Martyn Hull wrote a message about how to store tapes on disc for the long run, which refreshed a question I've been trying to discover myself for a while:

What is the best way to archive hundreds and thousands of self made "stock footage"? I always hate dishing out $300 for 30 seconds of stock footage from a website, so I've been slowing getting my own clips of all kinds of shots every time I'm out shooting.

But now I have thousands of clips of everything ranging from golfcourse shots (mowers running, sprinklers on, flag blowing on the green, golf carts driving by, etc. etc.) to the hot-air balloons near my house, etc.

I might not ever use some of the shots, but when the time comes that I in fact DO need the shot of the golf ball going in to the hole, I have a dickens of a time finding the shot.

It was OK when I had a hundred +/- clips, but now with 1000+ it's like pulling teeth finding it.

I've been using Adobe Bridge and adding metadata tags, but I'm starting to see some limitations with the program (like if I have a harddrive offline, I'd still like to be able to access a low-res copy of it with a drive that's online).

I'd love to know if there's a local equivalent of a stock-image website, where you can search by tags, like "grass; golf; hole" to narrow down your files and see a low-res copy of it then and there. Then if it's the right clip, you can find out the physical location of it to import it to your project.

Sorry for the long post. THANKS!

I'd like a "proper" library application for video footage too!

You can try Microsoft Expression Media - http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/expressionmedia2/default.aspx - but I found it didn't support all formats (but then, I don't have QuickTime installed on that particular machine).

I actually use Adobe Lightroom - Adobe - Photo Management Software - Photoshop Lightroom (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/) - (yes, I know that's designed for images) with Jeffrey Friedl's Video Asset Management plug-in: Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog Jeffrey’s “Video-Asset Management” Lightroom Plugin (http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/video-assets)

It doesn't actually tag the video files themselves, but the associate thumbnails it generates. However, the tagging options are only limited by Lightroom itself, and the thumbnails are available when the media is off-line.

Try both and see if one or the other works out.

Hmm... Thanks. I've actually tried both of those (but not the plugin). Not overly satisfied with them yet. Hoping someone else can chime in.

You don't say what kind of footage you're storing, but it may be possible to use software such as Sony's Clip Browser. It's not really a searching/sorting program, but it does allow one to label clips and then sort them. It also stores a cache of all clips for quick access.

Just a thought.

Microsoft Expression Media maybe the way to go. You can download a free trial version. I have found it is satisfactory for stills and digital video.