media

Minimal media management

Local saves / Bookmarks / Archive / Database

Artwork by いのふとん

💡 About

This a guide on the most optimal and minimal medias management method for consumer.

📔 Story

As a former wjbu on Facebook.com, I have a lot of painful memories about:

• Try to find back a drawing that I saw a few days earlier but unable to search it.
• Upset about saving every images/videos that i like hoping that i don't lost anything ever again. But stupid me at the time saved stuff on Facebook with Facebook bookmarks. If any images got deleted, the Facebook bookmark doesn't even show the title to search it back.
• Realize it's a bad practice, I decide to:
  • I go through over 500 images/videos that I save on Facebook, find its artist profile then rebookmark it to the web browser (this part is very tedious).
  • Most of the drawing on Facebook are repost with no source, I have to research it's source with Google Images.
  • I noticed some artist's accounts got deleted so I bulk download everything from the artist profile just to be sure. This take a ton of space on my local storage device.
  • I also start to bookmark every animes/mangas/games that I watch, read and play.
  • I spend more time source finding, downloading and categorize medias rather than enjoying it.
• Although I try my best to categorize them thought folders, rename each files/bookmarks with correct title, ... I still sometime get lost in this giant mess and couldn't search for what I'm looking for!

After a lot of pain and suffering, I finally discover Gelbooru an wjbu archive that already categorize and store 99% of the mess that I store locally and done it way better than me:

• For the artist profiles that I bookmarked, I write a script to convert them to a list of artist entries on the database (to be honest, I never need to touch this list).
• For the images that i bulk download, i just deleted it.
• For the remain image, I check if it's have been archived yet. If it's not I upload it to the database (≈ 50 images).
• For the animes/mangas/games that I bookmarked, I also deleted theme (turn out animes/mangas/games are pretty quick and easy to search back just by a web search).

🏛️ Archive/database > Local saves/bookmarks

Do you afraid that you can never search back something that you like or one day it will be deleted to the realm of lost media? Before go through my dark path, consider using a database and archive.

There are archived service and database for anything:

• MyAnimeList for manga and anime.
• Gelbooru for anime related art.
• Last.fm for music.
• Internet Archive for... everything!

Benefit of archive and database over Local saves or bookmarks:

1. Safe:

• One something is archive, it's will never become lost media.
• Because it's a optimize database with each entry be categorized by artist, genre and tags..., you can easily lookup something.

2. Leisured:

• It's doesn't take space of your storage device.
• If there is something popular, high chance it's already be archived and add to a database for you to search it back. If it not on the archive yet then:

3. Community spirit:

• Upload media to an archive database benefit everyone. Make sure to take some time fill in as much relevant meta information (source, artist, copyright, ...) to the media as possible so that people and even yourself can search it back.

TIP: If it's a anime/manga relative image, use IQDB or SauceNAO to reverse search it's source.

You should only save to local storage device if it's a paid medias like from Patreon, Bandcamp, ... Or something that can't/shouldn't be upload to an archive service.

TIP: You should properly save something you like locally if you want to enjoy it in situation where there is no internet.

🗄️ Searching skill > Local saves/bookmarks

💩 Your saved become a giant mess

Although I try my best to categorize them thought folders, rename each file with correct title, ... I still sometime get lost in this giant mess and couldn't search for what I'm looking for!

Lets me explain the situation in more detail: sometime I want to find a waifu drawing but don't remember the artist and don't know the character's name, I just remember the it's hair/eyes color, thier's clothes, what they're doing... while I categorize images by copyright and artist.

The same thing could happen if we just rely on a bookmarks.

🔎 Searching skill

When searching if a few web search with Google or DuckDuckGo is not enough, try to find it through a wiki or a database of it's kind.

Examples:

1. I remember saw a drawing with #white_background of #professor_shinonome holding a #stuffed_shark:

• Search it using that 3 tags on Gelbooru and find it.

2. I remember listen to a SiIvaGunner rip that is a mix of the Lucky Star OP with some thing IDK:

• Search it on Youtube doesn't show up.
• But it can be found on the SiIvaGunner Wiki at List of rips referencing media.

It's "DRAGONLADY (JP Version) - maimai GreeN PLUS".

🔖 BONUS: Local bookmarks > Service's bookmarks

Your web browser's bookmarks is way more reliable than saving something to a Youtube playlist, Soundcloud playlist, Facebook bookmarks, ...

Because if you bookmark a link with your web browser, even if the link is dead you still can look at the URL and title to figure out what it is.

Thing isn't be the same for service's bookmarks, they have the power to control your bookmarks so if the content got removed, the bookmark just contain a dead URL. Worst they can remove the bookmark without indicate anything to the user, I'm looking at you Soundcloud.

💌 Credits

Special thanks to:

• Artwork by いのふとん

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