Storage for all my SFX libraries

[vudoo]

Over the years i've bought well over 100 CDs of different SFX libraries. Finally i decided this week to catalog them on and ideally have them online and ready to import/drop into Pt. I will be buying Soundminer or Basehead.

How do you guys store all your SFX, i guess ideally would be to rip them all and save them on Hard disk but this would mean i need to buy a 60 TB external array...ouch, this seems like a lot.

I guess the other solution is to compress the file to AAC or MP3. Suggestions ???
Thanks

[sonnykeyes]

I think your math is off: 100 CDs should have no more than 75GB on them. I have a 500GB external drive with over 270 CDs transcribed to it as full 44.1/16 files and tons of space left.

BTW, I hear Soundminer is awesome, but I just use Workspace search in Pro Tools, and as long as you import the CDs using iTunes with CDDB track name search on, it does a pretty good job for a lot less $.

Sonny Keyes
Ricochet Audio
Toronto

[vudoo]

oops..my math was wayyy of. Can you search/audition /drag&drop the sound into PTHD using the Workspace in PT ?? Thanks

[TiagoJSilva]

Originally Posted by vudoo

oops..my math was wayyy of. Can you search/audition /drag&drop the sound into PTHD using the Workspace in PT ?? Thanks

Yes, yes, and yes.

What you can't do is specify an inpoint and an outpoint to avoid importing a 10 minute file to get a 10 second event.

I've lost my clip editor when I stopped using Audiovision and since then I've never been able to buy a replacement.

[Kuba_Pietrzak]

I am sorry, but I really have to ask this question:

When you do sfx track using your library, do you "shuffle" your Cds and import effects from those Cds directly?

Kuba

[Airon]

The most comfortable thing that I know of is to use the Soundminer Ripper that you can buy along with Soundminer at a discount.

I have no idea what Basehead can do in this regard.

Be sure to use a very good CD/DVD drive for ripping. I went the slightly more complex, but also more secure route, since I don't trust anything to go 100% according to plan.

I ripped images of the CDs with Exactaudiocopy in secure mode(Plextors own ripping tools will do a fine job too).

These images are then mounted with Daemontools(Windows) or something similar in OSX, and the Soundminer Ripper then rips from that virtual device at blinding speeds and 100% accuracy.

You can test Basehead for 30 days if you want to take a look at that. Both those guys and the Soundminer folks are extremely helpful, handing you support very quickly. If Basehead works as well as Soundminer, which has much more experience behind it, then it's fine.

Btw, if you're on Windows, Basehead may be a slightly better choice for now, since Soundminer XP hasn't seen a lot of development. On the Mac it's a different story alltogether.

Oh and forget MP3, AAC or any other lossy compression. Sounds bad when pitching to the extreme and everyone can hear compression artifacts on a soundstage. Chills my blood to think that some actually mangle their precious recordings like that.

[mikevarela]

I use soundminer and love it. Personally I'd just leave the data on the discs once you rip them in.... you could even use iTunes as I think it's cddb database works with soundminer.

I think you asked about digitizing the discs to have duplicate digital copies after you've imported them into soundminer. If you do decide to do this (for archival purposes) then just use Disk Utility and do a compressed clone.

I have a mac pro, so i use a terabyte internal for all my samples, it makes transfer very quick. But, any external will do as well.


*** edit,

just realized after reading there site that Ripper would work best, though it's a little expensive. Aparently iTunes can't stamp the info aquired from it's databases when keeping things ful res wave (haven't tried though), they say it only works with compressed conversions

[idahorecordist]

You are correct, iTunes will not embed (stamp) the metadata into a WAV file. You could rip AIF and then import to Soundminer then mirror to WAV format after you get all the libraries on your HD.

Also, I tend to rip to a spare drive then once the complete library set is ripped, copy it to it's final destination HD then scan into Soundminer. I noticed that when I used to rip a while back (i don't rip anymore, get my stuff on DVD ripped or online) the files would be very fragmented on the HD. So to make myself feel better I always used a temp drive first.

Frank

[NReichman]

+1 for Soundminer and Ripper! It's worth it. You won't regret it. Ripper does things that no other CD ripping software can do. You only want to do this massive conversion once. Get it done right with the maximum amount of metadata.

[Jesse Peterson]

I use ripper also
basehead has something called injector, I think it does the same thing. Use one these that are designed for SFX cataloging, you'll be glad you did.

[NReichman]

Right. CDDB/Gracenote won't embed description fields and keyword tags into a BWAV file. Ripper will.

I haven't used Basehead, so I can't compare it to Soundminer/Ripper.

[Jfriah]

Yeah to Soundminer

[dogandpony]

I have to chime in for Basehead. Incredible support and, having owned Soundminer before, Basehead does everything except the VST processing at a much better price point (including the ripping). Plus, I found the support at Soundminer to be insufferably condescending. YMMV. john.