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08/08/2004 |
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iView Media Pro 2.5 Iain Laskey examines a professional cataloguing system for digital media
If you’re a photographer, whether using a digital camera or scanning in slides and negatives, you’ll know the problem of keeping track of all those images. In many cases you’ll get by quite nicely with any of the various cataloguing and thumbnailing tools available. However, if your needs are a little more sophisticated, you’ll want something that goes above and beyond the norm. Enter iView’s Multimedia's Media Pro 2.
Installation Media Pro 2.5 can be downloaded direct from the manufacturers web site or bought boxed from the usual retailers. Unlike many of its peers, it is available in both Mac and Windows formats. The former tends to arrive first and the Mac version 2.5 has been available for a little while now. New on the scene however is the Windows version and a welcome arrival it is too. The program can check for and download updates automatically which is a nice feature ensuring it stays up to date.
Features Media Pro 2.5 can handle over 100 different file formats including a vast range of images, sound, video and vector formats as well as fonts, HTML, PDF and Postscript. As such, it can be used to catalogue all your digital media no matter what format it takes. A bonus is support for a number of the RAW formats used by digital cameras including Canon, Kodak, Olympus and others. New files can be added using drag and drop or by opening folders manually. You could even drag and drop a CD full of photos on to it or load them directly from a digital camera (assuming your camera supports PTP or Picture Transfer Protocol). Cameras that do not support PTP can usually have their images loaded via the Microsoft Camera and Scanner Wizard instead. When images are added to the catalogue, you can choose to have Media Pro 2.5 create its own thumbnails or use embedded ones that already exist in the files. The latter is quicker but probably lower in quality. Note that iView merely catalogues data about the files, it doesn't make copies of them.
You can create individual catalogues to break things down or lump everything together. Once stored, you can add additional information (meta data) about each file and this is used to help sort and filter. Media Pro can also make use of the Exif data in photos if available. Meta data can be added by hand on a file by file basis although common fields like copyright, author etc can be set to auto-fill across a range of files. Once the basic data is in place, you can start to create your own set of categories. You may want to create one called ‘Holiday’ under which are sub categories of ‘People’, ‘Places’, ‘Events’ and so on. You may even wish to divide ‘People’ down to ‘Wife’, ‘kids’ and ‘others’. Once done, you can select all the photos that relate to each category and then drag and drop them on to the category name. Photos can be in as many categories as you wish. Once done you can then select a category and Media Pro will then only show thumbnails for the selection made. If importing from PhotoShop, you can make use of Media Pro’s support of the Adobe Extensible Metadata format. Media pro maps the XMP fields to its own fields making it much quicker building up information from compatible file types. As well as the versatile and easy to use cataloguing and sorting features, Media Pro 2.5 also has a few other tricks. It can perform some basic image enhancements including sharpening, cropping, colour adjustment, red-eye removal and so on. Changes can be made to the original images or you can make use of the built in version control system to allow you to make different versions of the same file. Media Pro can also generate slide shows as either basic shows or QuickTime movies. If you have any useful Adobe PhotoShop droplets, these too can be used to process images.
Printing can be done of individual images or contact sheets and users can create templates or use existing ones to print CD cases or other custom layouts. You can also generate PDF files containing your images. Media Pro 2.5 can generate HTML galleries for inclusion in your web site with a number of options being available. A useful function is the built in backup to CD-ROM. Finally, data can be exported as XML allowing you further processing options on your database.
Sharing A really nice feature is that catalogues and media files can be shared with other people without having to buy a full version of Media Pro. You can give people a copy of your catalogue which they can then read via the Catalogue Player which is freely downloadable from the web site. The player doesn’t just allow you to view the files, you can still search for particular ones by any meta data you may have created or perhaps by the Exif data embedded in the photos. You want to see the images you took at 400ASA or on a certain date? No problem!
Documentation Media Pro 2.5 comes with a PDF based manual which covers everything you need to know in clear and well illustrated terms. The appendices usefully describe the file formats, short cut keys and information on the field mapping with the Adobe formats. The web site includes a wealth of useful information and includes a user forum where you can ask questions, share experiences and generally get the best out of the software.
Issues We found Media Pro to be generally fast, bug free and easy to use. The only real problem is some odd behaviour when cataloguing CDs full of images making it hard to tell which CD holds which image. IView are aware of this and investigating so a fix should be available soon. Another minor quibble is the lack of JPEG2000 support although to be fair, this is a limitation of the current PC version of QuickTime which MediaPro uses for access to come file types. Conclusion IView Media Pro 2.5 is not cheap on the face of it. However, if you have a lot of digital media to work with, particularly photographs or audio files, you’ll find it an indispensable tool which will quickly repay itself in time saved and ease of accessing your valuable data.
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