Browse Catalog — apparently odd behavior on multiple searches

[Rolf Howarth]

The “Browse Catalog” dialog is basically a glorified file chooser with some searching functionality built in, so if you use it to open a catalog that’s already open it will tell you it’s already open (and bring that window to the front), exactly the same as if you tried reopening the catalog using the Open Catalog… chooser.

[Kevin Duggan]

Hi Andy.
glad your getting on okay but may I make some suggestions. You are running the standalone version of Catdv and you have made several catalogs , one for each day of your shoot. Now this seems like a logical way of going about things and if you where running our server version of CatDv then this would present no problems with searching across all the catalogs and also give you a human type of metadata to search and filter your material on. You additionally state that you have about ninety clips in each catalog.
Well the best tip I can give you is to create a new catalog and drag and drop all of the previous content into a new GLOBAL catalog. CatDv can easily deal with thousands of clips in a catalog , it will maybe take a second or two to build the window but from on its all gravy as everything is loaded into RAM and its super fast. If you do this you will then realise that you have two friends in finding your stuff. One is what I call GLOBAL tagging. So you could for instance put your catalog into List view and filter on creation date. This will group all the shots from all your shoots dates into either ascending or descending order .. its your choice . Select say all your shots from one day with SHIFT /Select then start to fill in your form ie the User fields that you have created for logging. Now everything you type or select is effecting all of the selected assets . These are the global attributes , think cameraman director , producer , location, job number , job title etc etc … Then you can deselect the clips and do a second pass and add what is unique or dicreet to the shots… in this case you could tag specific locations , wideshot river , B+roll … downtown sunset , sunrise. etc etc..

All these keywords or tags will allow you to create searches across all clips (remember we dragged and dropped them into one single catalog ) so we could if the logging schema permits do a search for Everything that was shot by Jim in Texas for a specific show on the 21/10/2010 …. Start to think like normal editing folk. You know I am looking for a sunset shot of Dallas . I am sure you get the idea.. But it requires a bit of work to design your logging schema and to add the metadata . CatDv tries to make it as simple and fast as we can but someone has to view and log the footage. You will probably find in a long form documentary shot over an extended time frame that it will pay dividends as you move forward.
I have written here before as to the limitations of the catalog and the fact it is not actually required but understand that it appears attractive initially as a mechanism to organise you media , but search this forum for other ideas as to how others have structured their logging. Pretty soon you will be using filters and quick searches and indexed searches to find your stuff. The short hand I have to describe this is that initially Catdv presents to the user like a SPREADSHEET…. hey why would anyone want one of those , its just a blank page with a grid… Its only when you plug in the formulas that it becomes useful. CatDV is similar out of the gate its that blank page , think of how you are going to search and then log in that manner and build CATDV out to mimic you thought process would be a good start. Its easy to add additional fields as you go . The second concept is , think GOOGLE . Use the query panel to type in keywords and group the tags together as in my earlier examples. CatD will only present you with the candidates that match your search criterial, this is the filtering effect. Click on in the tree on the interface element “all clips ” to get back to your home position. However with the right metadata tags you can then use this mechanism to help build your bins.. So for instance if you tag all your interviews with name of the interviewee and a tag INTERVIEW . you could do a simple search for INTERVIEWS … which will return all interview….. then fileter on the name of the interviewee eg Bryson Jones to get just these takes. . Go through these interviews , they will most likely be very long if Bryson is involved but you can add Event Markers at the good bits. Also because you are using transcriptions have a look at the HTML summary tab as you will be able to search for key works in the transcripts. Bryson came to mind because this is a stock technique in reality shows of which he has done many.. He might be tempted to share some of his knowledge but he is a kindly but timerous animal and you may have to be patient , to see if he will appear..
As those that know me can testify I could go on , but maybe this will get you thinking and help your workflow.

Anyway hope this helps a little

Kevin Duggan
CatDv

[Andy Johnson-laird]

Hey Kevin:
Thanks for that long answer. Much appreciated.

I’ve interlineated some comments to your reply.

[Kevin Duggan] ”
Well the best tip I can give you is to create a new catalog and drag and drop all of the previous content into a new GLOBAL catalog.”

That makes excellent sense. I’ve not tried dragging and dropping list view items to new catalogs, but now you say it, it’s obvious, init? 🙂

[Kevin Duggan] “CatDv can easily deal with thousands of clips in a catalog , it will maybe take a second or two to build the window but from on its all gravy as everything is loaded into RAM and its super fast. If you do this you will then realise that you have two friends in finding your stuff. One is what I call GLOBAL tagging.”

That also makes sense.

[Snip of details of global tagging.]

[Kevin Duggan] “Start to think like normal editing folk.”

That’s really hard for me. I only know abnormal editing folk.

[Kevin Duggan] “So for instance if you tag all your interviews with name of the interviewee and a tag INTERVIEW .”

Yeah…actually what I do is create special subjective encoding tags as geeks sometimes call them. By using a prefix of, say, * you can then easily refer to either *interview for the tags and not get hits when the verbatim logging includes the word “interview” because the talent actually said it.

I also put a number after the subjective tags, e.g. *funny 5 (where the number 1 – 5 means “not bad” to “really good.”

That way I can search for all *funny 5 moments in the verbatim logs.

[Kevin Duggan] “Bryson came to mind because this is a stock technique in reality shows of which he has done many.. He might be tempted to share some of his knowledge but he is a kindly but timerous animal and you may have to be patient , to see if he will appear..”

Do I have to close my eyes and make a wish? 🙂

Thanks again for the global catalog suggestion. I thought I was going to have to use the dodge of printing out to PDF, then using Acrobat’s advanced searching options (which does feature keyword proximity and stemming — pretty powerful searching features).

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
Regards
Andy

Forensic Software/Internet/Image Analyst
Portland, Oregon