Bryson Jones
Forum Replies Created
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This is not really an issue of “can it be done” in regards to checking a file’s status at a given moment in time to a given path. That’s easily scriptable, as a “check online status” action.
However, what that status means is the main issue. CatDV’s path mapping and flexibility makes it difficult to say what “online” means to all users at all paths at any given time.
That said, if you want an action to check for a file in a given path, then update a field stating that status as of a date and time, that can certainly be done now.
Check file in path
Write “online status”
Write date and time of check
When and how often this happens is where your choice comes in, as well as the speed of checking a large set of files.
Let us know if there’s widespread interest in this sort of status check. This could be offered as a middleware product I’m sure with the above stated workflow restrictions.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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I’m not sure how well QT supports this. Running Mavericks I cant even get the poster frame to update in the Finder using QT Pro.
Just my observation. What OS are you running and how do you currently do this at your place?
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Excellent!
Great to hear you got it sorted. There’s so much that can be done with the Worker and a little extra scripting.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Yes, just like any path based non-linear editor, CatDV would see those assets as offline.
I’m not sure that any DAM would really be able to track those reliably. I’m excited to see what others are doing about file moves, but I’m cautious about that in the real world. Here are my questions about this:
How many files can a system track in real time?
How do updates and duplications get resolved. (Does the system decide what is a dupe and delete one? This seems strange/scary to me.)
How are temporary offline situations resolved? (We’ve seen another brand DAM system be set in a way that a short period of the storage being offline caused a re-scan of 2,000,000 files with new thumbnails being pulled etc. Yes, this took days.)These are all real concerns and I’ve simply not heard of enough people doing this type of workflow to answer. Do you have a demo running yet?
CatDV can watch an area, like you describe, and ingest assets. In most of the North Shore deployments, we like to have CatDV Worker ingest the assets and then move them to a fixed structure that is under admin control. Then people can access them read-only or call a move from a Worker action so that the system tracks files and delivers it to the new location, if copying isn’t appropriate. You can leave them in place but it can get a little confusing as to what to ingest and what not to. The node-based Worker gains a ton of power from being a separate app (You can have 100 of them ingesting if you wanted to in theory) but it not being tied directly to the server at all times does have limitations.
In my training and consulting I use the term, “the myth of editorial asset management.” That just means that humans will always outsmart a computer when it comes to tracking assets (and moving/losing them.) I find that handling the assets pre and post edit, is a far more successful approach and then letting the editors edit from the shared storage as needed, which is what they tend to do no matter what you tell them. 😉 If they need to change the assets, then of course a copy is made and re-entered as a new asset, (which it would of course be, once changed.)
There are so many issues with letting a user move assets and then expecting a DAM/MAM to “find” it. The biggest is latency. While the DAM engine is scanning or doing some other operation on another part of the system, what if a user moves a file? How long until the system shows that change? As we all know, “instant” isn’t really likely in a decent sized file system. (Heck, some SAN’s don’t even refresh the filesystem that fast unless you do it manually.)
Until we can tie DAMs directly to the filesystem I’m not sure how well that would work. Clients/users often hate to hear this.
Let us know the results of your testing, there are many ways to tackle this one, but I would think the answer is a workflow modification if you want to use CatDV in this environment.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Define “real time” for 46TB, right?
CatDV does not do this, neither does any other sub-$10,000 product, at scale.
Good to see you on here, man!
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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You mention they are “logged” into clips.
Do you create subclips or how are these split into “clips” otherwise?
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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This is likely a Windows thing, as opposed to CatDV.
Squarebox recommends using UNC paths and not mapped drive letters as Quicktime doesn’t play nice with drive letters over ethernet networks.
Try UNC and see if that sorts you out.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Are you asking about not having to move or link to the 500GB original file?
If so, Sending to Premiere will bring the whole clip over (test this but I believe this if how that will work). However, you can export a subclip, range or just an in and out point either with the client or the Worker and have it just re-wrap to the same codec. It’ll create new media but not have to transcode. This “sacrificial” media can be deleted after the edit, leaving the master in the archive.
It seems inefficient, but in many workflows we’d rather give the editor a small piece and let them do what they want with the media, rather than link to or copy the whole piece. Is this what you mean?
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Couple of thoughts.
The Notes field is one to be careful of in certain workflows as the Verbatim Logger can overwrite your info with a single “save”. You might want to create your own field and then put that into an HTML view for better viewing and search.
And then, CatDV has no true way to associate files together other than by metadata or catalog, meaning that there are no “look ups” per se. (There are some exceptions to this and I’m sure support will kick in with them, but they are exceptions and not the rule.)
If you have a programming code of some sort, for the content, you can easily enter the code in both and then search as needed. (This would be a great thing to cut and paste into that field we mention above in addition to the text of the transcription or title.)
CatDV is an asset management tool, always remember this, it’s not really for programming data and unless you have very good security, be careful as it can be easy to edit things and no one would know. Lock those fields!
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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File Catalyst rocks.
I haven’t seen their sync stuff, I always thought it was just to send and receive files.
Matt, can you link us to some info on their synchronization product?
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com