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Tagging field
Not seeing anything that relates to this specifically, so I ‘ll try a new post.
We’ve been using CatDV Pro for a couple of years. We’re doing documentary style work, mostly corporate/organizational environments. Everything we shoot goes into the hopper to be mixed and matched to create projects. We have some basic themes and concepts that are recurrent. Many of these overlap. And of course there are lots of ways to categorize the footage in relation to the specific project’s perspective. I want to run some basic searches that run across multiple tags without building dozens or even a hundreds of user fields. Is there a way in which I can create what are now traditional “tags” in a way where multiple can show up in a single field.
For example: I have footage that could be A, B, C or D inside field 1. Well, I want to look not for A or B or C or D in field one. I want to look for all the A and C in field one. In many apps I can create my pick list of tags, and then select as many tags as I want to describe that shot (using Aperture as an example). While it’s obvious that I could create separate user fields for each of A, B, C and D and search across those fields, I have dozens of “descriptors,” or “tags” not just the four.
So the question remains: is there a way to setup a user field so it can hold multiple independent tags, say separated by a comma.Thanks
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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8 Replies
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Yes, you can do that very easily by creating a user-defined field of type “multi”, then defining the pick list values in the Pick Lists tab of preferences.
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You know I tried that. I can’t find any documentation regarding Multi or Group, explaining what they meant.
I set a pick list. But then I could still create new entries in the field even though I thought the pick list was locked,
e.g. I had a pick list of:
A
B
C
DI was able to enter and of the single items but if I entered “A, C” the pick list changed to:
A
B
C
D
A, C
a new item was entered into the pick list. So what am I doing wrong and what results should I expect. And where can I find documentation on Multi v. Text v. Group?Thanks
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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If a pick list is marked as “extensible” then users can enter new values not in the list, so you’ll need to uncheck that option. Also, the delimiter that CatDV uses is a semicolon. If you enter a comma then it will treat that as part of the value.
-Rolf
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I’ll go try that right away.
ThanksNow, to what does Group refer?
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Yes, that worked. I made sure extensible was off. The semicolon was the trick. That’s huge for us because we have so many shots that overlap concepts and descriptions. They’re often coded in three of the four possibilities.
Is there any further documentation on the user fields? We’re condensing them and organizing and figured out some ways to slim down the entire catalog and yet make it more flexible.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Nevermind…
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I’m all over it now. I found the references I needed, finally.
Multi and Group are really the same thing—though multi means you can make more than one selection from the pick list.
Just used advanced searching and stack the variables—worked like a charm, no problems. It’s doubtful that we’ll use one of these stacked searches. But the multi means we can tag in traditional ways, that is multiple tags for a single event. Previously we were having to select ONLY one tag per event, or setup an additional user field to get the second tag working. Now I can build in much better tagging, which really solves everything as far as searching goes for us.
yay!Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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A “grouping” field is any field that takes defined values, rather than being free format text, and means you easily group all your clips by that field. For example, you can group by audio rate then see all the audio rates in use in your catalog, then click on the 44.1kHz or 48kHz buttons to see all the clips with that rate. We call it grouping, but I’m not sure if there’s a better known term to describe that concept?
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