Daminion

Things I like about Daminion:
User interface is intuitive and well laid out
Ability to create custom tags, catagories and meta-data
Auto tag creation based on directory structure
Easy to search by tags or catagories
Fast search with large catalogs (15.000 images in milliseconds)
Easy to update catalogs
Catalogs are saved in files which can be accessed from any location
Does not contain unnecessary editing functions (can use third party editor)
Has a stand-alone desktop version
Daminion does not modify the original files

DBGallery is another great alternative. It pays special attention to image data. Various types of data are used to organize and quickly find images even when you have a large collections.

Daminion lets you put tags and categories and user defined labels on videos too. They give you the option to write that info to an XMP sidecar, to the IPTC/EXIF data, or both.
This will hopefully catch on cuz we video freaks would love to have a way to easily organize our video collection just like we do our photos.
So your alternative to - it just ain't so.

Just FYI

Ck