Digital video occupies huge amounts of hard disk space, enough so to make archival of more than just a few hours unfeasible for most users. T-Squared Software is hoping to remedy this with its newly released application for Mac OS X called FootTrack 1.0.
FootTrack uses an interface metaphor similar to iPhoto, with a main window that displays information on all your tapes or clip groups on one side, and thumbnail images of the clips on the right. You import your video clips through iMovie and use FootTrack to index to the content, complete with intact DV timecode and record date information.
If you have the disk space to spare FootTrack can link to the original DV clips. You can also use FootTrack to compress your video clips using QuickTime 6 and the H.263 codec. T-Squared Software claims that 60 minutes of digital video takes up about 180MB of space, including clip images — a 70 percent space reduction compared to the uncompressed clips’ original size.
Once your clips have been imported, you can use FootTrack to group your clips to make it easier to find individual clips for future iMovie projects, or content you’re working on.
The Web site includes more information, as well as screenshots to help you get an idea of what FootTrack looks like and how it works. You can download it and try it out for yourself. FootTrack costs US$29.95 to register.