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Re-rendering proxies
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Actually I wrote the same path where everything else, the previews that is, are stored. CatDV made this elongated path. I don’t mind it but it seems to be excessively long. I also don’t mind seeing the original bins. As you can see in the screen grabs below, when using tape-based the reel names became the folders. I would have thought that the bin names would have shown up in this list. Instead I got the Volumes folder with the longer path in it. I am getting a little concerned with the RAID Set, RAID Set-1 folders because these are in fact the same. Normally I get RAID Set for machine #1 on the network and RAID Set-1 for the raid on the #2 machine. I’m using the footage on machine #2 to figure this out. I’m thinking I’ll have an issue when I go to add footage from the raid on machine #1. Will I get RAID Set-2 to describe what I would have thought was RAID Set. I’m trying to prevent a problem as I move into this new workflow. And I’m still not sure how this will work when I use the laptop and make changes to the catalog.
Thanks
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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The path based previews are the magic. You can set root, as Rolf said, to be whatever you like. and whether you know it or not, your Mac is adding /Volumes/Drive_Name/ to whatever you have when you view it in the command line so what we see as:
/drive-1/
is actually /Volumes/drive-1/.
This way, CatDV is making a instantly re-linkable copy of your media files. Putting it on a firewire drive is as easy as pie if you set your root correctly, (sometimes you may go one level above your main root if you want all non-shared drives to appear as the same to proxy) or if you partition and name your firewire drives (a favorite of mine) FCP just relinks because the proxies are all in place and the names are correct.
Be careful as you map paths, sometimes “fixing” something to look right to humans isn’t what a machine wants.
You are indeed digging into CatDV deeper than most casual users want to. Good luck out there and know that all the path tools are in the CatDV system to make this flow easily.
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Bryson,
You’re hitting that proverbial target spot with that accepted means of basic construction.What looks normal for me may not work so hot for the machine. It’s the one adding the extra data. I am not about to change it without checking. It’s still odd because the path-based structure to me looks more like tape-based, where the bins and original clip names show up. I live and breathe by reel name and timecode (for a generation and a half now). If you saw my preferences screen shot does that look good to you? I know I’ll have to add the portable drive to the path when I go to use the laptop. But can I just copy the previews with the existing structure? Or do I now need to make an archive? And yes, I understand that CatDV will search the listed paths starting at the top. I figured out that I needed to use the Preview Manager to delete the old previews, so now I’m rerunning them (low rez photo-jpeg) from the ProRes files that are the original media.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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So I switched to path-based, or rather added it. I used the preview manager to delete the proxies in one of my catalogs. Now viewing of previews has become very spotty to non-existant. Fortunately I started with plenty of hair or I’d be bald now.
I learned a couple of things that have been sneaking up on me over time.
When I setup our different FCP systems I knew that projects would move back and forth from one machine to the other. I thought I’d be clever and name the raids and external drives the same. I never anticipated sharing the full rez footage between machines because they’re only using internal raids and they’re just on the internal gigabit network. On the other hand I knew that the external firewire raids would go back and forth between the MacPros, and laptops and even home. I thought by naming those the same that FC would always know to find the footage. It ain’t so. FCP is using the drive ID at a lower level, so it knows the drives are different. Ok, one issue.The next issue I only recently while messing with CatDV and refining our catalogs. Get this: Sometimes I am accessing the full rez footage from across the network—not to edit, but to import footage into CatDV and/or to make previews. I’ll use one system or the other to pull HDCAM footage into FCP and then import those clips into CatDV. But the raids have the same name (Raid Set) on both large systems. Here’s the rub (and I know some of you see this coming). When I’m local on a machine the raid is “Raid Set.” If I pull from the other system’s raid the path is /Volumes/FCP Edit2/Raid Set-1. But when I move into the other room and work from there, the relationship and paths filp, so the old Raid Set-1 is Raid Set and the old Raid Set-1 is now Raid Set. This even though the footage is coming from the same directory on the same machine. No wonder I have all these extra paths and Raid Sets and Raid Set-1s, now with footage duplicated in them. Yeah, so I’ve renamed the raid on my #2 system. I haven’t been using it much and there isn’t much on it.
