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volleynerd
volleynerd
Participant
November 13, 2017
Question

Elements 2018 - Organizer find by tags

  • November 13, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 423 views

Hello -


New to Adobe Premier Elements 2018, actually checking out the trial version for the past couple days. Coming from experience in Power Director, and have done a fair amount of video editing, mostly for sports clips and highlight videos.  Looking for a better workflow than what I have now, thought the Organizer in Elements was going to be the answer, but not loving it.  Wondered if anyone has any better ideas or can point out something I'm missing.

My standard workflow:

  • record kids sports, usually many video clips of a given game, start/stop producing small clips throughout a game
  • have the video clips in Windows, directories for each sport/date/game
  • thought I would use Organizer to TAG video clips that have good plays (tag by person and type of play), eventually wanting to gather them into a highlight video.
  • create highlight video with clips from many different games/dates/players

Thought the Adobe Organizer was going to offer great capabilities for exactly the above, most notably for tagging and finding the clips later (across many directories).

I have spent a couple days watching tutorials, reading help, etc.  Finding that Organizer (maybe the blame should lie on Premiere Elements) does not do what I need.

I have tagged various clips in Organizer.  This is a very clunky UI by the way.

  • I have to individually double click a video to watch it in action.
  • Can't use any pause, rewind, frame-by-frame controls that I'm used to in many editors (I realize I'm not in Premiere Elements here, so Organizer just doesn't have any of this functionality)
  • Super awkward user interaction - single click selects a video, but the 2nd of a double click DE-SELECTS the video, but brings up the video in a dialog to play.  When dismiss that dialog, the selection is gone, so it's not clear what video I was just looking at.
  • Add a tag using the search at the bottom right (has to be one of the already created tags)

Using hierarchy of sports, player names, etc.  Then I'm in Premiere Elements.

  • New Project
  • Add Media, Elements Organizer
  • I can't find any way to find media by tag.  Can only search - which seems to search only filename (which in my case are date/time stamps from the original video clips) or caption
  • So what good is the organizer to tag all the media, if it can't be used to import into Premiere Elements?

Sorry for the long winded description of my frustration.  Was thinking based on reviews that the Adobe tools had what I wanted - the ability to tag across lots of media directories and collect those into a video project.

What am I missing?


Thank you!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

B
Community Expert
Bill SpragueCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 14, 2017

A few versions back, I quit using Organizer because I'm also a photographer and happy user of Lightroom.  If you happen to be a Lightroom user, I would be happy to describe my workflow that combines Lightroom file management with video editing.  I do use Premiere Elements, but any NLE would work as well.

Bill

volleynerd
volleynerdAuthor
Participant
November 15, 2017

Hi Bill -

Thanks for your reply.  I am not a Lightroom user (actually had to look it up to find out what it was).  I have my videos stored locally (in addition to multiple online backups and Google Photos), but am looking for a good workflow to "tag" the videos with various names, sports, plays, etc. Then I can "quickly" collect all of them when wanting to make a highlight video.

Seems like Organizer + Premiere Elements is not a good combo for that.  Should have mentioned, think Final Cut Pro X (what both of my kids use) is the best I've seen, but it's on their Mac and I'm on Windows.

Would be interested in your workflow in any case.

Thanks.

-Dan

B
Community Expert
Bill SpragueCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 15, 2017

I use Lightroom to do exactly what you say you want to do.  The Lightroom workflow I use is routine for still photographers except for one part involving video. 

When I adopted Lightroom for my organization system I quit using Organizer so I can't tell you (or not) if it will (or won't) do what you want. 

I shoot with a couple different cameras.  They use SD cards.  Lightroom has an "Import" function that recognizes and finds image files on the SD card, copies them to the HDD and creates previews.  My preference is to use a "by camera/by date folder structure".   The video clips are put next to the photo files.  Lightroom has an abundant set of filter choices where you can find, tag, collect, select, etc.

In other words, I can quickly and easily get all my files to my computer, find and preview all the clips shot on a particular trip, event or mission.  I can rename and move files withing Lightroom when I need to.

The video part has to do with Lightroom's "Export" functions.  On is to "Export as Original".  After I've found and selected what I want for a project, I "Export" copies of the clips to a folder I've created just for the project.  In that same folder I put everything relating to that project.  To make things, including editing and rendering, speedy I use a SSD for that folder.   The original clips stay in their primary (and backed up) storage location.  I like working with clip copies.   When the project is complete or I want to stop working on it, it is easy to move the entire folder from the working SSD to some other place for storage.

Lightroom does have some very limited video editing capabilities.  One that I use is to pick frames from 4K footage to make still images and prints.  I do use Lightroom for most of my still photo editing.

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