Organizing videos from past years

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My collection of digital photographic files on my hard drive starts in 1998.

Since then I’ve been trying to keep the image files organized by date and event.
 

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Within my PhotoArchive1 folder are more than 63,000 digital images that I’ve taken from 1998 through 2010. This folder is subdivided into folders arranged by year and some folders are further subdivided by month, day and event name.

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Since it’s inception I’ve used Adobe Lightroom to organize and edit most of my photographs. As an ardent user of Lightroom I’ve benefited from the new and powerful features that Adobe continues to add to this software. I’ve spent many, many hours using Lightroom to tag the images and can now easily search for images by date, name, event, category, more.

Two weeks ago as I was going through these older images I realized that I haven’t done a good job organizing the videos that were taken at the same times as the still photos. I’m now reminded that video recording was missing from the digital cameras that I used. It wasn’t until about 2004 that my first digital camera had video capability. These videos were small sized producing 320 x 216 resolution movies. By about 2006, the resolution of my movies jumped to about 640 x 480. Since then resolution has grown by leaps and bounds with many non-professional cameras offering 1920 x 1080 and some even having 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160.

Let’s get back to my past videos. I use Lightroom to easily spot the videos. then I make digital copies of all of these videos with a set of filenames that clearly identifies the date of the recording.

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With Lightroom I’m looking at the contents of the 040523_Birthday folder where I see two videos files – one 9 seconds and another 15 seconds in length. From here I Export a copy of these videos and separately rename them with a prefix of 2004_04_ to make it easy to determine the date taken.

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I repeated the process of Exporting the videos from Lightroom from each folder. This took many hours over a several day period. When I finished, I had processed more than 1150 videos.


Above you can see a group of the renamed exported videos. All of these videos (more than 1000) are now in a single folder that other members of the household can view at their leisure.

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The year and month prefix (in this example 2010_09_) help to put the videos into a chronological context but is not helpful otherwise. However the small thumbnail photo provides a better way to key in on the contents of the video. It’s not perfect, but is certainly a better way than keeping the videos hidden within my PhotoArchive1 folder.

Would you be surprised to learn that I have never viewed many of these videos? Up to now I have concentrated on the still images in my large collection and have largely ignored the videos. With my videos now more organized I am anxious to view these “motion pictures” – some going back almost 20 years.

One of my future missions is to uncover the videos that I took from 2011 to the present.
 
 
Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 

What’s is WPPI?

	Late last momth, I left the bitter cold and snow of Michigan and trekked to a warmer environment for a couple of days. My destination was the Wedding & Portrait Photography International Conference and Expo in a warmer Las Vegas. Here are some of the photographers lining up to register for WPPI. I was told that attendees numbered about 13,000.
WPPI is an annual event. The audience is the large set of professional photographers and videographers who earn their living shooting weddings, portraits, school and sporting events. The five day conference consist of classes, seminars, photo walks and live demonstrations taught by celebrated professionals and industry educators covering every imaginable photo topic. In addition to the conference, there is a three day long expo at which several hundred manufacturers of photo equipment, accessories, photo finishing services, frames, albums, software and services present their products for attendees. The venue for WPPI was the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on the south end of the LV Strip
This year the conference consisted or more than 200 different classes covering a wide gamut of subjects: equipment, lenses, posing, lighting, flash, printmaking, pricing, babies, special effects, drone. The list of instructors are among some of the most well-known and successful photographers: Me Rah Koh, Matt Kloskowski, Denis Regge, Terry White, Bob Davis, Lindsay Adler, Miichele Celentano, Bambi Cantrell, Julieanne Kost, Hanson Fong, Jerry Ghionis, Roberto Valenzuela, Tamara Lackey, and Joe McNally to name a few.
While I sat in on a few classes, I spent most of my time at the expo. Follow me as I take you on a quick walk through of the exhibit hall to show you the types of photographic knowledge that is available at WPPI.
Special Effects Class	Lindsay Adler behind the lens
A Lighting Demo	Posing Babies
Jerry Ghionis at the mic	Portraits Up Close
Single Flash Demo	Group Shots
Hanson Fong Bounce Flash	…and the result
During the couple of days that I spent at WPPI, I talked to several exhibitors about their products. I’ll have additional articles here describing these products in the next few weeks. I hope you’ll be back here soon.	Fashion

 

 
Written by: Arnie Lee

 

 

Upcoming WPPI 2018 Conference & Expo

Having been part of the software, computer and publishing industries since 1980, I’ve been to Las Vegas more times than I care to count.

However the thought of another laborious trip out West isn’t going to keep me away from the Wedding & Portrait Photography International event this year. For the past several years I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this meeting where 200+ classes are taught by professionals covering a wide range of photography topics including lighting, posing, drone, video, baby/child, sports, school, printing, retouching, marketing and business. Among the instructors are many recognizable names: Tamara Lackey, Lindsay Adler, Julieanne Kost, Sue Bryce, Jerry Ghionis, Roberto Valenzuela and Joe McNally who will share their skills with the attendees.

In addition to the standard classes, there are smaller and more intensive sessions aimed at a limited number of attendees. And for those who’d rather be in a non-classroom setting there are multiple scheduled Photo Walks that provide hands-on learning.

I’m especially interested in the WPPI Expo. In the large exhibit hall you’ll meet with manufacturers and suppliers of photo equipment, accessories, photofinishing, presentation and framing, software and services. On the expo floor, various manufacturers present live demonstrations of their equipment and techniques. It seems that all of the major brands are on hand to demonstrate their products and answer your questions. I’ve made many purchasing decisions after having met with sales reps at earlier WPPI events..

This audience is taking in a presentation at the Canon booth

If you’re anxious to sharpen your photography skills, take a look at the many classes that are offered at the conference. Last year WPPI hosted about 13,000 professional and advanced photographers.

WPPI will take place February 24 to 28 at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. For more information please visit WPPI Conference & Expo.
 
 

By Arnie Lee
 
 

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