Setting the previews to path-based hasn’t seemed to be an improvement. Half the time the systems still can’t see the preview. Note that all the previews are, and have been, in the same location: a shared drive on yet another machine on the network. I’ve been using tape-based for ages (year or two?) without much of a problem. My workflow has been for a writer to create a sequence in CatDV using previews. I take that preview into FCP and it pulls up the timeline populated with the previews. We refine the cut, and when I get close I conform by reloading the footage from camera originals at full rez. It’s been a great system. But recently some of the timelines in FCP were not fully populated. While most of the shots were visible from the proxies, some showed as offline, even though the preview version existed and worked in CatDV. Hmmm. I did some wrangling and filled in the missing bits, but it was very tedious. I was hoping that path-based would solve this new issue. But now the previews keep getting lost. Unlike the full rez footage there’s no way to relink the previews, and they haven’t changed where they live, and the path is still in the field in the preferences.
What’s confusing me is how to add the paths to the preferences for path-based previews. Tape based were never a problem. Now I’m not sure what the word “original” means. Is it the original full-rez footage? Or the original path where the previews were created and stored, which hasn’t changed. Do I need to put in a “new” path for each clip, each directory, each tape? The tape-based make previews function stored clips from each tape in a separate folder in my CatDV Previews folder. The process using path-based has created the new Volumes folder in my CatDV Previews folder. Within Volumes are folder structures that mimic the paths to the full-rez footage. Hence my question about “original,” Does it mean preview or full-rez path? Argh.
And path-based doesn’t work with catalog archives? Wouldn’t an archive be the way to go for a catalog on a portable drive that I take to work on at home using the laptop?
yes, I stepped off the deep end with this. I went from a system that was 99% working and messed it up myself.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Sorry man, got a little busy out there but you have to know that doing this over a message board is like doing surgery through a key hole, not the best or easiest.
When you are setting path-based preview paths you can usually ignore the “original” setting unless you want to set up a special path map. You can choose use it as a wizard where you choose the hi-res, original path and then point to the place you want to place the previews but it’s often not needed. (again specific to your system)
Your storage naming was definitely a problem. Things might straighten out now, but in FCP, you have to get away from the tape based previews. I don’t think that having them both live is a good thing.
Honestly, I’ve never installed a single system in 4 years that used tape-based previews. I’d like to hear from anyone who’s used them to confirm that or refute it, but I can say that I have dozens of systems out there working with path-based only so that has to count for something. Mr. Duggan told me to stay away from them and I did.
Remember that certain features in CatDV exist because certain companies requested/paid for them, or once did. They do not apply to all installations and unless you have engineered your system to use that feature it may cause problems. Features often outlive their useful lifespan but cannot be EOL’d because they are in use on a specific client site. (Has anyone out there really exported a CMX3600 EDL from CatDV lately?)
Rename the drives, make sure that your paths, when you drag clips in, show up as /Volumes/drive_name no matter if it’s local or over the network and you should be fine. It’s that simple.
In a small rig like yours, with one proxy location and just macs, there should be one preview path. That’s all. /Volumes/path/to/where/you/want/previews/to/go
Troubleshooting path based previews is insanely easy. If you look at the media path value and then look inside the preview directory and the paths don’t match, it won’t work. If they match, it will.
If not, then you have to get your dealer or a tech involved. “Do It Yourself” is great for bird houses and gardening but a waste of time in professional post production. You can lose a lot of hair, or get a lot of gray. 😉
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Excessive long paths
When you add your path-based previews there are two parts, original path and preview location. It’s a good idea to fill in both as I suggested previously. That way you’re telling the system how much of the long path is irrelevant and to ignore. You don’t need to do this, but it makes things more efficient.Mixing tape and path previews
These are quite different so as a general suggestion I would recommend using separate folders for these. It’s not a big problem if you have them in the same place but it could cause a bit of confusion.RAID Set and RAID Set-1
That is a concern. When you mount a volume on Mac OS X it “magically” appears as a special directory in /Volumes, eg. /Volumes/RAIDSet. If some software has accidentally created a normal directory with that name then when you mount the volume it picks a new name, ie. /Volumes/RAIDSet-1 and so on. This is bad, as you could end up with files that are actually on your startup volume even though the path looks like it’s on the RAID. In the Finder, do Go > Go To Folder and type in /Volumes. It should only contain disk icons with a little arrow in the corner, not normal folders. If there are any normal folders there, move the files out of them and delete the folder.Update: I’ve just read your final message which makes things a little clearer. I’ll follow up with another post…
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Don’t use catalog archives! That’s an obsolete feature that only worked with tape-based previews and will be removed in a future version of CatDV.
