Mediabay and sfx libraries

Cubase
#1

Hi all!

I’m having trouble understanding Mediabay. I have two rather large sound libraries I use a lot at work. One is Sound Ideas 6000 series, which I have installed on an internal hard drive.

If I do a logical search -> any attribute -> matches, on the word ‘wind’ I get a lot of results eg. a file called ‘AirConditioner 6101_04’. The word ‘wind’ doesn’t appear in the filename (but there is off course some kind of windy sound in a file called AirConditioner), so there must be a tag or something which MediaBay uses to find the file. This is great and it works perfectly!

The other sound library I have is Hollywood Edge - Cartoon Trax. This is my problem. The sounds were ripped from audio cds (not by me) and the files are just named ‘Track 1’, ‘Track 2’ etc. And apparently there are no tags (or whatever it is) because none of these sound files show up when I do a logical search on eg. the word ‘Buzz’. Track 1 on CD 1 is called ‘Insect Buzz Single and Multiple: 6 Versions’ so it should pop up, when I search for ‘buzz’.

And here comes my problem: how do I write tags for the sounds I have in my Hollywood Edge sound library, so that MediaBay will find the right sound files for me when I do a logical search?
I’m sure there’s something on this in the manual, but I just can’t find it. :blush:

#2

I just spottet that the files from Sound Ideas are Broadcast Wave File format and the sounds from Hollwood Edge are AIFF.

So I’m guessing that MediaBay uses some sort of metadata contained in the wav files to find.

EDIT
I’ve found out that BWF descriptions are set and used to find the sounds in my Sound Ideas library!
But since the Hollywood Edge sounds are in the .aif format there aren’t any ways to set the same attributes, are there?

I’m thinking af ripping the sounds again, this time in .wav. After all it’s just 5 CDs containing 99 tracks each.

#3

Sooooo…

I just tried putting the Cartoon Trax cd in the tray. If I choose “Import audio from cd” Cubase actually recognises the tracks and names them correctly, but I can’t find this metadata anywhere on the disc when I try to rip the whole cd with windows media player or VLC.

So if I rip the cd’s using media player I will just get 99 tracks named ‘track1’, ‘track 2’…

And I can’t get Cubase to rip an intire cd, can I? 5 x 99 tracks is just too much to import using Cubase… any ideas on how I can get the cd ripped, so I can search the library using media bay?

#4

Most of the sample libraries should have BWF Broadcast Wave File Meta data included.

If they don’t: try Stamp ID3
http://www.nch.com.au/tageditor/index.html

Here you can add your own BWF entries
and search using Media Bay : Audio Assets : BWF

You’ll have a little copy and paste involved - but once it’s done - it’s done.

Another way to add BWF descriptions is to load the file into cubase - and render and save as BWF- adding the correct BWF meta data on export.
logical_bwf.jpg

#5

Thanks a lot! That did help me.

Btw. I found a freeware program instead called BWF MetaEdit. Now all I have to do is a bit of copy/pasting and my sound libraries will be much easier to navigate!

And I also gained some knowledge about what a Broadcast Wave Format file is (I always just thought of them as ‘some sort of wave file’, which was correct, but now I know exactly what sort of .wav they are). :smiley:

#6

Stamp ID3 is also free - unless you use it commercially.

#7

Now I have added BWF-descriptions to the files I have ripped from the first two audio cds in the Hollywod Edge Cartoon Trax library. This rather weird thing happens:

CD-1
tracks 1 -9: descriptions show up in MediaBay, the sounds are categorised as Broadcast Wave Files under ‘file type’ (everything works).

tracks 10-99: descriptions show up on each file, but only after I highlight them. The sounds are categorised as Wavefiles under ‘file type’, and if I search for a specific term the files I’m looking for don’t show up in the results (not even after I have highlighted them and thereby ‘forced’ the descriptions to pop up).

CD-2
tracks 1-99: descriptions show up in MediaBay, the sounds are categorised as Broadcast Wave Files under ‘file type’ (everything works).

I have followed the exact same procedure when adding BWF-descriptions to the files:
Ripped from original audio-cd’s with Windows media player (settings: wave-file loseless, highest quality)
BWF-descriptions added with BWF MetaEdit.

Can someone tell me what I have done wrong?
The stupid thing is I tested the procedure with 3 or 4 sounds first, just to make sure I wouldn’t spend too much time adding descriptions and then finding out, that it wouldn’t work because the files actually were wavefiles and not Broadcast Wavefiles. :confused:

#8

update

I have tried to load the files in several ‘bwf-description-making applications’, including Stamp ID3, all sounds load up perfectly with descriptions and play as they should.

So I think I have narrowed the problem down to MediaBay or the way I import the files/scan them in my setup. I will try to re-arrange the file tree and do a rescan just to see what happens.

#9

Succes! This seems to eliminate the problems I had. All sounds show up as Broadcat Wave Files now.

Phew!

#10

If any time you do an update ( Cubase .7.0 -5 etc) Id recommend a FULL Mediabay Rebuild, to eliminate any errors creeping in, which in variably with new updates they seem to.

just delete your Mediabay.db file… Let Cubase (new update create a new file automatically, and then select your fresh drives to rescan.

#11

Thanks! I’ll kep that in mind when doing future updates. Right now everything is dandy.

#12

Thanks for the running commentary towards a solution!

Very helpful