How to Manage Information About Your Videos¶

You can add three categories of information to a selected video from the Video Details window. Remember that all the details you add can be used for filtering later when you work with the video catalog.

• Video Scene thumbnails -- These visually represent the video and are perfect for a quick overview of a video.

• Details -- This is text information or metadata about the video, such as Description, Title, and Genre.

• Cast -- Actors who feature in the video.

Video Scene thumbnails¶

All videos are technically a series of video frames (images) passing by fast. Fast Video Cataloger creates visual overviews of videos by capturing images spaced evenly in time. In the Video Scenes window, you can view these images as a row of thumbnails. Each of these images represents a scene in your video. You add new scene thumbnails by clicking the capture button in the video player.

Clicking a scene thumbnail will start playing from that scene in the Video Player. Right mouse button, click on a scene thumbnail shows a menu for using the image as either the preview thumbnail for the whole video or as a cast thumbnail for an actor. You can remove thumbnails you don't want in the Video Scene window via the right-click menu.

Details¶

The Video Details window contains general information about your currently selected video. Most of this information is available during a search and filter operation using the Search Window Content tab.

The text fields are all editable - just click and type. Don't worry about saving: it is handled automatically. You can also copy and paste text from the clipboard into these fields.

Title -- The filename of the video as it occurs in its media source is automatically inserted here. However, this can be edited in the usual way directly in the Title field box. Any change that you make here automatically changes the video's filename within its storage location, which becomes evident when you move to another item in the Video Catalog window.

Description -- This box is for entering longer texts. Maybe you have some text written about the video that will fit in here. A particular property of this Description field is that you can drop a .txt file directly onto it, and the content of that text file will appear as the video's description. Note: this drag-'n'-drop operation will replace any text already in the box.

Genre -- The Genre option allows you to change the genre of the video. You can rename genres for your whole video catalog by right-clicking on a genre. In most cases, we recommend using keywords instead of the genre.

Ratings -- The Rating option allows you to change the rating of the video. Right-click if you want to reset the rating.

Extended Properties -- Extended properties are searchable user-defined extra properties. Click the Edit button to add your own extended properties.

The filter field allow you to filter out any property name that don't contain the filter text.

The hide empty checkbox hides all extended properties that has no current assigned value.

Extended Thumbnail Properties -- Extended thumbnail properties are searchable user-defined extra properties tied to thumbnails. Click the Edit button to add your own extended thumbnail properties.

The note field allows you to enter free text note for a specific thumbnail. You can search for notes in the search window in the scene search section.

Tip: If you do not use extended properties, you can close the expanders. The open/close state of the expanders are stored with the Layout.

Cast¶

The cast area is the space where you build up the video's Cast. To assign an actor to the Cast, simply drag that Actor's portrait from the Actors window to this Cast window. You can remove actors from a video's Cast using the button at the bottom.

The best way of creating and adding actors to a video at the same time is by right-clicking a video scene thumbnail in the Video Scenes window and selecting the "Use image for New Actor portrait" option.