If you're like me, your professional or personal efforts toward video organization nirvana have been less than fruitful over the years. With video files spread across multiple formats and multiple storage locations, keeping everything readily available and tagged for reuse is a giant pain. On the consumer level I've tried iDive, iView Multimedia (now Microsoft Expression Media), even plain old iPhoto, and I'm checking out FootTrack; moving up the ladder, there are high-end choices like Cumulus/Mediadex and Final Cut Server. Finding that midrange, prosumer & network-enabled video cataloging tool, with options for MPEG-7 metadata, dynamic clip creation and embedded Spotlight comments in files -- well, I'm still looking, but Frameline 47's new version 3 seems to come pretty close to what I want.

Frameline 47 is a $139 app that works both for an individual and as a networked tool, with Bonjour sharing and the ability to do the aforementioned Spotlight embeds, so your tags, comments and metadata travel with the files instead of with a master catalog; the full Workgroup edition is due at Macworld Expo, with additional capabilities for shared data. All your video files, on all your attached drives, in any QuickTime-readable format (plus WMV and more with Flip4Mac and Perian) can be scanned and thumbnailed into Frameline's search browser; once there, you can add annotations, identify clips for reuse, export your edited files, create webpage galleries, or pass along edit lists to Final Cut. There's a lot in Frameline to explore; probably more than I'll use for my personal projects, but if you have to wrangle a large collection of clips for your editorial work it's definitely worth a look.

You can download a 14-day trial from Frameline's site... but we've got a special offer for TUAW readers courtesy of Frameline: 10 licenses to give away, free of charge. Read on for details on how to enter and win.

P.S. Extra credit if you suss out why the app includes the number '47' in its name.

When it comes to turning a DVD into a movie file, Handbrake's name is hailed far and wide for its ease of use, speed and overall quality. Recently, Handbrake's developer took these praised aspects and raised the bar by releasing Instant Handbrake (beta), a one-stop, brain-dead-easy app for converting a DVD to iPod/PSP-compatible video.

By default it's set to crop the video when necessary (4:3 for iPod, 16:9 for PSP), depending on which device you specify, but you can elect to maintain the video in its original size. Video formats are MPEG-4 or H.264 for the iPod, and MPEG-4 for the PSP.

Like its big brother, Instant Handbrake is free and available here.

iSquint, the fantastic little iPod video converter that we've mentioned before, has been updated to version 1.4.1 with a big new feature: handling QuickTime files that contain MPEG video that most other players/encoders will balk at. Various other code tweaks have brought some big speed improvements and fixes for issues with 10.3.9.

iSquint is surprisingly still donationware and available from iSquint.org.