconds, this is the tool. Keep in mind, metadata and tags/keywords yoy add are still in a proprietary database.
  

• DigiKam (Open Source) It's a big big project. It's the open source version of Lightroom and it has been active for over 20 years. Even if development were to stop today, the software would keep working, and the database (SQLite or MariaDB) is open and readable. There is no risk of proprietary lock-in. but more importantly, it can mirror every tag and metadata into standard XMP sidecar files***. While it started for photos, the latest versions (v9+) use FFmpeg to handle ProRes HQ and even ProRes RAW previews. It’s the database nearly futureproof because even if the software disappears, your metadata lives in plain-text XMP files right next to your videos. And last but not the least, it's free.

Among the three, Kyno is the one designed specifically for video and the one I loved the most. However, the fact that it was basically declared dead for about three years after the company was acquired really made me stop and think.

*** a note about XMP and a database while managing indexed files

Imagine you add an "interviews" tag/keyword to your Clip001.mov files.

When you type "interviews" into software like digiKam or Kyno, the information is instantly saved in the Database, usually a single file on your PC, such as digikam4.db. The tag is inside a system file on your main Hard Drive for speed. When you search for "interviews," the software doesn't scan all your external hard drives; it queries its internal database, which is tiny and very fast.
The limitation: If your database gets corrupted or if you uninstall the program without having a backup of the database, the "interviews" tag vanishes, even if your videos are safe and sound on the external disk.

To avoid the risk mentioned above, professional software uses XMP files. Since writing metadata inside a video file is slow and not supported in all formats, the software creates a small text file with the same name as the video but a different extension. Example: Video: Clip001.mov Sidecar: Clip001.mov.xmp or Clip001.xmp. The tag is written inside this text file in a standard XML format. If you open the XMP file with Notepad, you will clearly see the word:

<dc:subject>interviste</dc:subject>

It is for security and portability. If you take that hard drive to another computer with different software, such as Adobe Bridge, that software will read the XMP file and know that the video has the "interviews" tag.

If you spend months tagging your historical archive in digiKam and two years from now you decide to switch to Kyno or another MAM, you won't have to redo all the work—provided you've enabled XMP sidecar writing. The new software will read the XMP files and import the tags automatically.

P.S.

before you ask, no Adobe Bridge doesn't work!

Wow, thank you for the detailed reply @Davide DB ! I too had looked at Kyno but abandoned pursuing it further once I learned that it couldn't ready the sony XMP files to extract metadata. I've since solved that problem with Evrexpanse, which allows me to export a file which allows Resolve to read the metadata-- I'm wondering if that workaround will allow it to access the metadata. In the sony world I've also looked into their Catalyst Prepare/ browse software, but it isn't good for long term cataloging.

@Davide DB Are you still using Kyno? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the software further, especially as it relates to the risks you mentioned above.

On 1/5/2026 at 6:31 PM, DriftC said:

I too had looked at Kyno but abandoned pursuing it further once I learned that it couldn't ready the sony XMP files to extract metadata.

Are you sure that all those info contained in the xmp sidecar file is not in the MP4 file?

No I haven't used it since.

I was about to buy it, but then I saw several posts on the forum from people who hadn't heard back from tech support in months, and news that the company had been acquired. So I stop. I managed to get a pirated version 😇 just to test it out, and I have to say, it did everything I needed. I could even select subclips within a single file and assign different labels/keywords to each one. When I exported to DaVinci, the metadata and subclips were all there. It was awesome. The search was fast, but if I remember correctly, you had to re-insert the backup drive to search because the app doesn't have its own database; it only works with proprietary sidecar files in hidden folders next to the video files.

I eventually uninstalled it because I didn't want to buy it and waste time cataloging my entire archive with a product that seemed EOL (End of Life). Now there's this news about an update last September. Can we really trust it?

The fact remains that for my basic needs, Digikam might be just as good. It’s been around for 23 years, uses standard XMP metadata, and even if disaster strikes, its database is open-source and Digikam has a massive community behind it.

P.S.

I've never saw Catalyst Prepare/ browse software. I want to avoid vendor lock-in at all costs. I used Edius for years before moving to DaVinci, and it had its own proprietary asset manager. If I had relied on that for my archive, I’d be totally screwed right now. That’s why I’m looking for a brand-agnostic solution