Help, how do I create a database for a production video tape libr

[Vampii]

I'm a newbie to Access, but I've seen it being used in a previous video
production company to great success. Basically each tape in the company was
entered in with tape numbers as well as information of what was in the
tape(with time codes on the tape and description). Every time anyone needed
to search for a shot or tape, they merely need to go to find/search and
anything that was relevant to what they entered would come up. Now I'm in a
new company and want to do the same for them, but can't figure out how. Are
there any Access users around who could help me, thanks!

 

[Vampii]

Thanks for your reply.
Basically there are about hundred tapes in the library. Each unique tape
contain many shots. The aim of a database would be to be able to think of a
shot required and then find it efficiently, or even think of a tape, and be
able to find out what shots are in that specific tape.
The reason why I wanted to use access was because the previous company that
was using it had a very productive library and were able to find shots or
tapes easily.
For example, if i were to type in a search of coal mines, every tape that
consisted of coal mines would pop up in a new area, including the time codes
where they started on the tapes. This made finding of the physical tape and
specific time code easy.
The categories of information include a Tape number, Category and (Timecode
& shot description that were linked). For eg
COM01 - communications - 00:20 - Radars
01:30:00 - satellites
02:40:00 - equipment

COM02 - Telephony 00:30 - Phone lines
00:55- Mobile equipment
01:00:00 - Radars

I want to be able to type a search after the database is done, for eg radars
and for the database to come up with
COM01 00:20 - Radars
COM02 01:00:00 - Radars

I'm playing around with access right now, and I'm confused with even how to
get all the information for each tape in each row of the table since
timecodes and shot Description can go on for quite a number of rows.
Thank you for ur reply and let me know if this is enough information.

 

[John Vinson]

I'm playing around with access right now, and I'm confused with even how to
get all the information for each tape in each row of the table since
timecodes and shot Description can go on for quite a number of rows.
Thank you for ur reply and let me know if this is enough information.

It's difficult - because you *don't do it that way*.

In Access (or any relational database) you need to identify the
"Entities" - real-life people, things, or events - relevant to your
application, and their relationships. A Tape is an entity, and you
would have a table of Tapes; a shot is an entity - a DIFFERENT KIND of
entity - and you would have a table of Shots. The Shots table would be
related one to many to the Tapes table (since a Tape contains many
Shots); to do so you would have a field TapeID in the Shots table as a
link - called a "foreign key" - to the tape of which that shot is a
part.

To enter or display this data, you could have a Form based on Tapes,
with a subform based on Shots. To find which tape contained a
particular shot, you'ld have a Query joining the two tables, with
criteria on the Shots fields.

If you want to apply keywords to each shot, then you need yet two more
tables: Keywords (all the key words you want to use, you can of course
add more as you go along) and ShotKeywords, a table with field for the
ShotID and the keyword. So if a particular shot involved "Bees",
"Pollination", "Flowers", "Alfalfa", and "Commercial" as key terms,
you'ld have five records in the table with that shot ID. A Query
joining all three tables with a criterion "Bees" would find this shot,
and the tape that it's on.

John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[pietlinden]

I'm a newbie to Access, but I've seen it being used in a previous video
production company to great success. Basically each tape in the company was
entered in with tape numbers as well as information of what was in the
tape(with time codes on the tape and description). Every time anyone needed
to search for a shot or tape, they merely need to go to find/search and
anything that was relevant to what they entered would come up. Now I'm in a
new company and want to do the same for them, but can't figure out how. Are
there any Access users around who could help me, thanks!

There's an example of this in F.Scott Barker's Access 2000 Power
Programming... maybe it's on the SAMS website.

 

[Vampii]

Thanks u all for ur replies, will go try all this out.