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Evaluating CatDV Enterprise Server/ Premiere CS6
We are in the process of jumping ship from Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server to Adobe Premiere CS6 and possible CatDV Enterprise Server/ Worker Node5.
We currently have an evaluation license for Enterprise server package through next month. One of the main features of Final Cut Server that I liked was the ability for it to find media referenced by a FCP file and ingest those files automatically into the server. For instance it would find the jpeg file on the workstations desktop and pull that file into the storage pool once the file was checked back in.
Is there any way to do this with CatDV?
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2 Replies
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Hello there,
This sort of workflow is more common in more server based MAM systems. CatDV comes from a client/server methodology so there’s less direct connection to the server and more of a publish to model.
Assets are managed in the client app and then those changes are pushed up. Additionally, FCSvr was unique in that the company that sold it also controlled the NLE so they could be deeply integrated. This is harder with something like CatDV.
That said, with a solid workflow design there is a lot you can do inside CatDV to automate ingest.
Another consideration is the “permissiveness” of CatDV. Most editors like this although it follows a very different methodology than what you are talking about. FCSvr was very much from the “let us manage your files” way of working. Flexibility suffered, but it did impose a wonderfully ordered structure over the storage and workflow. This can be accomplished with CatDV and a shared storage system but it must be designed and implemented as it’s not built in “out of the box”.
In the plus column, CatDV is far faster and easier to program with and so you can quickly develop workflows and iterate them far easier than you could in FCSvr.
If you think of CatDV more as a media manager application that lives on your workstation and publishes info to the server, that’s a good way to get your head around it. The Worker Node can then automate those same actions and more, but you can start with a manual process, test it, and then deploy automation with the Worker.
In a more server-driven system you start with the server, and all media is delivered to and accessed from there. CatDV flips this and put more power in the hands of the user.
Make sure you have a solid reseller or integrator who’s familiar both systems going into this and it’ll ease your path.
Hope this info helps,
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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People all have different workflows so you can use CatDV in different ways. It doesn’t automatically suck all assets into its storage the way FCSrvr likes to (though you can configure CatDV to do that sort of thing via watchfolders in the Worker Node if you desire). In your case, you should be able to import the contents of an FCP7 (or FCPX) file into a CatDV catalog via XML and then work with the clips further from there as required eg. save them to the server, build proxies, etc.
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