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Phase One Media Pro? Anyone?

Has anyone used phase one media pro for organizing and viewing their photos? I've been using aperture for organization up until aperture deleted all my photos upon updating to the newest version.

I have had lots of problems with aperture in the past; however, I have not found a product easier to use than aperture. Any personal experiences with Media Pro out there?
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Well, media pro can render image formats, such as pdf and psd, that Capture one balks at. I suppose once Phase broadens what they can render in Capture one it may make media pro redundant.
-bob
 
Thanks everyone for the help so far. OK I started using Capture One as my program for keeping my files.
I am already starting to have some problems:
Imported some edited tiff files into Capture One. Then tried to export out a small jpeg of the tiff file (1200px) The photo comes out with huge amounts of moire, looks over sharpened, and at the same time has no detail....

I checked all the settings to make sure that it wasn't re-sharpening the photo and it is not.

What's going on here?
 

mikehoward

New member
CO7 does not (yet) replace all the functionality of Media Pro.

Media Pro is very strong in cataloging and handling metadata for large collections of images. It also recognizes more file formats than CO7. It offloads image processing to other programs so it interacts pretty well with PS as well as CO7 (and probably Aperture - but I don't use Aperture)

Also - Media Pro catalogs are very cheap. It's easy to create one for any collection of images, mess with the metadata or whatever and then either save it or blow it away. CO7 can create Media Pro catalogs (as well as import them) so there is a reasonably good interoperability between the two programs.

CO7's catalogs can actually contain your images - on a Mac catalog actually looks similar to a Mac application, so you can 'inspect' it by using Finder -> Show Contents. Media Pro does not do this: Media Pro catalogs are a database file which can live anywhere and is just used for managing the assets.

And - Media Pro documentation is somewhat opaque. :) The program has been through several owners, name changes and multiple revisions.

I use both CO7 because I find their strengths complement each other and because CO7 catalogs are unstable on my system (have no idea if this is systemic or just my problem). My current workflow is to use CO7 sessions, manage some of the metadata in CO7 and the rest in Media Pro. This requires telling Media Pro to import and export annotations in order to keep the XMP files up to date (Media Pro keeps the meta data in its catalog otherwise. CO7 can be told to keep an eye on the XMPs). This seems to work well to keep Media Pro, CO7 & Adobe products in sync.

Regarding your tiff problem: no idea. CO7 presumes it's working with raw camera data and does all of its adjustments as instructions in .cos (I think) files. I don't know what Aperture does, but PS mucks with the pixels destructively. If your tiff has been 'adjusted' then this might be the source of the problems you're seeing.
 

timgo

Member
Media Pro has several virtues:

Fast-functioning
Simple interface
Easy-to-learn
Stable
Versatile for various output formats, like jpegs from tiff originals

When I tried to employ CO7 for Media Pro's job the effort was fraught with frustration: the interface was not simple and it was not easy-to-learn.

As Capture One versions acquires more features, like the blades of a swiss army knife, it also becomes more complex to use and less efficient, at least for me.

I recommend Media Pro, at least over CO7.

Good luck,
Tim
 
I'm not in love with LR, but forced to use it and struggle with my Phase files. I really like media pro for many reasons. I prefer how it handles my offline files. The organisation of files is really well thought out.

However:

- If your agencies provide you with keyword categorisation files in some hierarchical format, you cannot use them. There's just no way to import them
- You cannot export your LR hierarchical keyword list and massage it into Media Pro. I think I'm a light digital user as I only have around 70K images, but boy is it tedious to move over
- Doesn't support the Leica Monochrom

So I just don't use it. I tried, I really did. I've imported all my images. I've tried scripts, I've tried editing the text vocabulary files, posting to the forum etc. Tagging all images from scratch is just not an option.
 

Bill Caulfeild-Browne

Well-known member
I use Media Pro as my primary library. After each shoot I migrate my files (actually copies) from Capture One and keyword them. Works very well, and when I want, say, a lighthouse pic, I can find it easily and immediately open it in C1.

Lightroom is more seamless but I just don't like the rendering as much - and certainly not for Phase files!

Bill
 

jagsiva

Active member
I have used Media Pro, but now stick to C1. Main reason is that even the latest version does not appear to support Retina on my MBP.
 
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