I’ve just seen your comment about “naming the RAIDs the same”. That’s another more likely explanation of why you’re seeing RAIDSet and RAIDSet-1, if you have two volumes with the same name mounted at the same time.
I would strongly recommend you don’t name them the same. If you have two different files with the same path name, how can the system tell the files apart?
Note that that isn’t the same thing as saying that the same file can’t have two different paths. This happens all the time and is something that CatDV copes with well, especially in mixed environments. For example /Volumes/Media and the M:\ drive might be the shared volume on Mac and Windows, so if you configure them as being equivalent paths then CatDV will automatically find the file even if it encounters the “wrong” path.
Yes, “original” refers to the original full res media that the proxy relates to. Let’s say you have a disk which is sometimes mounted as /Volumes/RAID_ONE and sometimes as /Volumes/FCP Edit 2/RAID_ONE but the contents are the same in each case. (I’ve made up a new name to make it clear that each volume needs to have its own unique name, for example RAID_ONE and RAID_TWO). Let’s further assume you have a separate volume which we’ll call PROXY where you want to store your proxies. (If you mount and unmount your main volumes, I assume the proxies will be on a separate volume that is always available?)
You could then set up paths such as the following
Tape-based previews:
/Volumes/PROXY/TAPE/Path-based previews:
/Volumes/PROXY/ONE (/Volumes/RAID_ONE)
/Volumes/PROXY/ONE (/Volumes/FCP Edit 2/RAID_ONE)
/Volumes/PROXY/TWO (/Volumes/RAID_TWO)
/Volumes/PROXY/TWO (/Volumes/FCP Edit 2/RAID_TWO)If you do that, your PROXY volume will contain three top-level directories: TAPE (all your tape-based previews), ONE (proxies for all the original files on RAID_ONE), TWO (proxies for all the original hi-res files on RAID_TWO), and CatDV will find the proxies regardless of which machine you imported the media and built the previews on.
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PS. You could also set up equivalent directories for the full res media, so even if you import the file on one machine (so that’s the path that’s stored in your catalog) CatDV will automatically locate the hi-res media file on the other machine, even though it’s mounted differently.
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Bryson and Rolf,
Thanks for getting back. I know what you mean about going through the posts. I do a lot of support on the Apple support sites, myself. And just so you know, I’ve earned my gray hair. Designed and built a number of facilities and go all the way back to B&W reel-to-reel 1/2 tape. And been through laser disk, and then montage and then doing digital non-linear when Avid was still a dream in Tewksbury. I believe that CatDV isn’t all that difficult to setup and use, and I’m a big fan. But there’s some weakness in terminology, direction and intent (yes, I write tech manuals, too). We’ve been making great use of CatDV for several years now. I can easily say that it’s the single best addition to the facility in years. And it’s relatively easy to get a non computer-oriented writer or producer up to speed and doing useful work.
Up until now the drive naming conventions haven’t hurt us. That’s because each of four systems is sandboxed. When we move a project the path appear the same to the editing systems because we’re not mounting network volumes for editing. And acutually we haven’t had this current propbem with CatDV until just now. The eported XML always contained all the media. So something’s weird. But I did manage to fix that.
So now I’ve gone in and renamed one drive. That should sort out that part of the issue. We only ever had one path for previews. But I’m going to look at Rolf’s suggestion to have a separate directory for tape- and path-based previews. I’m re-rendering some of the previews, and using the new paths for all. So we’ll see.
As I look at it the path-based files look more like tape-based files, at least at face value. After all the path-based utilize the actual reel names, as well as the paths. That’s very cool, as far as I’m concerned. And because they’re in a playable format with the reel name and timecode burned in I can hand them to someone as it if they want to look and make some loose notes.
The definiition of “original” could be a little more precise. Suggested workflows could also be a little stronger. Point of fact we really haven’t had a single problem when running the system off the laptop and using the previews on an external pocket drive. Works like a charm. The description of the “archives” lulled me into interest, but I’m heeding Rolf’s warning. There really should be some caviate in the documentation. Ok, get this. I made the 8.1 documentation into both Kindle and ePub ebooks so I could read them on my Kindle and iPad. Nothing like curling up on a chilly Spring evening with a good manual. And no, I have no life ;-). I’ll let you guys know what happens as a result of the renaming and moving.
RobbNon-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Geeze, I hit Post Direct before fixing my typos. Oh well.
Thanks for the help, it’s been huge.Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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