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CatDV and P2 proxies
Hi all,
We are concidering using CatDV for managing our backup catalog of P2 clips. The clips are in a variety of resolution, but they all have camera created proxies in qt container in the proxy folder on the P2 card. After scanning the folder the files are found, but not the proxies. I believe I have tried every combination in the proxies and thumbnails pane in preferences, but I can not make Cat DV find my proxies. Thy play fine in QT so I guess the problem is that it can not see the files.
Any help are very welcome.Best regards
Per Chr. Larsen
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8 Replies
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I’d love to hear more from Squarebox on this. I know that XDCAM proxy is supported but I’ve never heard of P2 proxy being used.
I will tell you that in my experience, the time spent letting your machines create Quicktime proxy is well worth it if only for compatibility. If you use P2 or XDCAM proxy, you need the software/codecs loaded to see the proxy, whereas with an mp4 or h.264 proxy, you can view it with any mac or PC and even on the web.
My policy has always been to create the proxy as the footage comes in to guarantee ease of use later on non production machines or the web.
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Hi Bryson,
Thank you for answering.The thing is that I just wanted to set up a simple system for handling the backup, and there is a lot incoming material that will be quite time-consuming to make the proxies, specially since as it looks to me, that their are made with qt exporter. The other thing is that we already have invested in the proxy generator fro all the cameras, witch make H.264 in a QT or .mp4 container that plays fine in QT without any other decoder installed. That is why i thought this should be easy going, and as you I would like to hear from Squarebox if this is supported or not.
Best regards
Per Chr.
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We use AVCHD cameras that created MTS files that cannot by played back by the Quicktime engine within CatDV… so there is no playing them back after they are imported.
To solve this we automated the creation of ProRes proxies with CatDV Worker Node. The Worker Node routine places the proxies in a path that is identical to the location of the actual MTS file but under a different “parent” directory. So let’s say my original is located here:
/volumes/maxxraid1/footage/domestic/interviews/000325.MTS
the routine puts the proxies at:
/volumes/maxxraid1/catdv_previews/footage/domestic/interviews/000325.mov
Under the “media search paths” path I set:
/volumes/maxxraid1/catdv_previews/
as the place to look for proxies when the original cannot be played and it works great! In your case you don’t have to use Worker Node… you could do your own flavor of this trick… I think you just need to place your camera-generated proxies in a certain place and then tell CatDV where to look and it should start working for you.
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Jeff, that’s a solid way to deal with non-QT stuff, but I’m not sure if the P2 proxies are single files. I think they may also be split MXFs like the main P2 media.
(Honestly, I haven’t seen any P2 proxy in years.) Per, are they encapsulated or are they split audio and video like the main files, as in XDCAM?
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Is storing the proxies like that a standard P2 feature? Our P2 importer doesn’t currently recognise such proxies but if you tell us what camera is creating the proxies and forward a screenshot that shows the folder structure to support@squarebox.co.uk we’ll see if we can add support for that in a future update.
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Hi,
The proxies ar not split up as the mxf’s and the naming convention is that there is an equivalent proxy with the same name as each video file. That said, the P2 cards are formatted in FAT32 with the limit of 4 GB filsize. Most editing tools and I believe CATDV will still read multiple files as one clip, but the proxies will still be the same length as the length og the single mxf video file. I’m not very good a explaining but I hope you get the point?
Best regards
Per Chr.
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Picture sent.
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Hi again,
I figured out if I change the proxygeneraton in the camera to a .mp4 wrapper CATDV finds it an uses it, but only use the first proxy file associated to the first mxf of a spanned clip. I can live with that. My new problem is that CATDV just quit when scanning my library. Any idea how to investigate this?
Best regards
Per Chr.
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