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Workgroup Server Questions
I just managed to install the Workgroup Server successfully and published a catalog which had about 4000 clips in it. I realize the 4000 clips for a catalog might be too much for the CatDV Pro version but my understanding is once it’s in the mySQL database that ‘strain’ goes away. It seems to run very well when connected to the server rather than a catalog. I have several thousand more clips to add, I’ll probably be around 10000 that I might need to access, log to and search on at once, at least for now. The catalog I created was really just a ‘test’ catalog, I may eventually create several smaller ones. I’m still thinking about how to do it. I think I may group them by camera type, as this is how they are currently grouped on my online hard drives.
I have a couple of questions:
- I currently have the workgroup server trial license (obtained from CatDV via email), will this allow me to set up access via a web browser? I read in the server documentation that Tomcat is necessary to add to my local apache installation. I can do it, but before going down that route I want to make sure I have the license to do it. If not what is the required license?
- For remote Macs accessing the CatDV workgroup server, I’m getting strange behavior when I use the user preferences/Advanced Functionality/Always Connect to Server/ set to on. CatDV will come up with the last IP address of the server that I’ve entered previously filled into the login window, if I click OK then the user preferences window comes up, and if I hit cancel or ok on that window, CatDV will quit. If I don’t have the ‘Always connect to Server’ pref set, and manually connect to the server and login, it works fine.
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9 Replies
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Hey there, depending on how you lay out the catalogs, you should be fine up into the millions of records. I have a client nearing 100,000 clips and the really big boys roll into the millions.
As to the web server, there are 2 licenses. 1 – the HTML Publisher allows you to publish your catalogs out to the web, non interactively. You can choose which catalogs or clips to share but the web users can’t edit them.
The other option (2) is the Web Client which provides the interactive web client where users can edit and add metadata to catalogs and clips.
Neither is bundled with a server license, although your demo might have HTML Publisher enabled. The HTML Publisher works with jsp so it’s pretty customizable. The Web Client can only be customized by Squarebox as of right now.
There’s a lot of folks excited about the Web Client, but there’s a ton you can do with the HTML Publisher, depending on what you need to set up.
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Thanks for the info Bryson. Regarding your clients with the huge number of clips, how are they grouping them into catalogs? By shoot, project, etc and what have you found to be an optimum number of clips per catalog, working on the premise the they are using the workgroup server version and accessing them after the initial populating via SQL?
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The “always connect to server” option is designed so network administrators can ensure that users only use CatDV when connected to the server, and loading the latest settings from the server etc. If you cancel the connection to the server CatDV will therefore quit – that option means you MUST connect to the server to use use it.
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Man, most folks who are tape based are organizing by tape. That just seems to make things easier to track since it’s the traditional “container”.
Small shoots like commercials and music videos sometimes go by project or by day.
You will find that as you have metadata in the server, the need for the “catalog” goes away. It’s much faster to query or group by a container field and just get your clips that way. But this means that you need to plan your metadata well.
Note that I’m talking about large bulk tagged groups, not “logging” which may never be done. Find all the footage by day or something and then add the 2-3 fields you need to group them and move on.
As to catalog size, I’ve had clients have a 1,000 item master catalog that they use daily but it’s slow to load and not a great experience. They’ve since moved on to catalogs by project so the item count is much smaller.
To be clear, they used to have a catalog of “masters” that was every master they had ever created. 1,000 items or so. Now, they have a field to tag something a “master” then they have a content category, (surf, skate, snow, etc…) and so they can now have saved queries for “master + snow” and quickly get a small list of the snow titles instead of starting from the 1,000 and narrowing that down.
My reality guys are all tape based to start so they tend to use the tape or “reel number” in tapeless workflows to define the catalog. They end up with 1 to 20 clips per catalog and then gather/query by shoot day to find what they are looking for.
Let me know if you have other questions!
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Hi Rolf
Thanks for the response and the help, here and elsewhere.
Regarding the always connect to server, I don’t think I’m choosing not to connect to the server, unless I’m missing something pretty basic I’m choosing to connect as that’s the first thing CatDV shows me, the small login window with the last IP address of the server that I’ve entered previously filled into the login window, if I click OK then the user preferences window comes up, and if I hit cancel or ok on that window, CatDV will quit.
If I don’t have the ‘Always connect to Server’ pref set, and manually connect to the server and login, it works fine and I can login to the server, load catalogs that are in the server database, and everything is fine. I’d just like to bypass the manually selected menu item ‘login to server’ step, which I thought was the point of the preference setting.
Basically, if I have this option set, I can’t get CatDV NOT to quit. I’ve tried several times with the same result.
Thanks again for any advice.
Regards,
-Keith
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Ah sorry, you’re using the Workgroup server aren’t you? The always connect to server option is primarily designed for use with the Enterprise server (so you always get the latest settings from the server) and currently doesn’t seem to work properly with the Workgroup server. We’ll fix that in the next update but for now just leave it unchecked if you’re using the Workgroup edition.
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Thanks Rolf, so I’m not crazy 🙂
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Thanks for the great detail, Bryson. My situation is that I’m just starting to use CatDV Pro, and I have a lot of hours of tapes, cards, clips over the years, all belonging to the same documentary ‘project’ so to add each tape or card as a separate catalog at this point is a lot of repetitive importing. I take it the client you talked about did the same thing initially, imported large number of clips to one catalog, but then now imports one ‘reel’ at a time as they acquire new footage.
I’m also wondering if there is something that the ‘worker node’ thread can do to automatically import a new ‘reel’, and ‘publish’ that reel to the database, so I don’t have to think about it. I assume that’s possible.
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Well, actually one other way to do it is to bulk import it all and then filter by date etc and then pull those clips into catalogs. That would let you quickly gather things into some semblance of order.
Docs are hard, but they can be wrangled. We pulled Fuel into shape. (shameless Sundance Winner name drop there) and they had 18TB of DV and HD shot over 10 years. It took some doing but they are now able to use that footage as needed for TV and future doc projects. Kinda neat.
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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