-
Catalogs Proxies and Full Res
Hello! I had a concern with assets (proxies and full res) and catalogs:
I was curious as to what might be best in regards to my company’s situation for CatDV Pro and the Web Client. I had created several catalogs that I wanted to import files. The situation is that they are all Pro Res 422 files and when the catalogs are published to the server, the client(or role) can’t see the file given it is so large. The concern I have is, do I have to create a catalog with the Full Resolution files and additional catalog that contains the proxies for the files (and therefore publish the proxies catalogs rather than the full resolution)?
For example I would create a catalog that would be marked as “Assets Full Resolution” which contains the ful res version, and from there create proxies from that catalog and then import into “Assets Proxies” which would only contain the low res/proxy versions.
Is that the right away? Is there a better way? Can I just have them import as proxies and not have to go through the process of selecting Full Res clips from the catalog and exporting the proxies just to re-import them into a different catalog?
Let me know! Thank you.
-
3 Replies
-
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “the client(or role) can’t see the file given it is so large” – do you mean the video can’t stream reliably from the storage? And that’s why you want to use proxies?
Assuming that’s what you mean then no – you should not have a separate catalog for the proxies. You should have a parallel directory that contains your proxy media, and you should set up a path mapping rule (in Prefs -> Media Search Paths) to map the root of you media folder to the root of the proxy folder.
CatDV will try and play the original media by default, but you can right-click the player to choose to play the proxy (or switch on the old thumbnails/proxy/original tabs).
-
Thank you for your response John.
Correct, the original files that I import into catdv and publish to the server are too large for the webclient to see and therefore I want to use proxies. What I had done yesterday is set it up that when I import the original media that the proxy is “force used” rather than the original media. I did this because If I have the original media in there and I create a proxy it seems that when I publish that catalog to the server the Client will be able to see the Full Res file (which doesn’t stream correctly). I mainly want them only be able to view the proxy files given the file size streams better.
-
Hello there,
CatDV manages the relationship between high res and proxy versions of assets internally. You do not have to ingest the proxy separately as that would create new clips (at proxy resolution) and you would not want to have to manage 2 copies of clips manually.
If you have an installer or trainer to reach out to, I’d ask them about this. Otherwise read up on path mappings as John said.
The basics are this:
If you have a ProRes file at the following path –
/Volumes/FAST-DRIVE-01/folder/file.mov
Then you could set CatDV to make and look for its proxy files in –
/Volumes/SLOW-NAS-SHARE-01/DRIVE-01/folder/file.mov (or something like that.)
CatDV looks to the equivalent path that you set (/Volumes/FAST-DRIVE-01 = /Volumes/SLOW-NAS-SHARE-01/DRIVE-01) and if it sees a mov or mp4 file with the same name as the original (file.mov = file.mp4) it will assume that that is the proxy of the high res file in the equivalent path.
If you tell CatDV to “make a proxy” it will put it in the equivalent path.
The user would then mount the “slow NAS” and when they opened a catdv catalog they’d see the proxy instead of the high res in the player window.
If a user had both the FAST-DRIVE and the SLOW-NAS-SHARE mounted, they’d see both versions linked to the same metadata in the player window.
In this way, you can grant users access to the proxy and not the high res or have the high res on a fast fibre SAN and the proxy on the slower 1Gig ethernet NAS, for instance.
Hope this helps. It’s one of the cooler things about CatDV but rather hard to explain. Easier to show, hence if you have a reseller, have them set it up for you and you’ll get it right away.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up