CatDV vs. Cantemo

[Bryson Jones]

Thanks for the update, and please keep us posted as to how it goes over time.

I’m curious about Cantemo as well, was it strictly price that swayed you to Axle?

As to the licensing, you can’t really gripe about at the price (though you know we all will). CatDV and Axle are so far under the competition that I really don’t consider that a limitation. 60 users on any DAM is a significant investment.

Speaking of investments. Are you fairly confident that you’ll be rolling out Adobe Anywhere? And will that likely be in-house or over a WAN?

Knowing that it’s looking to be a $50k+ solution, once you have hardware and software integrated for let’s say 4 users, I’m curious as to how many people will really dig in and use it below the large broadcaster level. (For those of you curious, check the AA hardware requirement and network needs. It doesn’t exactly run on a Mac Mini over wifi.) We’ve looked at it seriously and think that the average deployment of that product will be pushing $100k for a decent sized shop.

I love the idea and the product but I think people are really unclear about the infrastructure needed at the current time.

That all said, congrats on deploying a DAM and getting into the mix and thank you for posting your results.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Craig Ricker]

Bringing this thread back to life. Our company is just starting to look into MAM’s and I have been looking at Cantemo Portal, and stumbled onto this thread. We are based in Australia and UK but would only need 5 editors to have access to material at any 1 time. Scaling in the future is something we want to have in mind. Cantemo Portal 2.0 looks to have some excellent integration with Premiere.

How have you been finding axle. What has been its weaknesses and strengths across the period you’ve been using it? Has there been adequate development over the year to the software?

Any information will be most useful to myself and others i’m sure.

Regards
Craig

Mac Pro 2.4Ghz 8 core, 24GB RAM, GTX 670

[Bryson Jones]

Jeff, can you share some experiences with Axle? I’d love to hear more as well.

Craig, also check out the webinar on the Squarebox page about the Adobe Premiere Panel which covers CatDV’s Adobe workflows as well.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Jeff Handy]

I’d be happy to share a bit about our experience with Axle. We have had it in service for just over a year and it’s been a rocky road. I would like to say it’s been great, but it’s been only decent. I think you really do get what you pay for and Axle is not at the top end of the price range by any stretch. That said, what it does, it does pretty well. It really is insanely simple, like they say.

Although Sam and the team do respond quickly to emails, resolutions can take time. I find they often need reminders that I’m waiting for help. It’s a fairly small group, but they have recently added staff and had a much bigger presence at NAB and will also be attending InfoConn in Orlando next week. I think that’s great that they are working on getting the word out. It’s a good product in a very low price range and I think it works great in small workgroups.

Unfortunately, we have grown past that and the product doesn’t scale well for our use at Bisk Education. At least not yet. I’m giving them some breathing room and even looking to upgrade our licenses to allow for Adobe Anywhere integration. If we do this, we’ll be doubling down on Axle. It’s a risk on my part, but I really do believe in the talent of Sam’s team. They really do care, and I’m confident in the new build they have coming for 2015. The new platform will soon be ported to Linux. They will also be rolling out their RESTful API. When they can get to that point, I think we’ll be able to settle in for a long relationship.

I’ll continue with more granular detail on my experience if you guys want to get in the weeds.

HandyGeek

[Bryson Jones]

Jeff, thank you.

Sam is pretty great and it’s cool to hear you temper your experience taking into account the budget/price of the software.

Support is expensive for DAM systems but as you note, critically important. I think that comparing Axle, CatDV and Cantemo is challenging since they have “radically” different pricing as well and how much support is “thrown in” is a point of contention when just buying the software.

Note that CatDV pricing varies widely depending on the scale and the scope of the system and the professional services. Cantemo does as well, but we find that the initial “buy in” on a CatDV system can be smaller. This is not always a good thing, but you can get started with CatDV at a much smaller level and then scale as needed.

For instance, many companies purchase CatDV and get through the initial stages and then engage in a more involved deployment once they have a better idea of what they want to do in a larger DAM sense.

We find that many other DAM’s require a much larger commitment of time and resources up front, so there’s no “toe dipping” period. Again, I personally wish everyone would/could engage in a large deployment and consulting contract but we know that that is not appropriate for all clients so take that into account.

I often to tell people that you can buy a small CatDV (or Axle) system and not even use it and no one would get fired. That would not fly on a larger $100k+ DAM. When/if you need/want more help, there are resources available from your reseller, Squarebox or NSA.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Craig Ricker]

Hi Jeff,

I am most interested in hearing the details of how its been going. As this is our first step into the MAM space, I am very much in need of real peoples experiences with the software, and the limitations they have experienced, as well as the strengths they have found.

So how does it go with axle on that level? What have you found are its strengths and weaknesses, and what is the general workflow that you use it within?

Mac Pro 2.4Ghz 8 core, 24GB RAM, GTX 670

[Craig Ricker]

Are you using prelude to rename clips on ingest onto your NAS or other media storage system. Then you have axle see the new footage, and you add metadata there?

How do you bring footage into say premiere after doing an axle search and finding a couple of clips you want to use in your edit?

Mac Pro 2.4Ghz 8 core, 24GB RAM, GTX 670