June 22, 2009
Video in Lightroom: more plugin goodness
The need for video import into Lightroom has been high on peoples feature list, and of course when the King of Lightroom Plugins takes a look in that direction, something might just happen. Jeffrey Friedl, well known for his Flickr, Smugmug and Facebook plugins has announced the ‘Video Asset Management‘ plugin. This plugin allows you to select a folder and scan for video via a Plugin Extras command. When a supported video is found, a frame grab is created and imported into Lightroom. You can then Play the video via Plugin Extras menu command. The frame grab (placeholder image) also has a neat video icon, making it easy to recognise as a video file, even in Grid mode.
The control you have is basic. The video must already be imported onto the hard drive (No importing from Cards). If you move the placeholder file, the video remains where it is. The video will still play from this location, but it’s not a good way to manage the files. If you move the video on disk, you must delete the placeholder image and re-import the video.
For further information and better detail on the plugin, go to Jeffrey’s ‘Video Asset Management‘ Page.