FrameVault

iTunes For Video Clips

Justin Williams Skip to comments 4 Comments (Comments Closed Closed)

If you have ever wished there was an iApp for your video collection, einstein's legacy's FrameVault might be up your ally. Justin Williams is here to tell you all about it.

Are you mediagenic? What’s that you ask? The mediagenic generation includes anyone who uses digital audio, video or imagery to create better products, services or processes. An elementary school teacher who records her students’ solo performances and e-mails them to parents is mediagenic. A realtor who creates walkthrough videos of her properties is mediagenic. Video bloggers are definitely mediagenic.

The Mediagenic Generation is the customer base that Charlotte North Carolina’s einstein’s legacy is out to target. Founded in 1993, einstein’s legacy states that their mission is to engineer innovative solutions for the mediagenic generation of creative professionals who use Macintosh computers. Their flagship product, Cinematics, has been reviewed in MacAddict and was even selected as their Shareware Of The Month back in September of 2003.

Last month, einstein’s legacy released their new application, FrameVault. Marketed as the first prosumer software solution for managing digital video assets on your Macintosh, FrameVault borrows extensively from the iTunes paradigm and translates it to digital video. Along with importing, playing and organizing your video collection, FrameVault also allows for video playback across multiple monitors, exporting a collection as an archived bundle and manipulation of various playback variables offered by the Quicktime API.

FrameVault

einstein’s legacy is banking on Mac users wanting to be able to easily access and manage their video collection the same way they manage their music and photos. This video asset management is a market Apple has yet to enter. The reason is unknown to anyone outside of Cupertino, but one can speculate that Apple either doesn’t feel that people have as much passion for their videos as their photos and music collection or they don’t feel that people have a collection large enough that it requires an iApp to manage it. Whatever its reasons, for video professionals and collectors, an application like FrameVault is a breath of fresh air.

When you first launch FrameVault you will be greeted with a welcome window that describes the application. You are given the option to show the Quickstart guide or begin working with the application. Selecting the Quickstart guide launches the guide, but it is behind the welcome window. An unfortunate annoyance that could easily be remedied.

The Quick Start Guide is FrameVault’s replacement for a standard Mac OS X help file through the Help Viewer. It doesn’t allow for search, it has no screen shots and is very sparse in data. I am a big advocate in exhaustive help documents for novice users, and not seeing it in FrameVault was disappointing. FrameVault does include a user’s guide in the disk image that is another source of help, but I still believe the contents of the user’s guide should be a standard OS X help file.

Once you get to the main interface of the application you will notice a general interface that is similar to that of iTunes. On the left is a source list of collections. On the right is the preview pane for a movie and a listing of the clips in the selected collection. Across the top is a row of controls to manipulate the video, view clip information, and search based on several different criteria.

Working With Media

The first thing I wanted to do was import my entire movies folder. Naturally, I dragged it from the Finder to the Library listing in FrameVault. It imported all the videos that Quicktime was capable of playing, but only in the root. It did not import anything from the subfolders. To do that, I had to manually drag each of those into the library. If you have several subfolders below that, this can become a tedious task.

The method that FrameVault uses to determine whether to recursively include subdirectories is confusing. If you drag a folder into the source collections list, it will only import the root files and ignore the subdirectories. If, however, you drag the folder into an existing playlist, FrameVault will prompt you asking if it should include the subdirectories. I argue that it should include all subdirectories no matter where you import a folder to. If this application is to be the iTunes for video then it should mimic iTunes in look, feel, and function.

After importing my videos I began to sift through the collection and organize it into different categories. I did this by creating new playlists under my default library. I noticed that as I dragged clips from the main library to their respective playlist, they would move to the bottom of the main library’s listing. If I sorted the library’s clips and then began dragging clips into playlists, the clips would disappear from the library entirely until I switched to a playlist and then back to the library. This seems like a pretty substantial bug that needs to be fixed.

Playing clips in FrameVault works as advertised. Since it piggybacks off of Apple’s Quicktime, it functions just like it would if you were playing the video through Quicktime Player. Along with the Quicktime functionality, you can also also append notes and keywords to each clip making it easier to search for what you are looking for. As an avid user of tag-based services like Flickr, del.iciou.us, and Technorati, I am very happy that FrameVault has this feature.

Archiving a playlist of clips is a simple, but resource-intensive task. I archived a playlist of 10 clips and it caused my system to become unresponsive for short bursts. Each playlist archive is a bundle containing the video clips. You can export this archive file to other systems that are using FrameVault, or manually extract them from the bundle yourself.

You can also archive your media to external devices such as camcorders and DVD recorders. I chose to export a clip from FrameVault to my camcorder and it worked seamlessly. The final export option is to create a digital portfolio, which is a playlist combined into a single video with chapters (using new features in Quicktime 7). This is one of my favorite features of the application, because it makes it very easy for me to create a joined clip of some of my favorite Daily Show bits.

Going The Extra Mile

Aside from the few bugs I outlined above, I liked everything in FrameVault functionally. It works as advertised allowing users to manage their digital video collection. What bothers me about the application is some of its choices in interface design and its lack of polish. There are traits that are inherent in all great Mac OS X applications: a consistent UI, attention to detail and an elegance and attractiveness to the entire application’s experience. At 1.0, FrameVault is not up to par in this important aspect of any Mac OS X application. Some of the major interface enhancements I think the application needs are as follows:

Source List

Do any of these imped on the applications ability to perform as advertised? Not at all. They are just annoying for an interface geek like me. I have been spoiled by rich user experiences in applications like NetNewsWire, Mail and Transmit. I’m confident that einstein’s legacy will try to resolve these issues in future releases. After all, this is a 1.0.

Wrapping It Up

Is this a must-have application? I think that depends on what type of user you are. If you have a large collection of stock video that you are frequently accessing, the FrameVault makes it easy to find and use your video. If you have a large movie collection on your machine and want a consolidated environment to view the films in, then FrameVault is for you.

I think FrameVault is ripe with potential and functionality for a 1.0. When they fix the lingering bugs and interface oddities I outlined, I think it will be a great application. Right now they are trying to target the iTunes interface paradigm, but they are only going halfway. einstein’s legacy needs to finish the job and mimic every last bit of iTunes.

FrameVault is available for $75 and can be purchased from the einstein’s legacy Web site.

Justin WilliamsJustin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at

Reader Comments (4)

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed below are those of their authors and not necessarily endorsed or supported by MacZealots.com. In all cases, the comments provided here are offered as a courtesy and will be moderated. Any content deemed off-topic or offensive will be removed without notice. Posting a comment here boils down to two things: 1.) Think before you type 2.) Respect the thoughts of others. See our commenting guidelines and/or privacy policy for more information.

1 bob remarks:
#1) On August 8, 2005 10:16 AM

Have you tried iDive?

http://www.aquafadas.com/

2 Justin Williams remarks:
#2) On August 8, 2005 10:17 AM

No.

3 Jay remarks:
#3) On August 10, 2005 11:54 AM

Have you tried www.foottrack.com ?
Comes with a free demo. Unlimited time, 2 tape/100 clip limit.
Worth checking out.

Jay

4 Ben remarks:
#4) On September 16, 2005 2:24 AM

I’m curently using “iVideo” found here:
http://waterfallsw.com/ivideo/
yes i know it’s not brushed metal, that’s a bit annoying, but it’s a good app to be written in carbon (Real Basic), it tried to copy iPhoto, oveiously doesn’t have the editing feaures, but it still good!