15-Minute Reviews :: Fast Video Indexer v1.02
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Fast Video Indexer version by Inzomia – An application to index your videos.
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Fast video indexer is an easy to use video Manager for large video clip collections. Use it to browse your digital video collection and to create video web index galleries, jpeg contact pictures or image playlists for Inzomia image viewer.
It can also be used to extract screenshots as standard jpeg images viewable in your favorite image viewer. Fast video indexer supports video formats supported by Windows media player and requires Windows 2000, XP or Vista.”
Quick Pros
- Quick at loading and adding videos to the queue
- Application will attempt to help you to find the correct codec if you do not possess it
- Processes queue very quickly – Few seconds for 23 videos.
Quick Cons
- Interface, while trying to look nice, ends up being overcomplicated
- Tutorials aren’t very great
- Can not view resulting index files or playlist files inside application without Inzomia viewer
- Resulting JPEGs for ‘index photo generation’ poor quality
- Webpages could use some serious work
- Webpages would benefit from linking to the file for quick-play
- Needs to build an index.html with a list of all the videos and maybe 1 screenshot
Expansion
Upon first launch of this application, the application looks okay with it’s film background and background to the bottom queue window. However, you quickly you will find the interface isn’t a very smooth layout. A lot of deadspace can be found around the application; It is awkward to use, and the ‘tutorials’ aren’t very descriptive or helpful. The tutorials were turned off after the first time I went through the application but in all honesty I wanted to turn them off the first time I moved to the Settings window. When you do come upon the settings window, you’ll realize the wasted real-estate; Around half the screen is wasted, and the fact that not all the settings are fit into this window but instead require you to hit a second ‘Settings…’ button to bring up a small pop-up window with only 5 more text settings is irritating at best. There could have been provided all the information needed on each setting right in this window rather than a pop-up tutorial window as well. While on the mention of the Settings page, I will mention that the browser for the ‘Here’ options are lacking as well; If you need to make a folder, you have to make it first; Another awkward aspect. The processing window has only a status bar across the top, a smaller picture screen in the middle, and a lot of deadspace around; May have been nice to see the queue in this window as well or some other feedback. The results window is likely the least offensive out of all the windows, simply being a large table in the center and a back button on the bottom; However, when you click on a video, you get a good-sized pop-up again showing the thumbnails and four buttons (HTML, index, playlist and play) which could have likely been worked into the deadspace at the bottom of the window with some adjustments.
The process, when you got around the awkward interface, ran okay. The application was quick at finding the videos in a series of folders and adding to the queue. I have a few videos littered throughout my photo collection and it went through all the folders very quickly and found 23 videos amongst all my photos. When I clicked the ‘Next’ button, it started processing the videos, extracting the screenshots as it went. This process even was very quick, only taking a few seconds to process all of them and land you at the results page. One surprising feature here is the application will try to aid you in finding the correct codec pack if you do not have a codec for a video you have; Very handy indeed.
When the processing was done, you moved onto the results page. On this page, you can see the list of videos processes and some information on each one. From here, you can click on each (As mentioned above) and greeted by a pop-up which shows you the thumbnails as well as buttons to view the resulting files. However, the resulting files did not strike me as stellar by any stretch.
Click images to see full-size
The HTML ( Click here to see a sample ) ends up being a little more thought out, but again, ends up looking almost exactly the same as the index images, but with links to the larger images and it does display all the images if more than one was taken. The HTML pages should have been a lot more clean and done so more. The primary factor I feel is missing is the lack of an index.html file which could be used to quickly preview your entire collection including the thumbnails; Instead, you’re given an HTML for each of the videos and a folder containing the images; If you want an actual HTML index, you’re going to have to build it yourself unfortunately. As well, I feel that this application could have built links to the videos so that the user of the index didn’t have to leave the HTML window to launch the video or browse to its location.
Final Verdict
While this application looked promising at first, quickly I realized that if fell flat on its nose for actually being useful. No built index page for the website; The index photo generation looks very shoddy with the text around a small image, instead of doing an overlay; As well as requiring another application to view the resulting images inside this application and instead have to resort to heading to the folder to view the file. I couldn’t suggest this as a download for anyone; This application needs to do some maturing before it could become a viable tool for actually indexing your videos. As for paying $35 for this title, the price is overpriced for what is provided and how functional it is at this point.
Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, September 11, 2007
