I'm a somewhat happy owner of a camera that by design is deprived of the so-called 'voice memos' feature (Nikon D800 to be specific).
Lately I began working on all sorts of projects that require fairly extensive annotation. Scribbling something down on a piece of paper is almost never a possibility. The only sensible way to address this is to carry a dedicated voice recorder.
We all know the drill. Lightroom can store and play audio annotations from just about any source. The voice memos do not have to originate from a camera like the Nikon D4. In order to assign a 'voice memo' to any photo, the WAV file can be copied to the folder which contains that photo and then simply renamed. And voila! The voice memo now appears as a sidecar. *As luck would have it, Lightroom isn't being too finicky in this department.
But how do I match each individual recording to its corresponding photo? Well, a recorder that timestamps the audio files should do the trick. As long as its clock is synchronized with the camera's, it should be a piece of cake... Well, yeah.. if you don't mind the manual labor and tons of it. But I've thought of something else.
There should be a good batch renaming utility that fits the bill. Before inquiring in a dedicated computer forum, I thought I'd make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel.
Isn't there a LR plugin for this? A plugin that I'm thinking of should be able to check the timestamps of audio files and import the ones that match with any of the photos in the catalog. By "import" I mean "copy the WAV files to the corresponding folder while assigning to each the appropriate filename". Nothing fancy, really. My logic tells me a plugin like that should be out there. If it doesn't exist, someone ought to code it. I think it's a great idea for a plugin. Personally I would pay money for one.
Plan B (originally plan A):
There's a ton of batch renaming utilities. Utilities that can be tasked with renaming millions of files in all sorts of clever ways. I'm looking for one that can be programmed to do something like this:
Look, here's a folder(A) with a bunch of photos. Here's another folder(B) with a bunch of audio files. Compare the timestamps in folder B against the timestamps in folder A. If there are any matches (within the acceptable range), rename the matching files in folder B; assign to the matching files the same names (as in folder A) but keep the extension (WAV).
Something like that would be splendid.
So what do you think? I know I can't be the only one who's ever needed this.
PS: I do realize that giving the audio files names that correspond to the photos and only then importing everything is more preferable in some ways.
Lately I began working on all sorts of projects that require fairly extensive annotation. Scribbling something down on a piece of paper is almost never a possibility. The only sensible way to address this is to carry a dedicated voice recorder.
We all know the drill. Lightroom can store and play audio annotations from just about any source. The voice memos do not have to originate from a camera like the Nikon D4. In order to assign a 'voice memo' to any photo, the WAV file can be copied to the folder which contains that photo and then simply renamed. And voila! The voice memo now appears as a sidecar. *As luck would have it, Lightroom isn't being too finicky in this department.
But how do I match each individual recording to its corresponding photo? Well, a recorder that timestamps the audio files should do the trick. As long as its clock is synchronized with the camera's, it should be a piece of cake... Well, yeah.. if you don't mind the manual labor and tons of it. But I've thought of something else.
There should be a good batch renaming utility that fits the bill. Before inquiring in a dedicated computer forum, I thought I'd make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel.
Isn't there a LR plugin for this? A plugin that I'm thinking of should be able to check the timestamps of audio files and import the ones that match with any of the photos in the catalog. By "import" I mean "copy the WAV files to the corresponding folder while assigning to each the appropriate filename". Nothing fancy, really. My logic tells me a plugin like that should be out there. If it doesn't exist, someone ought to code it. I think it's a great idea for a plugin. Personally I would pay money for one.
Plan B (originally plan A):
There's a ton of batch renaming utilities. Utilities that can be tasked with renaming millions of files in all sorts of clever ways. I'm looking for one that can be programmed to do something like this:
Look, here's a folder(A) with a bunch of photos. Here's another folder(B) with a bunch of audio files. Compare the timestamps in folder B against the timestamps in folder A. If there are any matches (within the acceptable range), rename the matching files in folder B; assign to the matching files the same names (as in folder A) but keep the extension (WAV).
Something like that would be splendid.
So what do you think? I know I can't be the only one who's ever needed this.
PS: I do realize that giving the audio files names that correspond to the photos and only then importing everything is more preferable in some ways.
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