Bryson Jones
Forum Replies Created
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Justin,
There are a ton of things you can optimize before you spend the money on MS SQL. Reach out to your dealer to re-evaluate your hardware and db config. There’s usually a few hidden “gotchas” in there that can slow you down.
Also, always test the response on the server itself using a local copy of CatDV, if you can, to make sure that network speed is removed from the test.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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If you take a look at the Worker Node’s variables (under the “help” button when you’re editing a worker action) you will find a ton of things that can be extracted.
If you need to do the type of extraction you are looking for in the example listed, you may need to do some regular expressions (or get help with them if you’re not into programming.) Your dealer can point you in the right direction there.
This is where naming schemas and detailed folder/path structures become important. For example:
If I have a file called ADS345C4-day01-07.mov in the path, /Volumes/MEDIA/Projects/Client_Name/Shoot_Name/B-Roll/
I can pull the client name, the shoot name and what type of footage is is from the path using variables.
I can also pull “day01” or “07” or “ADS4345C4” as well from the filename.
There are rules and you have to decide whether or not you can or have to change your filenames to match this. Additionally, a good programmer can adapt outside scripting to do extra functions that may not be covered in the Worker Node. We have scripts, for instance, that expand codes such as “ABC” and replace them with Alabama Broadcast Company based on a lookup file. CatDV can do this with RegEx but it takes a lot more work.
Extra thought: It honestly may not be worth the trouble if the files are already created and stored. CatDV tagging is pretty amazingly fast for a human to do (and interns are pretty cheap.) But in the end, going forward, things can get a lot simpler if you plan now.
You can make the call based on whether the tagging will cost you more than programming and how valuable the data is.
This is a new metric for most post and production managers. It’s something that was never possible so the business decision makers may have never had to consider that. This is far and away the harder thing to work out than the technical side of extracting the data.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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That can’t be done the way you would assume it would be.
If you export and then use the command line to update the subclip’s media path, it will take your original clip offline.
This makes sense as CatDV likes a “sub clip” to be a true sub of the master.
However, there are many ways around this. I can think right now of a workflow that recorded the master clip info into a set of meta fields, exported your subclips as mov’s with an XML and then re-imported them as new assets. This would break the “sub” reference but you’d have a record of where they came from and it seems that you less want the master/sub relationship and more want these clips as new items on their own but with all original metadata.
That should get you what you want.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Will can you clarify?
“When all is said and done, I’d like to render those subclips out so they’re self contained movies…”
“But the only thing I’m finding is how to export a sub-clip as a movie.”
Is this not what you are looking to do?
Anything you want to automate will be a Worker Node action.
You can do what you are looking to do by using the Worker Node to search for “Underlying Type” and the value for a sub-clip is “Secondary”. Using that (and some other field mapping/status magic) you can set up a workflow to do exactly what you want to do… providing your LTO system is capable of being automated.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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This is a good thread, I’ll keep it going too. This is not so much on limits but on the character sets that are “legal” for file names. Maybe I should break this out and post it as a new topic too?
On the subject of “good” cross platform file naming conventions:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5923
There’s what we are delivering to programming clients as a standard for file names.
An important thing to remember is that if you’re storing data for long term use, it may get shared to another file system later (long after we’ve all retired or a software/computer company has gone out of business.) If you name things for Windows or Mac OS X only, you can get into trouble.
We recently ran into a nightmare where a company had named files using OS X rules, was using Windows automation and then their storage was a Linux system so that when we programmed using the APIs for all of these apps, we had to clean every name for all three OS’s. Yes, a nightmare… and expensive.
They could have saved everyone months of work and thousands of dollars by simply using simpler file names.
So if your users are tempted to use a cute character in a file name, please stop them. lol The future depends on it. 😉
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Hey, a reader pointed out that my link to AWS is wrong above. (Good catch, Joe!)
https://aws.amazon.com/importexport/details/ should be the correct one.
Cow links also seem to not be working so you may have to cut and paste.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Could you be talking about Live Capture Plus? CatDV Pro doesn’t capture footage itself.
Never really used the app but I’d try contacting support. I’m not sure if the app is in development anymore.
If you have media issues with DV movs, (common in that format) there are a ton of ways to read and transcode the files. But CatDV Pro only plays and catalogs the files, it doesn’t create them.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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I’ve not seen this, but are you using the Apple Java install or the Oracle one?
I moved to the Oracle Java install recently on my Mavs machine. (NOTE I did this as a test. It’ s not advice or offered as a solution) 😉 Can you tell that I’m paranoid?
Could someone from Squarebox offer insight as to which version of Java is best on Mavs?
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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For non-TC cameras CatDV can parse the start time from the .THM files.
Have you tried importing a file both with the THM in the same directory and then with it not in the directory? That’s the only thing I can think of that would sway it, if somehow the .THM data was conflicting.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Could you try to export to the same proxy setting using QuickTime Pro? This will tell you if it’s a codec or media or machine issue.
If these exports are black, it’s something in those, if not, then I’d report it to Squarebox support.
Let us know!
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com