how to catalog b-roll stock?

<p>Curious how others are logging in b-roll stock footage and then cataloging it? Especially with b-roll there are a lot of clips that could be thrown away without even bringing the footage into an NLE project or even taking up space on the hard drives. You know, you blew the pan or started the camera and things didn't happen etc.. Other than folder naming how are you archiving stock footage for easy retrieval months later?</p>

<p>The other question is how to preview footage on my underpowered laptop (that does not have an NLE software) and somehow create selects or notes that when I am working on my workstation in an NLE project and import the clips I already know the specific clips I want to look at.</p>

<p>Any ideas or advice dealing with b-roll stock footage is very appreciated.</p>

<p>thanks, jeff</p>

<p>This a tricky one! What you really need is an asset management system and they normally come as part of an NLE system (expensive) or bespoke software (very expensive). The problem is adding metadata to your clips that can be searched for and edited by a future NLE system. At present the only universally useful metadata in a clip is actually the clip name, so a convention needs to be established which can re-name the clips such that you can search it at a later date. Example might be YYYY_MM_DD_location_brief_description.<br>

As for deleting unwanted clips, beware! Many pro or semi pro cameras place clips into folders and any attempt at deleting them could cause problems ingesting later on. Different pro manufacturers have free software to allow you to view, rename and copy selected clips from their cards, but they often tend to be optimised for their own NLE systems. Examples that spring to mind are Canon's XF utility and Sony's XDCam browser. DSLR cameras generally don't have folder structures to worry about<br>

Large broadcasters generate a mind boggling amount of footage and are wrestling with this very challenge. Just search for "BBC DMI"</p>

<p>Thanks Gareth for the response. Yes I would never delete clips on the camera, I'm thinking more along the lines of transferring them to external hard drive that I could go through from my old laptop without needing to import them into a big piece of software such as Premier just to do the logging work. Maybe adjusting file names will be beneficial enough.<br>

thanks</p>