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CatDV vs. Cantemo
Has anyone evaluated or used Cantemo? Going over the features, it seems to fall right in line with CatDV’s product line. Anything I should know?
HandyGeek
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17 Replies
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Full Disclosure: NSA (My company, integrates both CatDV and Cantemo systems.)
They are actually fairly different in approach.
For instance:
CatDV has a client app, Cantemo is all done from a browser interface interacting with a single server.
CatDV uses separate apps for Client, Server and Worker/Automation and these can span over multiple machines or live on one.
CatDV runs on Mac OSX, Linux or Windows for Server and OSX & Windows for automation & client.
Cantemo runs on all OS’s for clients (obviously) and Linux for Server.
Cantemo, in my opinion, has a lot more in common with more traditional DAM systems whereas CatDV is more of a hybrid and focuses more on production asset management. There are benefits to both, depending on the environment and use.
We’re actually evaluating several sites where they will likely use both due to the fact that they cover such a wide area of use between the two systems. And with the pricing, you can buy “one of each” so to speak and still be far under the price of a traditional “Big-Iron” DAM.
That said, Cantemo is priced a bit above the typical CatDV base deployment.
As always, this is a bit more than can be discussed on a forum. DAM systems are so specific to the environment. I’d contact the US Reps and get a demo of both products and you’ll have a better feel for the two as they relate to your particular system. I personally feel like Cantemo is aimed more at the Final Cut Server user rather than the CatDV user as far as use case. The philosophies & methodologies are very different.
Speaking of… is there a generic DAM board on the Cow? Seems like that might be a lively forum.
Hope this helps you on your way.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Digging up an old thread..
Have you have a chance to use MediaBox by Cantemo? It is apparently a cheaper version of their Portal system although I have not looked into the pricing. Do you feel this could compete with CatDV for budget conscious clients?
Trying to get a full demo shortly to look under the hood..
Scott Goddard
Neo Verite Limited
http://www.neoverite.com -
We are about to begin testing now, but we are evaluating Cantemo Portal. Our team is very much looking forward to running this system through its paces. We are also transitioning to Adobe Creative Cloud and I’m interested to see how Cantemo will work with Adobe’s tools.
Our development team is also in the midst of creating a new learning management system with media asset management functions. They are hopeful that the back end of Cantemo, Vidispine, will provide a platform on which to build that new LMS. If it works as the API documentation explains, the developers should be pleased.
-HandyGeek
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That said, if I were running a smaller shop, I would be looking seriously at Axle – very slick, and highly affordable! They sell a five user license for under $1500 US.
HandyGeek
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Would love to hear your thoughts on the portal trial. I think everyone is in a transitional period to Adobe!
Scott Goddard
Neo Verite Limited
http://www.neoverite.com -
Axel looks good. Very simple collaborative tool. Lots of competition in this market now.
Scott Goddard
Neo Verite Limited
http://www.neoverite.com -
We have been working with our vendor over the past couple of days. As of today, we have our evaluation Cantemo server online. We still have some loose ends to tie up: linking it to a SAN share via SMB (because we can’t get a StorNext license authorized), getting some metadata sets made, etc. So I expect to know a lot more by Friday when we start really digging in.
HandyGeek
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Cool, keep us posted as to what you find. They are very different platforms in almost every way.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Once again digging up an old thread…. how did this shake out?
Doug Metz
Anode
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We actually ended up with Axle. The value proposition was quite high, especially after they announced an upgrade available for use with Adobe Anywhere. That was the final selling point for us. Although we aren’t quite ready for that upgrade, I could easily see it happen within the next couple of years.
That said, Axle is not nearly as comprehensive as a tool set. Both Cantemo and CatDV have a big lead in that department. We can’t do rough cuts with Axle as yet. That’s kind of a big deal, but wasn’t a deal breaker for us. For now, we’re thinking of a hybrid Axle/Prelude use for this system. Axle’s built-in logging tools are helpful enough for 85% of our work, though we aren’t an average shop.
I don’t care for the way Axle handles user accounts. The system doesn’t use concurrent connections for licensing. We have over 60 users, but only need about 10 or so concurrent connections. The only way we could get it working right was to have only 10 users share group accounts. I think this is one of the biggest differences in these system – user and group controls.
The Axle system took about nine weeks to index and generate proxies for about 90TB of media. It would have been much faster if we’d had our Episode Cluster upgraded to Engine during that time. Now that we have Engine added to the mix, the system is doing much better. If I were consulting anyone on Axle, I would strongly urge my client to run Episode Engine and run it on a separate computer. Running Episode on the same system is a major slow down for the whole process.
HTH!
HandyGeek
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