Mediabay & Soundminer Metadata

Cubase
1

I really could use some help knowing exactly what kind of metadata Mediabay can read coming from Soundminer & other similar metadata library tools. I have several Terabytes of SFX & music sample libraries I am converting to UCS standards. But before I can even begin I need to know what kind of metadata Mediabay can interpret/read/write from Soundminer. Its super frustrating at the moment because Mediabay is only reading 4 fields of BWF metadata written by Soundminer. The Steinberg Cubase 11 manual doesn’t give anything remotely close to knowing how things work under the hood in Mediabay. I wish to use both Soundminer & Mediabay together, but its not possible at the moment unless I can get some good information on what exactly Mediabay is able to read. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

PS/ All of the samples are Broadcast Wave files.

2

I would email tech support on this as well, and also, ask in the Nuendo forums… might get more help on this there - more post-production related

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3

I imagine mediabay, and Soundminer etc., use proprietary methods.

Sounds about right, I’m afraid.

afaik, mediabay simply adds metadata that it can later read into its sql type database- the file %appdata%\steinberg\Cubase 11_64\mediabay3.db

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4

really? I was told it embeds it per file?

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6

Yes. Embeds per file, then stores the data in a sql db. Mediabay reads that.

This is also why deleting mediabay3.db is a trivial matter – Mediabay simply remakes the db later.

You can open the db in a tool like SQLite too.

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7

Maybe it is a worthy avenue for Steinberg to explore if it’s possible to come up with a piece of software or MediaBay utility to convert and import SoundMiner data to MediaBay… Could make the transition easier for some people to come to the DAW and bring more customers.

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8

Or perhaps an opportunity for an enterprising young programmer?

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9

Here’s a quick analysis of the fields Soundminer reads. Its not ideal at all…

steinbergTable[‘MediaCompany’]=metadata.Publisher

steinbergTable[‘MediaArtist’]=metadata.Artist

steinbergTable[‘AudioSoundEditor’]=metadata.Designer

steinbergTable[‘MediaRecordingLocation’]=metadata.Location

steinbergTable[‘MediaRecordingMethod’]=metadata.Microphone

steinbergTable[‘MediaTrackNumber’]=metadata.Track

steinbergTable[‘MediaLibraryManufacturerName’]=metadata.Manufacturer

steinbergTable[‘MediaAlbum’]=metadata.CDTitle

steinbergTable[‘MediaCategoryPost’]=metadata.Category

steinbergTable[‘MusicalCharacter’]=metadata.Mood

steinbergTable[‘AudioSoundMixer’]=metadata.Recordist

steinbergTable[‘MediaLibrary’]=metadata.Library

steinbergTable[‘MediaComment’]=metadata.Description or metadata.BWDescription
if metadata.SubCategory then steinbergTable[‘MusicalCategory’]=metadata.SubCategory end

–MediaCategoryPost
if metadata.Keywords then

steinbergTable[‘MusicalInstrument’]=metadata.Keywords

steinbergTable[‘SmfSongName’]=metadata.TrackTitle or metadata.FXName

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10

I very recently stumbled over a GUI freeze in a PresetDialog, and this mapping was the root-cause:

This mapping is CRITICAL! It writes Soundminer’s metadata.Keywords into the “Sub Category” tag (historically id=“MusicalInstrument”. Leading to potentially huge number of entries and inconsistencies with “Category” (id=“MusicalCategory”). Soundminer is informed.