What is Reddit's opinion of
NeoFinder?
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13 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
MediaInfo Should handled this for you in a pinch.
If you’re trying to get yourself organized as opposed to just a quick peek at one or two files, then
I highly recommend NeoFinder (Or the Windows version called AbeFinder.
It builds a catalog of disks/drives and allows you to index all of your media for searching (even offline drives so long as you’ve indexed them) - and it is not at all limited to photo/video media files. You can use it to index pretty much anything.
If you do manage to find something it won’t index, you’ll likely be able to convince the developer to get it done. It’s a small shop and he’s very friendly and responsive.
We use HDs with clones to backup all sessions. 4 TB each. To search the drives we use a utility called CD Finder. http://www.cdfinder.de/ Every drive is scanned into the database and totally searchable. ever since the 90's!
If you have files on multiple HDs, I would recommend NeoFinder. It doesn't have the exact functionality that you're looking for, but you can use it to catalog all of your drives, which is especially useful with older drives with USB 2.0 or FW400 or slower connections. Once it scans each of your drives, you can search for files without the drive being connected to see where it is.
You should also take a good look at your practices going forward. My number 1 digital management tip is to rename your files so you don't have any IMG_xxxx lying around. For most jobs, I make a new LR Catalog, especially because I'll start editing on my macbook, but then I might finish it on the iMac. When these are done I'll import them into a master catalog. Obviously there are many ways you can approach this, but I would urge you to do some critical thinking as to what makes the most sense for you.
Many of you probably already know about this but for documenting I recently found these two apps that saved me a lot of time:
(both have free versions)
Creates a pdf that lists the contents of any volume or subfolder. Very customizable.
Reads the entire volume or subfolder and creates a directory with thumbnails of every file (dope!). Once it saves, you're able to search the drive without having it plugged in. The thumbnails take up some space, but I scanned 8TB of data to create a ~500mb file. Very useful when I need to go dig up a file from an archive drive but not 100% sure which drive it's on.
Do you know if NeoFinder lets you import libraries with XML, HTML, or even sheets that have values separated by tabs?
I use DiskLibrary, which is not supported anymore. I have so much stuff in it, and am dreading the day that MacOS doesn't support it anymore. I'll pretty much need a legacy machine to just run the thing
Edit: Nevermind, their website answered my own questions: http://www.cdfinder.de/guide/3/3.6/import.html
Yes your future self will thank you greatly, there's no greater pain than having to dig through thousands of IMG_1234's until you find the right one.
If you have many drives, you should catalog them, using something like (Neofinder)[http://www.cdfinder.de/], this way you can search image names and/or dates across all your drives without having to sift through individual folders.
If you're on a Mac, CD Finder is your solution. I used to work at a small production company and had exactly your issue. The guy before me had a massive spreadsheet that he updated manually, and it was driving me crazy. I found CD Finder, and life improved. It does exactly what you described: creates an offline, searchable database of all your drives, automagically. I think the free version does something like 20 drives and only on one computer; the paid version does unlimited drives with a network-accessible database, so more people can use it. I just used the free version, since we were small enough that all requests to find things could just go through me.
Good luck!
EDIT: Apparently, they have Windows Version, too.
http://www.cdwinder.de/ (Windows)
http://www.cdfinder.de/ (Mac)
I think abeMeda may work for you but I'm not familiar with how it'll work in your specific situation so take a look here, it's basic look at how it may behave on a network:http://www.cdwinder.de/en/en/networking.html
Neofinder is what we're moving to at work. Let's your create tags for files, search databases (which you can store on a server or in Dropbox type of folders), create sidecar files, contact sheets, etc.
They have a Windows counterpart called AbeMeda. I've only used Neofinder, but it looks like it's the same thing with Windows.
I did a lot of archiving at my last job.
• We had G-RAIDs for easy accessibility. If an editor wanted something, I copied from the G-RAID to the SAN for working projects.
• Each G-RAID was mirrored to it's own folder on a Drobo.
• I kept track of the contents of everything with a program CD Finder, which is now called NeoFinder.
I have a catalog system for my writing. 1 through 1000 etc. theres drives and clones... for the studio i have drives and clones as well by project name. i am on Mac and i use a search utility called CD finder.
It has existed since the OS9 days and i still use it. I can find any project i worked on since 1995!!!
Have a look at NeoFinder or the Windows version called AbeMedia.
For a long time i was doing exactly what you described - processing using C1 and using LR for the catalog and LR was always so slow/cumbersome that I was always on the lookout for something else - but any better solutions I found were always super overkill (like Extensis Portfolio).
About six months ago I stumbled upon NeoFinder and fell in love with it as a catalogging tool. It's totally solid for photos, but will catalog basically any sort of data you'd like because the development was focused initially on catalogging offline optical disks (waaaay back in the day) and has since evolved as a DAM tool for offline hard drives, server volumes, and even a handfull of cloud storage solutions.
It's totally reasonably priced ($40ish USD for a single install) and if you NEED it, there is multi-user support so more than one person can be browsing the catalog at a time.
I was so impressed with the thing that I bugged the developer enough that he let me join the beta testing program, so I've been tinkering with version 7 that's about to release next month and I'm kind of psyched about it.
Bottom line... I haven't used Lightroom since I started testing NeoFinder other than to look at a few smart collections I wanted to re-create.
(Other than being a beta tester, I'm not at all affiliated with the developer - I'm just really really pumped about it ha).