BaseHead Review, wishes and bugs?

A short review of my experience with BaseHead Ultra, will not cover everything, just some parts I really like with the program, and parts I like less and hope there is a fix for them.

I have tried BaseHead Ultra (BH) version 2021.7.23 on a Mac with OS 10.12.6. Mostly I want to compare it to Soundminer Plus (SM) which is in the same price range.

What I like

I really like the left side panel, to be able to split up my imports, search or not search in certain imports and easy rescan selected imports. I have just touched the collection and groups briefly but really wanna see how it could be used best.

The UI overall is great, simple, and easy to set as you want it.

When it comes to the import, first I didn't like that BH copied the filename to description, I wanted to control and be able to see which files in my archive have a description or not. But the more I used it I started to like it. I have sorted up my whole SFX Archive and this helped a lot. Also the option to Decapaitalize descriptions and remove duplicate words.

The Metadata Chunk panel, love to have the option to exactly decide what metadata should be written and where. I did find a bug here, I think. More about that further down under bugs.

Same with the burn in metadata panel, great to have the choice of what it will burn and not just all or nothing.

The metadata batch rename panel. It's very easy to understand and I love to have a preview at the bottom to see the result before I hit rename. There are some wishes I would like to have though. More under wishes.

Wishes

I'm totally into UCS and it's great to be able to set this to high or low priority on import. It takes in the category and subcategory perfect. But it would be great if it also imported the CreatorID and the SourceID since this is not optional to have in the UCS naming. The CreatorID is almost always the designer or originator. And the SourceID could go to the library. I also posted this in the request part of the forum.

Renaming at import. Now since BH is copying the filename to the description maybe this isn't a problem. Still, I was a bit confused that I didn't have the option to rename imported files to the description as first priority, and filename second priority (if there isn't any description). I think I found a way around this. And that's to set always use description in the options and put the filename in the rename transfer window.

Renames non-western characters

I just posted about this also and it's very irritating. When I spot to Pro Tools my Swedish characters å ä and ö are renamed or just deleted depending on how I import. I don't accept that it's an API thing since this works perfectly in both SM and Soundly.

If I chose to drag and drop from the file list instead it works perfectly, except that the inline function doesn't work, so I cant put several files on the same track. If I use the DnD bar it's the same, inline doesn't work, and if I have made a selection the import full handles isn't working either. I just got the selection.

Rename Batch panel with more options.

Wildcards or even RegEx would be great to be able to use here. I had to go over the archives several times some time because I was limited in what I could do. Also, I can only have one destination at a time. Please give me more here. If I wanna change the description and originator in one go, I cant.

And I cant change in two or more different filetypes. So I have to sort on filetype and take all wave first and then all aiff for example. Not many pro archives have different file types but some oldies I had this in and I was a little bit confused why this was a problem.

Multichannel files in the waveform view don't show the track names. So if I have a 3 channel file with the names Left, Right, Close. And I just need the Close channel, I'm not sure which one it is. And in the same way, I can solo one channel and import it would be great if the mute channels don't import, or if I could solo more than one channel.

Bugs

Maybe some of these have been fixed in later versions, I can't check since 2021.7.23 is the last version working on my OS.

Window settings going nuts.

If I move BH to a second screen, and then quits. Then start up again, the window settings are broken. The right panel is taking up all of the screens, I have to find the line which I don't see and change the size to make the left panel and file list screen show up. An easy fix is to just move the program window to my internal mac book pro screen and quit BH. Restart so it starts on the internal screen, then it works and I can move it and resize it as I need. And continue to remember to move it to the internal screen before every shutdown of the application.

Some panels won't pop up when clicking on them.

For example the target application warning, the manual says when I click on the sign it brings up the security settings. Nothing happens when I click it. I also had trouble extending my demo version since the register panel didn't pop up. So I had to install version 2021.1.09 and there I could extend it.

Locking parts of the application.

Sometimes I get locked out to do some stuff. I can search but I can't make new groups or scan new files. I just hear an alert with no error message. Have to restart the application to fix it.

Cant strip Originator to blank in batch rename.

I cant totally blank out the Originator in batch rename. If I choose source and destination "Originator". Put the Strip clear text as rule. The preview looks good (blank). And hit rename. I get the error message "All of the current Rules are modifiers only without an input source. Please include a source rule such as a source db field, free text or numbers and try again after."

It works fine to double-click on the originator in the details panel and wipe it.

Originator gets "BaseHead" if I change something else.

If I have the originator empty and change something else. Sometimes BH adds "BaseHead" to the originator by itself. Both in the bext and ixml. Very irritating. Especially cos of the cant blank originator bug above.

Chunk panel writes to ixml even if I choose only to write to bext.

When I choose to edit iXML but NOT edit Bext it works flawlessly. But not the other way. If I choose to only edit in Bext and NOT in iXML, then change the description on a file and inject this, it will still add it to the iXML chunk.

The search in only marked imports sometimes gets locked and the yellow marker disappears. So I'm still in the mode to only see the files in the marked import, but I don't see which I have marked. Most of the time I can guess which one it is and I can command-click out of it. But I guess it can be tricky if I have chosen more than one and have a bunch of imports.

Waveform disappear.

If I click on a file in the list the waveform pops up. If I then click in the file list again, but on a space where it isn't any file (like under the text if there are just a few hits), the waveform disappears, markers are still there if I made any, and the file is still able to play. But I don't see any waveform.

That's it. I tried SM also and some parts I like better there and some are better in BH. The big thing I totally get nuts about in SM was when I found out that the SMED chunk is taking priority over everything. So all my edits I made in BH didn't show up in SM 😖